Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: wzl on January 28, 2015, 06:59:45 pm
Title: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on January 28, 2015, 06:59:45 pm
Hey people, long time!
I've been working on a game for some time now, on and off. I guess it started around 2 and a half years ago just to play around with flash. I've been fiddling with it ever since, never being happy enough with its art style. I've swapped tilesets a lot, always getting more where i wanted to be, but it never quite clicked until just last week. But let's start from the beginning:
At first there was Johnny (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Johnny/Johnny-idle-1.gif) (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Johnny/blackbob-loop-stillhead.gif) i wanted to go for a low res design to begin with so i can animate fast, turns out that was the right choice for me.
Except when it came to tilesets. To make the environment responsive enough for a sprite that size i went for 8x8 tiles. Which makes it really difficult to place a lot of detail, while remaining tile-able and not feel ridiculously gridded. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Johnny/tilemap.PNG)
After that i tried to embrace it and go for a more abstract approach but after not too long i got sick of looking at it (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Johnny/minimap.png)
Some time passed and i picked it up again, desperately trying to figure an artstyle for the game. The first attempt was to give some color to the sprite in hope to gain some inspiration for the environment aswell. It was quite a challenge to choose a palette that doesn't look ridiculously bad, and i think there's still ways to improve it (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Johnny/Johnny-walk-color.gif)
Interestingly enough, while i introduced colors to the sprite, i removed them from the tileset, resulting in an interesting esthetic, but still not quite what i was looking for (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/OldScreenshot.PNG)
Pause again, for close to a year. Then, few weeks ago, when AGDQ2015 were airing i felt it again. The urge to create. Remembering what state i left it in had me hesitate a bit but i kept thinking about it. Finally, last week i decided to give it another shot. I sat down and took a couple days to work on a new tileset, trying to use photos as reference to get a more... seizable feel. It turned out ok, but it still left me empty. This is not what i wanted. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Johnny/granite%20tiles.png)
Then, this weekend it hit me! I was showing a friend Irkalla (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35320.0), which in my eyes has a quite amazing design. Why does it look so much more awesome? It seems like a world that has structure, and and depth, yet it is not bloated with details and colors. It's not flat! That was it. It has an actual floor, layers seem actually distanced. So simple, yet it was so far away from me for such a long time. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/mockup9_3.png) As usual, i'm still having trouble getting a decent color palette, but the general style is developing towards where i actually want to have it. I'm very pumped about this
After putting some work in it over the weekend i made some realisations: 1. Making this mockup was tremendously enjoying, putting little things here and there to make every corner look a little different 2. But this will not something feasable for a tile-based game. 3. Or is it? I loved the hand-drawn(hand-inserted?) details so much so i ended up wanting to draw my levels. Not all of it naturally. Luckily enough i've also been working on a tile-map editor (which started around the same time as the game), which now has the ability to create tile-sheets dynamically, so i can roughly tile my map using basic shapes, and use a pencil to draw all those little nooks and wedges and boulders wherever i want! :D
This is, so far, my journey with this game. It's been delightful working with different styles throughout it, especially since i discovered one that really hits the spot. Of course this is only a stepping stone as well, and there will be hurdles (like that water over there) which i wont quite find comfortable with, but this is a big step for this project!
Thanks for letting me share this :D
After a couple long days of only coding i eventually got around working on the mockup some more, to get a better feeling for the shapes and shades.
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/mockup9_4.png) I added more shades and highlights. It helps especially in the water area, to get a better feel of submergedness. I saturated the palette and brightened it up a bit. But after looking at it when it is not at 800% zoom makes it feel pretty dark still. It's tough to get the atmosphere just right.
The background so far is a mystery to me. Should it be darker? Less saturated? Brighter even? I cant manage to find the color that still makes the fore- and background readable enough while still implying a dark desolate place.
I also added a bit of perspective to the ceiling to give it a more roomy feel. not quite sure about adding details to it yet. maybe its not even necessary, as it might grab too much attention.
I tried to explore more ideas with this style last night. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/mockup9_5.png)
There is still a bunch of issues i have with it. For one thing i'm not certain about the level of detail on it. That's something which needs to be proven when tested in actual production, but for a mock-up it's fine i reckon. One thing i liked about this style is that you can get interesting results by using basic strokes and suggest interesting shapes with it. As it turns out, it just isn't that simple.
With the current use of the palette it is hard to differentiate foreground from background, see the little descent above the lava pit.
