Agony GB:

Animation Test

Controls:

• Arrow Keys/WASD: Move
• Z/J: Fire

No enemies, no power-ups, no scrolling, not even any sounds or music; just Alestes - protagonist of classic Amiga shmup Agony - floating in free space, made in GB Studio.

The original game is renowned for its impressive graphics and animation, so if I was even going to attempt a full Game Boy demake, the first step would of course be to make adjustments to accommodate the respective device's limitations. In other words, retooling the sprites and animations in such a way as to preserve the feel of the original whilst enabling the rest of the game stuff to just work.

In other other words, shrinking the size of Alestes' sprite and reducing the number of animation frames so any given main game scene in GB Studio has enough leftover Sprite Tile allowance for enemies, powerups, etc.

In the Amiga original, Alestes' sprite can reach as tall as 62 pixels, with his flapping animation consisting of 16 frames. In this demake, he's 30 pixels at his tallest, plus he's made up of two sprite layers using two different colour palettes, and his animation runs for 5 frames.

This test is to determine whether he still looks good after this downgrade. I'm pleased with the results so far 👍🦉

If you like what I'm doing and want to help me make more of it, consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Thanks for looking.