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First post, by ishadow

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Hi everyone.
I would like to show you my latest game: "Avenger Bird".
It's available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/557030/

My goal was to recreate the look and feel of shareware games from the 90's that I played back then. Originally I planned to limit game graphics and sound to a 386 + Sound Blaster level, but that hardware would probably have a really hard time with many layers of parallax scrolling.

With music I've only worked with OPL3 chip emulation. It was actually fun experience. There's popular belief that FM synthesis was inferior to PCM samples, but when used right it can sound really great (well maybe not my music, but I did my best). I've used PCM for percussion and game SFX. I was always wondering why DOS games (almost) never used FM + PCM for music.

I wanted to make a game for players who grew up with DOS PCs, that has the same feeling and still has something new and challenging. Avenger Bird has somewhat unique controls. You just have to see them in action.
I also wanted to make an action side-scroller game that don't have any violence. It wasn't easy, especially a boss fight, but I managed to do this.

My ultimate goal was to make a game for retro fans, who could play together with they kids and show them the style of games from their childhood.

That's being said. I've got quite good reception and good reviews, but there's little interest in such a game. Everyone wants to play an early access survival games on steam.

So, if you want to try my game, here are the steam keys for you:

VDVNC-BPGNC-HRMKZ
03ENM-ET6IN-KNFT6
I9W3A-YHAW4-8IN82

There's a couple of easter eggs in the game. One featuring one famous DOS cameo character:)

Reply 1 of 6, by clueless1

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l33t

Thank you! Going to check it out right now.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 2 of 6, by clueless1

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It's entertaining, but I'm having trouble clearing the tutorial. 🤣. Not sure what to do. It seems I am doing everything to clear it, but it just starts the tutorial over again when I think I've cleared it.

edit: I figured it out. It's kind of like Super Mario. You have to follow the paths to new areas. I kept re-entering the tutorial, not realizing I could follow the path to the next area. 🤣. Pretty fun game, thanks again!

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 3 of 6, by mrau

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Oldbie

funny how we use 2-3 layers of abstraction to let our machines what they did vry well some 20 years ago 😀

this seems very nice, i like the multilayered backgrounds.

maybe the protagonist could get a little upgrade on the looks?

Reply 4 of 6, by ishadow

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mrau wrote:

maybe the protagonist could get a little upgrade on the looks?

The most surprising thing with making this game was to achieve compromises. Main character is 16x16 pixels big. It's very little. I wanted it this way, because I aimed for that blocky tileset look. Such small sizes are hard to animate, and adding detail makes everything blurry. Anyway my testers never complained about that look. I've changed many enemies overtime though.

mrau wrote:

funny how we use 2-3 layers of abstraction to let our machines what they did vry well some 20 years ago

Well, video game designers are really good at masking hardware limits. In modern pixel-art games you can do things that were impossible on the retro hardware. You can use tons of different tiles, many layers, hundreds of animation frames. Shader effects, gradients, even dynamic lightning. Not to mention millions of colors.
You also have very precise collision detection. Even games with retro style are often designed in a way that they could not run on old PC or consoles.

Even PS2 wasn't fast enough or had enough RAM for some modern pixel-art games. Of course with clever programming and some design changes it could run all of it, but it would be very challenging to optimize it.

Reply 6 of 6, by mr_bigmouth_502

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Thanks for the free game! 😉 Will definitely give it a shot.

EDIT: I used the third key down on the list. The other two might still be available.