Liquids are tough! I don't even...
Glows...urrrrgh..
In the lower part of the cave i tried to blend the background with the floor and ceiling, but it turned out more chaotic than it should be. especially the ceiling doesn't read well like that.
Here's the thing with collision in case you're wondering how that would work (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/mockup9_5c.png)
Still cant leave that palette alone. Gave it a slightly bluer touch. Removed the arbitrary highlight color and replaced it with the floor color. Feels more settled somehow.
When trying to create a basic tile sheet out of it i got a little confused. drawing by hand makes it so easy to not abide any rules and just go with the flow. I tried to make some sense out of it and came up with a simple basic outline for it
Tilesets consist of the floor, left/right walls, fore(back?) ground with a lighter and a darker greyish shade, and either a blueish shade when ceiling or the dark grey shade when being used as a crevice.
I am still confused as to when and where to use each specific shade. Its easy to overdo it and just go crazy on this thing. otherwise sometimes less is indeed more. I guess balance is the key.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: TheWing on February 04, 2015, 10:34:51 pm
..In the lower part of the cave i tried to blend the background with the floor and ceiling, but it turned out more chaotic than it should be. especially the ceiling doesn't read well like that...
Yeah, the ceiling at least shouldn't be blended like that; the "border" of the ceiling and the background isn't really visible in that perspective (shouldn't be). That being said, I hope J goes under the bit of that ceiling ;PP
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 04, 2015, 11:32:34 pm
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: TheWing on February 04, 2015, 11:48:54 pm
It works way better in game, no need for parallax :D
But guess the blending (the ceiling) should be of some different color? maybe darker than the actual wall?
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 09, 2015, 12:25:59 am
Earlier today i was talking with ptoing in a hangout and he gave me some interesting pointers. mainly to reduce the noise and only add highlights with context.
I was browsing for some references, how rocks and cliffs actually look like. I'm quite happy with the result. except the left column. I tried to imply that you could climb that, but it feels too busy. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/mockup9_7_crop.png)
Here's a comparision of old and new. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/Sketches/ungame/mockup9_7_crop.gif)
Do you know any interesting rock formations in the vein of giants causeway?
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: ErekT on February 09, 2015, 09:56:35 pm
Oh wow, this was a difficult edit! Hope you can still get something out of it (never mind all the anti-aliasing, I went ape) :P
There's a bit of noise and banding business going on. Given the low resolution, you could probably simplify more here and there and focus more on shapes like you did in the old version. Come to think of it I may prefer the direction of the old version as the rock formations look more natural in that one. The columns in the latter look kinda man-made with the rocks all aligned.
Did a little color experiment too.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 10, 2015, 12:23:31 am
wow. i love what you did with the palette. This captures even more the kind of atmosphere i'd like to get. But alas, my color experience is so-so, as you probably can tell by the last couple posts ::) The only sort of complaint i have is that it removes the dark feel from it, but it feels so much more uniform. I realized you optimized one color (the left facing wall blueish tone) and i think that does a good job at not having it stand out too much. At this point the shape does a good job at making it recognizable as an edge though.
The anti aliasing looks really great, i love the rounded off corners. I will have to see how much of that i can apply in production x)
If it comes to the structural shape i was actually looking at real life references: I found a kind of rock that would reflect the look i'd imagine for this environment:
I don't know how many are interested, so i will stuff the upcoming wall of text in spoiler tags.
Research/References
I did not find out what kind of rock this is in the small amount of research i did on rocks. What i found is (even though i probably should know that) that different minerals have different structural representations, which is also depending on environmental circumstances.
Basalt for instance for forming the famous giants causeway in its majestic hexagonal patterns, or dolerite which has similarily right-angled but more irregular patterns. It is amazing what kind of formations rocks can have and i will try to bring a few of those into the game.
I'll look deeper into rock formations (hehe, get it) to get an understanding of how they work.
