As well as neat environmental effects like that, if you use multiple cycles you can do more involved animations. In 1995, working with graph paper, screenshots, and patience, I made exact replicas of various Lemmings graphics and animations in Deluxe Paint II for DOS. I made a blocker with the foot tapping, head turning, and hair flinging out: https://imgur.com/a/KBuhu1G (a screen recording of an emulator, so the timing is a bit uneven - actual file data in description).
This could have been an amazing screensaver, or even the world of a AAA Karateka game.
My uncle was a prolific PC software pirate in the 80's, and I remember finding a french game in his collection that I've never seen again. Maybe it was actually a demo or prototype, that used the VGA palette in an incredible way with metallic reflections. Nothing that I saw for many years used those graphics until games started using prerendered 3D, and even those didn't look as impressive. I regret not saving a copy.
Looks nice, but it's not that one. The metallic surfaces could have been similar to the bottom alien hand (cursor?) in that screenshot, but I remember those looked way better:
I think it was a demo because it only had an animated intro I didn't recognize from other games, a menu, and the game was a plataformer with a large sized alien or android that could walk and shot. But it restarted (or crashed?) after a few seconds.
lol. Yeah, the intro was a rotating metallic object. It used the blue to orange gradient giving it a steel look. I remembered it had this sound of buzzing metal (Transformers alike) which should have been an advanced effect for the PC speakers. The game itself didn't have much content to it, other than the (female?) metallic android, the gradient sky and simple terrain. I guess these elements had so much detail because of their large size.
Wow, that's it! But I still think that I played a leaked prototype of that game, because it didn't have any other details like the vegetation, and the rotating cube didn't transform into the game's title. Great to see they actually finished it! lol
So, Metal Mutant (1990-1991) came before Flashback and Legend of Kyrandia (both 1992). I can't recall a previous game that has such impressive artwork. It seems they modified the gradient from blue-orange (sky-desert reflections) to colors that match the environments, which makes it kind of monochromatic. So the prototype looked even better as I recall.
Yes, I don't recall the game myself. But I recall Flashback. I had an Amiga at the time, but not a PC until a few years later. 1991 probably was about the time when the PC started to catch up to the Amiga in terms of graphics.
I like how ChatGPT can be used to to do fuzzy "queries" like this and come up with the right answer:
The art is great on its own, but knowing the constraints it runs under and how one image can look so different, or even animated, based solely on the palette, elevates the art to a whole new level.
It's funny to see this presented as a retro "pixel art" program. I mean I suppose it is given that it is based on a program nearly 40 years old, but the example image that is always shown with Deluxe Paint (and on this clone version's page too) is the famous picture of King Tut's mask. When I first saw that picture back in the day it was the first example of computer graphics that I had to look at twice to determine that it wasn't a photo -- the resolution, and the colors made it seem so real at first.
It's just that I find calling it "pixel art" (which a style of graphics deliberately made to look crude for a retro effect) odd when it was state of the art at the time. It's like how someone might make a black & white silent movie today in order to be "arty", but someone doing that 100 years ago was just making a movie.
It actually was pixel art, hand ( or rather mouse) crafted by the artist using a real picture for reference. I remember reading an article way back when where they interviewed her about the artwork. Amazing artist who I think at the time worked for Electronic Arts, but was pretty prolific in the Amiga space back in the day.
Yeah Deluxe Paint was mindblowing to me - I spent ages using that program. As amazing as it was, I would still be flabbergasted by what some of the really good artists could do with it.
About 2-3 years ago, I was writing a clone of Deluxe Paint in C/Raylib (referencing the released source code). I got about 50% done and lost my incentive.
It's a big program with a lot of features and caveats, so seeing a completed version is awesome. Congrats.
Well, yes, staring at a screen is the digital art workflow just as it is the programming workflow, and deep work (or just most work!) requires not constantly getting distracted.
If you are looking for an open source bitmap drawing program, [grafx2](http://grafx2.chez.com/) is worth checking out. Mature and with plenty of features. It was developed taking inspiration dpaint and brilliance
Pixel art paint programs are an underrated way to learn a lot about a programming language and how to apply various algorithms in that language. For the motivated learner they’re perfect as a third project once you’ve completed something like a todo list and pong. Easy to make as complicated as your ambition and skill level determine.
And then you get into things like mouse input, creating a primitive GUI or even windowing system, printing, saving/loading different file formats... (at least back the early days if you were using something like DOS that didn't have any of that)
I was thinking the exact opposite. Maybe I'm too much of a pun-lover or maybe I place too much value on the idiosyncrasies of non-commercial creativity.
Marketing guys don't follow any logic when they're coming up with names.
I take the "Deluxe Paint N", where N is a sequence, any day.
It's enough to see how marketing guys are naming smartphones, e.g. Sony
Xperia line. It's impossible to know what is the sequence of those
phones. E.g. "Xperia 10 III" came before "Xperia 5 IV". It's a mess.
Computer games? Current marketing trend is to name the game using the
same name the first part has been using. Nobody cares the name has been
already used several years ago, nobody is apparently old enough to
remember! Want to search the Internet for information about the old
game? Why would anyone want to do that?!
Deluxe Paint was nice and all, but I happened to have DigiPaint for the same system, and boy it had some really wild (for 1989) features, like gradient fills, gradient color blending, fully adjustable transparency painting, and texture mapped manipulation. ALL in the HAM (4096 colors) mode!
Deluxe Paint is what got me into graphic design. The hours I spent in front of that my Amiga pixellating away, no wonder I didn'g get at girlfriend in my teens.
I suck at computer art stuff, but what skills I do have came via many hours of practice with DPaint. It seemed like an impossible sci-fi system made real.
Seriously, a pixel art painting program with a crude CRT scanline filter overlayed on top, at arbitrary scale instead of strictly enforcing perfect pixels?
What is this for, to create a feeling of using an old computer?
Even VGA had double scan at 320x200 resolution for better clarity.
http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ (hit "Show Options)
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0