vga256Sep 16, 2025

today's software preservation task

one of the great crimes of the 21st century was that Mark Jones' (Core Design) Darkmere - an isometric adventure-RPG for the amiga - was poorly visually documented by the usual places like lemonamiga/mobygames/etc.

perhaps for that reason alone, few remember just how incredible mark's pixel work is. using a tightly compressed palette of 16 colours for title screens and 32 colours in-game, he produces some of the best-lit scenes i have ever seen. all hand-dithered, no less.

it's one thing to paint beautiful pixel art stills for circulating on social media; it's entirely another to build them as modular assets to be used in a game. mark's ability to tackle both jobs is a masterwork.

thankfully, mark is his own best archivist, and kept a treasure trove of screenshots from the project. he provides an extensive commentary on the creation of each sprite/tile and the overall style of the game, as well as his memories of designing and building it.

(daggerfall fanatics may recognize some of the assets - trees and mushrooms - re-used in that game!)

read his entire writeup on Darkmere here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171104143619fw_/http://www.mjonesgraphics.com/darkmere.html

#amiga #pixelArt #retroGaming

Show threadBen ChandlerSep 17, 2025
@vga256 I would have loved to see the process of drawing one of these scenes. When I go back and look at stuff like this, Simon the Sorcerer, anything Westwood were doing around this time, I think - well there’s people working at the very top of their game. Great stuff.
Show threadvga256Sep 17, 2025

@ThreeOhFour me too. i see very few pencil illustrations on mark’s site, and it gives me the feeling he was working entirely digitally in his amiga years. it would be fascinating to see his process in dpaint. no layers, figuring out the palette, and then (?) cutting the image up into slices/tiles that can be rendered isometrically.

the best part is that this was his first shipped game. (not counting one earlier game that he drew the title font for). top of his game, first game. none of his later work in daggerfall/morrowind/3d rpgs (imho) comes even close to the artistry

i see so much fantastic low res art these days, but the subtler job of turning a background/scene into reusable assets is not often shown

Show threadBen ChandlerSep 18, 2025
@vga256 Yeah, interesting that there's nothing in those later games that captures my attention like these do. It makes me think of Rick Parks' work on things like Lands of Lore 1 and Kyrandia 1-2 vs the later stuff he was doing in LoL 2 and Kyrandia 3. Hard to see any of it as a step up!
Show threadvga256Sep 18, 2025
@ThreeOhFour mmm the way rick park renders crystals and gems or anything made out of glass is incredibly satisfying in LoL and kyrandia. and his mini animations for sfx are wonderful
Show threadBen Chandler
@vga256 Yes, I fully agree. It’s truly something special.
Sep 18, 2025 at 4:40amMastodon for iOS