When it comes to caves, having watched a bunch of documentaries so far, it seems a mixture of earthquake heavy areas and wet climates as well as soft(yeah right) rock are really beneficial to that. The largest cave discovered for instance (in length i believe, not depth), Hang Son Doong (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/earth/10914205/In-pictures-Inside-Hang-Son-Doong-the-worlds-largest-caves-in-Vietnam.html?frame=2949001) in Vietnam. So inspiring! In one point the ceiling collapsed (forgot the term for that occurence and cant dig it up) and there formed a forest. In the cave. 400 meters below groundlevel. with a frickin skylight atop. its so gorgeous! (pic 13 in that slideshow shows a bit of that)
Otherwise a really interesting cave is the crystal cave (https://www.google.de/search?q=crystal+cave&espv=2&biw=1466&bih=752&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=A0LZVJizF4LQPavSgVA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&dpr=1#tbm=isch&q=crystal+cave+naica) below naica mexico. The materials, atmosphere and temperature in that cave were just right for the crystals to form (i think its around 60 degrees in there, so in order to explore it the scientists had to wear water-cooled full body suits and i think it was quite poisonous in there). The crystals are huge, but interestingly they're of ordinary nature.
Quote from: wikipedia
The cave's largest crystal found to date is 12 m (39 ft) in length, 4 m (13 ft) in diameter and 55 tons in weight
I'd love to bring such elements, authentic(but still artsy) caves, structurally as well as functionally into the game. But let's take one step at atime :D
Also when looking for image results i just stumpled upon this: Kailasa Hindu Temple (https://www.google.de/search?q=Kailasa+Hindu+Temple&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=rz7ZVK-WFYn1OMrggPgB&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1466&bih=752) Wow mad inspiration! If you know any more of those sites, lemme know!
Plot/Story/What is going on!?
Initially the idea was that you fall down a cave for whatever reason and cant get back up, the only way is deeper down where you find movement upgrades, very metroidvanian, but at the same time arbitrary.
Since i'm a big fan of mystery, legends and ancient cultures i wanted to integrate that so you would stumble upon the remains and ruins of a lost civilization, very much in the vein of chrono-triggers ocean palace. That again felt kind of arbitrary and not very well thought out. Having a culture that advanced hidden away in such depths doesn't make a lot of sense.
My current take on this, very much inspired by lovecrafts mountains of madness and shadow out of time, is that the remains you find are both very "not sophisticated" (for lack of a better term) architecture, with some mysterious devices. I.e. in shadow out of time the great race lives in cities made of giant stone blocks, but they have the ability to travel in time also. its a very interesting premise, both highly advanced and antique.
It's a similar design to what they had in indiana jones - the fate of atlantis. A city built of, and with, primitive (ha, thats the word i was looking for! thanks brain) tools and materials, yet they have a machines miraculously drawing power from oricalcum and even transcend the form of people.
I'm still not sure how all of that will form the game. its not much more than a blurry image at this point.
The general premise is that you're a geologist, journalist or something along those lines doing research in an area with recent seismic activity where you're caved in, or get lost in a cave, driven by your desire to discover and explore.
One thought was, with the afore mentioned high-tech ancients, that you find pieces and devices that would allow for certain mechancis. Respawn for checkpoints for instance. (i just love giving mechanics a reason :D) With a more mystified approach i thought it could be interesting that you find a device of whatever description. It is used to store knowledge and experiences from previous owners, so when you respawn, your previous death was more of a premonition.
This device could have led the ancients to increase their knowledge and capacity far faster than the actual technological process (nevermind the existence of that device to begin with, magic, aliens or whatever :D). This results in a very primitive state of existence, but the ancients themselves being highly intellectual and knowledgable, probably more on a psychological or social level.
I know it could use some more thought and fleshing out, but it's just a draft, as most things at this point.
Gameplay/Mechanics
As previously mention, initially it was a metroidvanian platformer with arbitrary upgrades lying around, ready for you to collect to advance to new areas by increasing your movement repertoir, wallruns, doublejumps, airdashing, etc. As the idea developed (which it did more in the last 3 weeks than the last 2 years actually) I tended to stray away from the idea to make it a precision platformer but a more narrative and urr..emotional? atmospheric experience. I want to tell a story, not by a lot of words, but by imagery, locations and exploration of the unknown depths. This led me to a more authentic approach, both in environmental design and game mechanics.
I mentioned the frame/animation-based movement like rotoscoped games did in the animation thread before, and thats a path i want to take, or at least try to see how it feels. I want the player to feel that the character has limits. a 3 meter high wall cannot be easily scaled by an ordinary person.
Obviously the environment design needs to accomodate for that. There needs to be some kind of challenge. I'm still struggling with that part. I want to have environmental puzzles. You'd need to loosen rocks by causing some chain reaction to advance instead of just power-dashing through brittle walls. It might be a little like a point and click adventure in that sense.
