[CC] C64 newbie making Roguelike

[viila]

Hi! Been lurking around, but decided to de-lurk to ask for some advice on Commodore 64 graphics because I'm totally out of my comfort zone here. Any pixeling I've done was decades ago on Amiga and PC/VGA so it's been relatively unconstrained so I've been having hard time wrapping my head around to what would be a good idea on C64 since the color combinations are so limited. (I am planning to make this to run on actual hardware, well emulated since I don't have a C64 anymore.)

Anyway, here's what I have so far:



First problem I encountered was that I used colours from the C64 Wiki, but when I tried it in Vice, it looked all wrong and I discovered that they have very different idea of what the colours should be. Most crucially the red is very different and the 7-8-9 ramp doesn't look nearly as good. So I tried some alternatives and settled on 7-10-9.

So, I understand that there are differences between even actual C64s, but in general, what would be the most suitable palette to use on my PC while making the graphics? I guess Vice, since it's my emulator, but...?


Secondly, I'm really not used to having to think about what I should use for shared colours, especially given how limited the 1 unique colour is that I can give the characters. Many of the ones I want to use are in the second half of the palette! Any comments or advice you could give for that? I'm really starting to understand why some games had really weird colour choices...


Thirdly, I'm not really happy with my floor. The fat pixels are making it really hard for me to draw anything irregular that looks good, since you only have 4 pixels horizontally! But hires floor is out since the only dark colour is the #2 red and I need that for my monsters, they become camouflaged in the floor otherwise. Any advice for what to do with the floor? I'm willing to make the pattern larger than 1 tile (in fact, the brown floor uses 3 tiles stacked vertically to break it up a bit).


Finally, do you think the Lich looks too much like a hockey player? 
He was supposed to be wielding a scythe to get the L shape, but turning him into 8x8 made it a bit ugly. (Gimmick with the monsters is that they're all made to look like the ASCII letter that is used to represent them to tie them back to roguelike tradition.)


And of course, feel free to tell me anything else you think about my graphics, good, bad or ugly. 

[Ichigo Jam]

I really like your monster/letter combinations!

That wiki palette is very saturated - although you probably could make a C64 look like that if you turned the colour dial on your TV way up.

The Vice palette is much better, although a little lighter than the palette I'm used to (see palette used here: http://tzigla.com/boards/3/)

I don't have a better suggestion for the fixed colours, but have you considered using hires mode?
I tried a quick edit (the blue is the other darkest colour, so I tried a variant with that too but it's probably a bit eye-burning with the saturation):

[0xDB]

I always liked the "Pepto" C64 palette most: http://www.pepto.de/projects/colorvic/

[viila]

but have you considered using hires mode?

I always thought that the hires mode always looked too much like a Speccy, but your mockup actually looks quite good! I may have to re-consider if I end up needing combinations of colours that are otherwise impossible to get. Thanks!

I actually also briefly experimented with a blue colour scheme myself yesterday after I saw a graffiti on a grey powerbox that was yellow-to-blue shaded. It's a viable possibility, I may divide the game into sections and start off with warm colours and go cooler as you descend down into the dungeon.

[viila]

Well! That was a hectic week... I finished a playable version of the game barely in the 7 days for the 7DRL contest. For interested, here's the download:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17789257/7DRL/ancient%20legends.zip
(You need a Commodore 64 emulator to play. I recommend Vice ( http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/ ))

It's a bit rough around the edges and missing lots of planned features, but it's functional and playable!

For others, here's a little bit of eyecandy in the form of the font that I made for it:

(Text loaned from At the Mountains of Madness.)

And some items that didn't sadly make it in time to the 7DRL release: