A Question...

[Was It Me?]

Mike - (or anyone who knows) -

What graphics program(s) do you use to make the (awesome!) art for your games, particularly the blocks and such in DX-Ball?

*Feel free to ignore the question if the answer is a company secret or something like that :) or, answer in as much or little detail as you wish.* :)

(I'm guessing that it's a mixture of 3D rendering and 2D painting?)

I've made some blocks for a DX-Ball style game before in Photoshop, but I'm still interested in learning...

[ben]

I'm not the artist, but Mike (and now Matt) use Blender, The Gimp, and Inkscape.

[Was It Me?]

Thanks! That's kind of what I expected.

[Lommen]

Wow "was it me" has pretty much become educated in all blitwise tech...i bet you could make a similar game now with C++

[Was It Me?]

I'm guessing that's sarcasm. :)

But, by the way, I have made a similar game in C++. It's almost done (it's been in progress for about a year). It's not a clone though.

The graphics might not be as good as DX-Ball, but that might just be because I'm not as good of an artist as Mike or Matt.

The graphics (and the question) have almost nothing to do with the programming aspect of the game. I was just wondering so I might look into ways to improve my graphics. :)

[Brian]

Easy fellahs! I don't think Lommen was being sarcastic so much as complementary. Happy thoughts, everyone!

[Was It Me?]

OK, OK. You're probably right. Although, you never know, Lommen is hard to predict...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, I'm definitely not "educated in all of Blitwise tech", and I think that Lom probably knows it... That's what led me to believe that it was sarcasm.

But, I'm not thinking any "unhappy thoughts" and never was...

[Mike W.]

Hi all,

The graphics programs used to make Pocket Tanks and Super DX-Ball are:

Brilliance 2 (running on Amiga 1200 or WinUAE)
Blender 1.80 (I bought a registration key to support the efforts)
The Gimp 1.2
Paint Shop Pro 5 and 8
Texture Maker (Super DX-Ball only)

Sound effects were edited using Sound Forge 7.0.

Coding was done using Visual C++ 5.0 on Windows and Codewarrior 8 on Mac, using a custom carbon layer made by CTSP Games for supporting OS9 and OSX.

I also use Visual Assist with Visual C++, because it adds some really nice code completion and other stuff to my very old compiler. (which I cling to for compatibility reasons and because I'm curmudgeoned... who needs a new compiler every darn year) :)

Boundschecker is also used with Visual C++ to find those nasty memory overwrites and leaks. If you are developing on Linux, Valgrind is recommended and totally free. <gasp>

FYI - The graphics for the original DX-Ball were made with Deluxe Paint 4 for DOS and Brilliance 2 running on a real Amiga 1200. I used GoldWave for .wav editing back in the good old days, and I believe I was compiling on Visual C++ 4.2. I think that Seumas McNally used a old copy of Lightwave on Windows to make the paddle graphics. (I had already drawn all the paddle art by hand using Brilliance, but he wanted to contribute to the glorious cause of making an Amiga-style game for the PC)

For the record, I do have Visual C++ .NET Standard with the free optimizing compiler toolkit installed... but Visual C++ 5.0 is an old habit that's hard to break. :)

We are moving to XCode 2.0 for Mac development, and on Linux we are using GCC and makefiles. You'll be hearing more about Linux development in the coming months. Any Linux coders or gamers out there?

[Was It Me?]

Thanks for all the detailed and helpful info Mike. From a developer and a general viewpoint, I really appreciate what you guys do at Blitwise.

For the record, I do have Visual C++ .NET Standard with the free optimizing compiler toolkit installed...

That's what I use...
Visual C++ .NET is well... different... than 5.0. (maybe cluttered?) :)

I had already drawn all the paddle art by hand...

Me too... :) (In Photoshop 7)

Brilliance 2 running on a real Amiga 1200

Sweet!

...using a custom carbon layer made by CTSP Games for supporting OS9 and OSX.

That's interesting...

The Gimp 1.2
Paint Shop Pro 5 and 8

Why all three?

What types of things do you use Blender for?

who needs a new compiler every darn year

Not me! :)