Use rod with boulder > boulder smashes onto large stone plate > plate levers a bigger boulder out of the way.
I'm still uncertain about combat. I wasn't a fan of combat for this game from the very outset, and given the current setting it wouldn't very well fit it. I could imagine the occasional critter or monstrosity blocking your way, but you'd have to get by it in a cunning way, by tricking it, more so than directly fighting it head on.
This game should feel like an adventure, an exploration into the unknown where you find unusual but intriguing places, where you feel lost but at the same time are driven forward by curiosity.
A vague image, but an image non the less.
Wall of text mode over. Just writing this helped me get a better vision of the whole, but i'd still be curious about your thoughts on it. If you have any pointers, ideas or remarks, let me know :D
Quick edit since i forgot to mention: I am fond of the previous approach to the rock design. the irregularity would tickle the mind, suggesting shapes, ridges etc. At the same time though, a lot of manual paint-over would be required if i apply that treatment on the whole environment. Additionally, i felt it too distracting. That, plus the tile count would be far less with this method. A limit i'm quite uncertain off where it is at this point, so i don't wanna overdo it just yet (if it at all exists for a game of this scale).
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Ai on February 10, 2015, 11:00:48 am
I think realistically, Erekt's edit is much closer to a 'comfortable' level of light; I don't really want to look at your colors for very long to be honest.
It's about interactable surfaces being readable. AFAICS. It's fine to have your background all black/blue and really faint, but you need highlighting on surfaces that the player's eye needs to pay attention to. (don't have to make the entire base color brighter, but the edges, at least, need to be clear.)
Stylistically you are going fairly close to Flashback / Out of this World, that might be a good research path -- they manage both bright and dark feeling environments while keeping things very readable. Prince of Persia is another good example with similar perspective setup + dark but readable environment.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 10, 2015, 01:01:44 pm
Thanks for being honest but it!
I agree, looking at it in comparision, it feels much more readable and you dont have to squint or zoom in to determine whats going on. I still have to learn a lot about how colors work, especially how they interact with eachother.
I'll look some more at another world specifically, since i've heard it being compared to that quite a lot. I'll try to recognize what they did to make it feel dark without using actual (and more importantly only) dark colors.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: ErekT on February 10, 2015, 02:04:51 pm
Quote
I'll look some more at another world specifically, since i've heard it being compared to that quite a lot.
That was my thought too especially looking at the level layout above. "Mmm, this has a pleasant Another World-ey fizz to it".
No hocus-pocus to the color tweak. I just upped the contrast, hue shifted more between green and blue, and lowered saturation for darker colors. This mimics the way our eyes pick up colors; the less light a surface receives the less color the eye is able to pick up. Which is why everything appears undersaturated during night time. Also, blue suggests cold. Green can suggest dampness but it can also suggest organic. Too much green gives your cave almost a mossy look.
Ai is right about readable surfaces, the backgrounds need to play a double role of aesthetics/mood and gameplay functionality.
Here's another with lower contrast. Lots of room for tweaking. Experiment with those colors and light levels, go wild :D What software are you using btw?
Plot/premise sounds good. The details of the plot is something I think you don't have to worry too much about beforehand as long as you have a clear enough idea to act as a general guideline. Imo the details can emerge naturally as you hammer stuff out. You'll avoid the contrived "three act"-whatever feel to story structure too.
Cool talk about development from the sole creator of Another World here: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014630/Classic-Game-Postmortem-OUT-OF
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 10, 2015, 08:03:00 pm
It's interesting that so many are reminded of another world. It wasn't a (conscious) inspiration at all. I barely played it and only seen some screenshots of it over the years. Yet the more i learn about it, the more i realize how close this is actually becoming.
The talk was amazing. Really interesting topics, especially about the ups and downs in the tension. It was quite insightful.
Thanks for the input with the palette. I've been reluctant to change the colors too much, as you can see in the history of this thread. I don't even know why, if it's not good, ctrl-z that stuff. I've opened up some more to experiment with more drastic palette changes :D Also it is quite fun to do! Hooray for learning!
here are some variations i've come up with just for fun's sake. Not saying they're awesome or i'll use them, but i found they have an interesting feel
I'll keep playing with it, but so far 1 is my favorite. The second one has an interesting feel on its own but applied to the bigger mockup it felt so lost.
