Thesius XII (The Making Of)

[kevin]

 Thesius XII - Intro Previews from 1993

   Here's something I only just found in my backup collection, which seems to have a number of Thesius XII demo's all the way back to when it was called Enforcer  then Enforcer II ...  

  In this video we're looking at two early editions of the Thesius XII intro, the most notable differences being that in these versions we see's Ben's backdrop picture.   I don't recall why it wasn't used now, but the demo is struggling to move the logo down and keep the frame rate, which is most likely the reasoning behind it.   Although space was at a premium  given our rather overly ambitious spec's for the game.


 

 Download ADF:   Thesius XII (Amiga)

[kevin]

Enforcer Preview 1991 - Amiga

Meet a very early predecessor to Thesius XII called Enforcer. I think this demo is from 1991 but it could be early 1992, not 100% sure.

The programming is by me (Kevin Picone) and so is the coder artwork. Although i think Gavin Close helped out bit also. We did the first test level for Thesius XII with Simon Beggs also before Ben Hemming took over the art duties..

Downloads

   - Get Thesius XII (Amiga)

   - Get Enforcer Demo (Attached Bellow)

[kevin]

Render of the Thesius XII ship (side on) by Ben Hemming (1995 probably)

 The original picture is encoded in #Amiga #AGA's native Ham8 mode. The file is stored in an IFF which means it only has run lenght encoding. What's interesting is that the 32bit PNG version is only about 40->50K smaller. So if you applied the same type of compression to the original stream you'd likely have a much more efficient (basically loss less) format.

[kevin]

  Enforcer II Sprite & Tile Sheet (8colour)  1990/91

     Here's some of my 8 colour sprite work for Enforcer II.  Which was the progression  between Enforcer (seen above) and what would be known as Thesius XII.  So it used the colour zones of 8 colours all down the screen.  So drawing sprite / tiles had to be in 8 colours.  The display would split the palette vertically, so the same object couldn't appear with  zones of the different palette.   

     I'd say beyond a few people (Gavin / Dan & Amiga user group) I doubt this has ever been seen..    My favorite is the is the hand titles which are part of the end of level gaurdian.   I remember getting this running (to a point) but Ben took over all the artwork duties in 1992 when we officially started on Thesius XII

[kevin]

ENFORCER II - ARKWORK   by Kevin Picone and Gavin Close 1991 ( 2019 04 25)



   This is coder artwork from the development of an Amiga game that would finally be called Thesius XII.  Before Thesius XII existed, I was working on game/engine called Enforcer.   In the original version, I did all the coding and artwork,  then later my friend Gavin Close helped out with the mapping in what was called Enforcer II.  Which was a progression of the original, but to be honest it wasn't much better than Enforcer so we need some skilled pixel artists. 

  Enforcer used an Amiga display mode called dual play field, this meant 8 colours for backdrop map, 8 colours for the foreground sprites.   The player was a hardware sprite that could be independently coloured from the playfields. Giving some control, but a very limited palette to work with. 


 

Video Music: Blue_Macaw - by Quincas Moreira
                      https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

[kevin]

  

  Play THESIUS XII in your web browser today at the internet archive