Hey, the latest update's looking pretty good. The ones on your blog (thanks--
now I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight) are looking neat too. Before I begin, I'd like to know, which system will the game be on? PC? Mac? Linux? iPhone? All? Sidescroller games are pretty much always something I want to play.
However there are a few problems (with the latest update) I'd like to discuss:
I think the player character isn't very noticeable. But you don't have to make him larger, of course, being a midget is probably part of his character. There is something you could do however...
The scale of the building seems pretty large. If so, then the shaft of the building is probably too thin to support it. (This is assuming that we're not looking at the whole thing, and that it's as long as I think it is.) It would probably fall over... Or split in two.
Edit:
The amount of detail located in such a small spot--the building's shaft--keeps forcing attention to it, I think. Especially considering that everything else is pretty much a blank space. In this edit I tried to spread more of the detail around more evenly (so that the eye doesn't get fixed in one spot as much, which is at least a bit better), lower the contrast and tweak the building's design so that it makes more sense, hopefully... It's still unfinished and very rough.
Added a band of bright color around the player character; note that the only appearances of the color used there are the player and the building's lights, nowhere else. Remember, having the player distinguishable is important, especially if he's in front of many buildings, which I imagine will be happening often.
Another topic: since the background seems unfinished, I tried to come up with an idea. Maybe it could be your city-empire at night, which, as you can see, can be accomplished while keeping the main background color more or less the same. I kept the contrast low and the design simple. And I added some dots for lights; it makes sense, don't you think? Unfortunately, I don't think it matches the style you were aiming for, and the low number of colors creates some problems with the illusion of depth. But you get the idea, and it might look better with some clouds. (If you're interested, however,
here are the buildings I used, as well as some additional, smaller/"lower-level" ones that didn't make it in entirely. They could be used to illustrate one of my points about fog mentioned in my last post, though, now that I think about it.)
This is probably the longest edit I've done to date, but it was certainly fun to do, and I think it was worth it. Might make more buildings in my spare time.
EDIT: More lights; should probably be brighter/more evident, though (except the one on the roof, it looks okay)
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