Oh yeah, i'm using aseprite. Ptoing showed me some pro motion features some time ago and ppd was advocating graphicsgale. I'll check those out some time aswell, but for now i'm ok with ase's feature set, and i like it's workflow.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: TheWing on February 11, 2015, 12:59:29 am
As far as I recall, Another World had is palette be quite exclusively different shades of grayish blue, which made it feel more desolate than dark (at least in my mind)... Ofc it has other colours, and to support the feel, those other colours are brighter and generally a bit more saturated.. the general palette being blueish and rather gray. In many screens Another World also has a lot of empty space, which is usually quite dark, making it feel darker without obstructing the view too much; no actions happen in the dark outsides. And to top it off, the game has very flat shadings and sharp shadows, eliminating some borders of stuff.. at least in cutscenes I believe?
I really like the jacket, makes up for good spelunking-gear !
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: ErekT on February 11, 2015, 02:23:45 am
Nice!
I'm drawn the most to the second and fourth I think but the first one looks cool as well. They're all good tho. Least interesting is the bottom one imo. Good call on downing the saturation.
Aseprite? I need to check that out. I'm using GraphicsGale myself. ProMotion seems very very good as well, probably better in fact, but the interface is something I'll need to get used to.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 14, 2015, 05:25:43 pm
Did some modifications to the mock-up, using the first palette and slightly tweaking the brightness and saturation.
Did some work on the lava part and lower level cave. not sure about either. doesn't feel quite right yet.
Some more work on the lava. Fixed the waterlevels to not be physically impossible :crazy:
I thought it's cool to have different collision layers even, so in the rightmost part you could decent or go the upper route. Splitting the otherwise flat gameplay up a little.
And again more palette mods ::)
Also played around with palette cycling. Mostly just to try it out for now. Pretty cool, if somewhat unpolished, result i think.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Decroded on February 16, 2015, 01:09:44 pm
added a few colours for some messy rock texture experiments... (http://i.imgur.com/P14AHcB.png)
i'm big on establishing trust with the player through clear visual language. a general rule for this is to establish a hierarchy that when u blur ur eyes u can still clearly see things that r important to gameplay.
some ways i attempted this: - aligned everything to a 16 pixel grid - there is a roughly 2 pixel highlight where the solid edge is rather than a vague large flat area - climable rocks use a similar but slightly darker shade than the solid edges to make them stand out and appear interactive. the texture here is also more detailed (made of more smaller bits) and regular than surrounding parts, which further attracts attention.
not sure i like the climable rocks but just wanted to mess with the idea. the other perhaps more typical option was to put holes and small knobs in pattern.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: TheWing on February 16, 2015, 07:50:38 pm
added a few colours for some messy rock texture experiments... (http://i.imgur.com/P14AHcB.png)
i'm big on establishing trust with the player through clear visual language. a general rule for this is to establish a hierarchy that when u blur ur eyes u can still clearly see things that r important to gameplay.
some ways i attempted this: - aligned everything to a 16 pixel grid - there is a roughly 2 pixel highlight where the solid edge is rather than a vague large flat area - climable rocks use a similar but slightly darker shade than the solid edges to make them stand out and appear interactive. the texture here is also more detailed (made of more smaller bits) and regular than surrounding parts, which further attracts attention.
not sure i like the climable rocks but just wanted to mess with the idea. the other perhaps more typical option was to put holes and small knobs in pattern.
That's damn neat pix-art, but looking at what wzl has been going towards I don't really see the link between these.. to put it shortly, to me that doesn't fit the style he's been going on with.
I also can't imagine anyone drawing a whole game worth of scenery on that level of detail.. tho I do like longer projects more, and this would of course lengthen the project :D
Great work anyhow, looking really awesome !
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Helm on February 16, 2015, 07:54:37 pm
Don't be afraid of it, do it. It doesn't take as long as it seems. It's just a matter of systemization.
The animation style for this game, I simply adore. I love sprites that walk the proper amount of pixels for their animation, that don't glide. This attention to detail should be present to every pixel of the tilework as well. Don't be afraid, do it.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 16, 2015, 08:14:16 pm
Wow, just wow. That is damn sexy decroded, thanks for taking the time!
And also i feel like :'(
That is some impressive work and i feel a little overwhelmed here. I've been looking at it for the past half hour, trying to figure out what happened.
I really dig the floor, how you added the highlights front to back, how it transitions into the wall below. The color ramp is really atmospheric, and placing the highlights on the climbable area really helps making it more obvious. I find it interesting that the far background is sort of bright and desaturated. it works really well and the mid-background really helps breaking it up.
