Hello everyone. I'm working on a side-scrolling platform adventure game, currently titled "Halloween Nightmare", although that could change if we come up with a better name. My job on the game is level design, story elements and character dialogue, research and playtesting. I'm also giving pixelling a shot, but I'm only a beginner so won't be adding anything significant to the graphics in the game.

The small development team who are working on it call themselves Underground Arcade, and they're goal is to make high quality, fun games in the style of those classics from the 80s and 90s. And to achieve that absolutely authentic feel, we're developing the games for actual 80s and 90s hardware! That means anyone with a moderately decent PC or Mac, PSP, X-Box, PS3, GP2X or various other systems can also play the games through emulation if they don't own the original computer or console.

As you may be aware, developing for old hardware isn't very profitable, and none of us are in it for the money. Our first game, Halloween Nightmare, will be "Donationware". This means the full, unrestricted game is freely available to download and play for anyone. If they like the game, they're welcome to leave a friendly message on our guestbook or make a donation through PayPal. All donations are pooled and used to pay any future contracted or freelance artists, musicians or coders who help out with future games. Currently our donation pool has around $27 in it.

We want to try and finish this game and release it a few days before October 31st, so everyone has a chance to download it and play it on Halloween. In the following few weeks, we want to have a few different collaborations and competitions for any pixel artists out there who may want to help contribute to this fun project. As we can't really afford to hire several people for specific jobs, what we're doing is offering a bounty! Whoever comes up with the best example of what we're looking for wins a cash prize (payment is through PayPal). Runners up will receive an "additional unused graphics" credit in the game (increase experience level +1) and your artwork will be added to a gallery of extras on the CD version of the game.

In addition to the bounty, you may also receive a share of the donations towards the game. We're honest people and we have no intention of using or ripping people off, we genuinely just want to make good games and some new friends along the way. If you don't think the bounty is enough payment for your time, you don't have to enter. The offer is open to both amature and professional artists, you decide if you want the reward or not.

Collaborations, WIPs, critique and edits are okay, and you're welcome to post in this thread.

To start off with, we're offering $25US to the artist who comes up with the best Heads Up Display Panel for Halloween Nightmare. This is the section at the bottom of the screen where the lives, energy and score are usually displayed. Our current placeholder (and previous attempts) are enough to make you sick. I have posted here a few of the quick panels some of us came up with to use temporarily in the game, as well as several HUDs from other platform games to give you lots of ideas and inspiration. There are a few conditions for the panel, these are:

* Panel must be 320 x 64 and in no more than 16 colours.
* Panel has to display one 48 x 48 size "hole" for the main character's face (may include a fancy border).
* Panel needs to have a long energy bar container (energy bar itself is a vector oblong that fits inside)
* Lives are displayed as "retries" because, being a children's game, the character doesn't actually die, she just has a cry, and tries again. The word "retries" doesn't need to appear, but there needs to be some indication of how many retries/lives are left. This can be in the form of an object bar (several hearts/blank-heart-spaces) or text (LIVES=3).
* Try and keep the panel as Halloween themed as possible.
* Try not to have much black around the outside, we'd like the panel to fill the whole area.
* Final artwork may be modified to fit the game.

Here are the first vomit-inducing panels we tried to make:



There's also a thing from Darkstalkers, and a picture of the girl who will be inside the little 48x48 box (her face would change depending on her energy level, in addition to the energy bar). The panel does NOT have to include the colours for the girl, the faces will use their own separate 16 colour palette.

Here are a bunch of example panels from other games. You're welcome to try and guess where each one is from if you like.



And here is a very early level introduction mockup. Some of the graphics here will be changed by the time the game is finished, but hopefully it will give you a general idea of the look of the game. There'll be lots of different levels filled with candy to collect and zombies to slaughter.



Hopefully we can get this project finished in time for Halloween so everyone can play it. There has been a lot of behind-the-scenes development going on on the game for some time, so I'm sure our goal is achievable. But due to the very real deadline of Halloween (October 31st) we'd like to get this done as soon as possible. As soon as the panel is finished, we can release real preview screenshots of the game and gather more interest in the project (more interest=more donations=bigger prizes in future bounties). So we'd prefer if the panel was finished in a week, or two at the most.

So, to sum up...

A bounty of $25 to the artist who brings me the Heads Up Display Panel for our platform game "Halloween Nightmare". All work will be credited in the game.

If you read this far, I hope I have your interest, so stay tuned for more exciting bounties from Underground Arcade, including Halloween costume sprite dolling (your chance to cameo in a game?). If anyone has any questions, they can either PM me, ask here, or catch me in #PixelJoint on IRC ( irc.slashnet.org ), I'm usually in there, along with lots of other fun people who talk about pixelling and other cool stuff.

Thanks for reading, and best of luck to anyone who wants to give it a go!

Love from Cammy

(Moderators, I apologise if this topic is in the wrong section, please feel free to move it as you see fit.)

Edited by Cammy - 24 September 2008 at 2:18am