If you have tried any of my games and haven't
run screaming, you might be interested in what I use for creating them
- apart from black coffee, cigars and large doses of desperation.
You might also be interested in the black coffee and cigars, but the desperation
is very much an acquired taste.
The main culprit is Hexaid (Dos , Linux or source), which can be used on its own to mangle one game out of another, with the help of an occasional look at the manual.
Most of the graphics are grabbed from pcx's with Picmake (Dos or Linux). A few samples of the various types show what restrictions apply.
The main scenery is tortured into shapes by Shaper (Dos or Linux). These files will help you get started.
The library of combat sprites is built with Spritlib (Dos or Linux). I consider them among the worst graphics I have ever made, but you'll need a few to understand how they work. Sigh.
Pictitle (Dos or Linux) may be of slightly more general interest. It puts text, plain, striped or spotted, on pcx's. I have a small collection of useful Gem fonts, there are several collections on the Web, and more can be made with Shawn Hargreaves' ttftopcx followed by my own pcxtogem.
Paleface (Dos or Linux) is a palette manipulator which can reduce a pcx's palette, blend several pcx's to a common palette or enforce a fit to a default palette. It was originally intended for bringing game graphics back to their ST roots, but there seems to be a shortage of simple Linux palette manipulators, and this unnatural state of affairs needs to be redressed.
This software is distributed under the BeWare License.
There's nowhere to go from here but up