Making-off

This article was already published in CAM issue #3. A few updates were done.

1987 was the year when Amiga came into my life. After have sold my old Amstrad CPC 464, I decided to buy my first Amiga computer: a powerful Amiga 500. I remember the first time I played Prince of Persia... it was like in a dream: beautiful graphs, magic sounds, excellent animation, ... Simply amazing! I often used it for gaming: Sim City, Populous II, Vroom or Lemmings were some of my favourite games. In 1993, I logically bought an Amiga 1200 that I still own today. My A500 is unfortunatly out of order as my floppy drive doesn't work any longer :(  I still, of course, use today my A1200 and I like so much games like The Settlers, Theme Park or Sensible Soccer. More recently I preorder an Amiga One and I will enjoy OS 4.0 on it when it will be available...

Amiga Developer

Little by little, I began to code software instead of playing games all the time ;). My first application was created in Amos on my A500: it was a map editor called Deluxe Map that allowed to create easily maps for game, mainly Amos games. When I got my A1200, I continued working on it, even if it was limited by ECS Amos features: I didn't count how many days I worked on this project but it would be with no doubt MANY.

I then began to use C language and created a few tools like for example, a tar extraction program called Untar. When AmigaOS 3.5 was released, I played a bit with Reaction classes and developed a startup-sequence management tool called Start Me Up, which is also a song of The Rolling Stones, one of my favourite bands :). You can still find this program on our website.

When AmigaOS 3.9 was released, I was very disapointed to see that there was no french translation of user manuals. That's why I decided to organize a team (we were more than 20 people) in order to translate the five AmigaOS manuals. It was a very hard job and it took almost ten months but we did it! Only Amiga makes it possible :)

AmigaDE wave

When Amino became Amiga Inc in early 2000, I was quickly convinced by their plans, even if I thought that it would not be so easy... But for the first time of my life, I had the opportunity to be at the begin of the new Amiga wave. That's why I quickly bought an Amiga SDK, even if I hadn't at this time the right operating system to run it! A few weeks later, I also bought a low PC with Linux on it and began to play with AmigaDE...

One year of reflection

I didn't code immediatly under AmigaDE. In fact, I began to read Amiga manual (300/400 pages I believe) to understand what can be done or not with the new Amiga operating system.I then of course compiled samples and a few programs to see how it was. But at this early stage, I prefered thinking rather than coding. And a few questions came to my mind like for example "Which language I should use?". There was indeed four available languages with SDK: Java, C, C++ and VP (Virtual Processor). I finally decided to use VP as it was, for me, the fatest and the more system-integrated language under AmigaDE. But quickly came another crucial question: "What content will I create?". I didn't know it immediatly but I decided to make quickly a map editor to create game more easily later.

Here I go

June 2001 was the real start of my work under AmigaDE. I first decided to sign a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) with Amiga Inc in order to have more help from them and others developers. I then worked during three months on an early beta (I still use it today) of my map editor called Map Me Up (yes I like these two words and find funny that all my softwares finish itself by "Me Up" :). It allows me to create sprites banks but also to create quickly levels for games. Once it was finished, I still didn't have any idea of my next project, even if it was clear that it would be a game.

The IDEA came suddenly: I was watching a soccer broadcast on TV (yes, it's true :) when I thought about a game in which you would have to catch some letters in right order to build a word. I immediatly took a pen and began to write and draw everything that came to my mind about this idea... Even if I still don't know what is the connection between soccer and word building ;).

Word Me Up was born!

The name of the game - Word Me Up - came logically to my mind and I began to write an analysis document in which I described the aim of the game, the story, game play key elements, screens, etc: a kind of storyboard. At the same time, I drew some characters. I also defined possible worlds (space, game, sport, country, etc) and possible levels (soccer, tennis, farm, etc). It took almost three months to write this document: yes, three months without writing a single line of code!

First difficulties 

I began to develop the game in early 2002: my first goal was to develop a prototype in which I could move a character in a labyrinth. Simple, you think? No, not so simple for a first game: collision detection, multi-directional scrolling, etc. Well, what a challenge it was for me! Two months later, my prototype was working well on my desktop computer.

I decided to sign a SDA (Software Distribution Agreement) with Amiga Inc in March 2002: it allowed me to have much more help and above all access to Ami2D, Prism, AACE player, etc done by Amiga guys. Ami2D was very useful, especially with sprites management. I've done several tests of Ami2D like "SaltLake" (see picture). I then kept on coding and improved my prototype with for example, baddies movement or tiles collision.

So much work!

It was time to add basic functionnalities like GUI, menu, help, options, etc. It wasn't so difficult but it took time! However, my game became gradually more real. I add french (yes I'm a french guy ;) and english localization. I also bought a PDA (Pocket PC) by June 2002 to test Word Me Up on it. First benchmarks were disappointed: the game was in fact very slow :(. But with help of Amiga and others SDA developers, I improved my code and it became much better :) At this time, I had a more or less stable version of Word Me Up but only one level! That's why, during two months, I drew all sceneries, tiles and baddies for 100 levels. I besides used PPaint on my Amiga 1200 for all this drawing. I then also used my A1200 to make all sound effects in late 2002.

It was also time for external beta-testers to play with Word Me Up. I have to say that I was very anxious because game play is a very personnal thing and it was the first time that others people than me get a stable version of Word Me Up. But I was quickly reassured because comments and feedbacks were quite positives. Besides, I'd like to thank Fleecy Moss who was very helpful with his feedback and advices.

Last work

In early 2003, I built 60 game levels, added others localizations (spanish, italian and deutsch) and sound effects... Beta-testing was done by 10 people and I had to fix last bugs, improve difficulty progression, maniability, GUI or add a few simple but important functionnalities like, for example, direct re-start (without the need to come back to menu). John Harris and Matthew Kille were very helpful, a big thank to them.

And now?

Word Me Up is now quite finished on AmigaDE. It is now time for Amiga Inc, our AmigaDE distributor, to release Word Me Up on Pocket PC and Smartphones. We can't give you a release date for now but the best guess is still "when it's done" ;o).

Glames, Boing Attitude :)