I think the biggest part of it is the amount of shades you introduced. It helps so much breaking things up into just-environment and actual important parts, without being too obvious with it.
Also, damn you! Now i want to apply that level of detail to everything! Oh boy. And here i thought i could get away with the simple and easy route. No sir. I think i can't now :D I'll place this into the mockup as reference and see what i can make of it.
I'll be firing up my stream (https://www.picarto.tv/live/channel.php?watch=wzl) and play around with it.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Kazuya Mochu on February 16, 2015, 08:42:56 pm
as a sugestion, if I may, I think that on the rock faces that you have on your level, and considering the flat colors on your character, I would remove the highlights from the cracks. The highlight sugests a chanfered face, wich doesn't seem to me to fit the style. Something more in the style of "Another World" would make more sense with the character. Im not saying remove the highlight all together, but if you have one, take out the other. SO either shadow, or highlight. not both.
(http://www.atarimania.com/st/screens/another_world_21.gif) notice rocks in the back
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 17, 2015, 12:49:47 am
ah good point kazuya. I wasn't quite sure where to shade or highlight, so i did both x) I will try to pay more attention to how light behaves.
So i was working on the mockup tonight. After trying to ape decroded's style i realized it is not all too different from what i was doing in the earlier stages of the mockup, except tons more detail and rendering! (also purpose and not randomly thrown in boxes)
After simplifying to my latest design i felt alright with the new style at first, but it lacked character, at least in the stage it was. I feel kinda glad being back to a more detailed approach, even if it is more work. It pays off since its more fun, for both me and the player eventually :D
I removed the ceilings as well. While i liked the idea of having ceilings in a cave they serve no actual purpose, since you will not be able to reach them anyways. I'll still use them where necessary though.
I guess i won't get around creating actual tile-sheets now. Oh well. I guess bits of repetition aren't all too bad ::)
Thanks again for the inspiration :D
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Decroded on February 17, 2015, 01:14:38 am
an important consideration here is what is the game's res? i think this decides the general minimum scale of ur tiles and how frequently they repeat.
from here i think u can fill some game space with repeated tiles then come back and make a bunch of variations and larger sections to break up the repetitive effect. keep in mind that structure and controlled repetition brings congruity to ur scene, just like recycling colours can bring harmony.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 17, 2015, 01:22:29 am
No clue about resolution yet. I'll decide when i get around making the prototype. I'm thinking 3x or 4x zoom in fullscreen and consequently less in windowed. Collision tile size is 8x8, but i think using 16x16 for graphic tiles is reasonable.
Good point about the congruity. especially for interactible terrain like the climbing parts it makes sense.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Ai on February 17, 2015, 04:05:53 am
Hey, this is looking a lot more readable, good job. I liked the palette swap with the lava in it -- the hue contrasts make it pop a lot more.
IMO resolution isn't so important itself rather than : where is the character shown, how large is he proportional to the screen? Which I realize is related but IMO it simplifies the problem.
According to your tilemap editor you don't necessarily have to use 'collision tiles' if you don't want to, for example Tiled (http://www.mapeditor.org) supports polygons and polylines, whose vertices automatically snap to tile boundaries by default. This is a lot faster and less fiddly to make than tile-based collision, but does mean you would have to draw the collision shapes for everything rather than being able to autogenerate collision info from your graphical tiles.
I agree with Kazuya that bevelling can be neat but isn't actually necessary. Clean flat planes for rocks are often much more readable, when possible.
Your latest tiles seem halfway between decroded's edit and your previous style, which is probably a comfortable medium -- it reminds me of Megaman X now. Though I must agree with Helm that once you get a systematic rendering method going, complexity on the level of decroded's edits are not hard. Looking into Voronoi systems might help -- they are a good approximation of rock plane structure, and relatively easy to make up from imagination. Aside from just being fascinating ;)
Anyway whatever you do with the style, I suggest tightening up the shapes you are using, making them more minimalistic and focused, it helps make the overall form pull together IMO. That's the most noticable difference to me right now between Decroded's edit and your new tiles -- his rocks are simple shapes whereas yours feel like they are trying to be more photorealistic / sketchy.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: rikfuzz on February 17, 2015, 10:26:49 am
This is really looking something special, keep it up!
So you're pixeling the whole set, without breaking down to re-usable tiles?
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 17, 2015, 12:11:36 pm
true, collision tiles are not necessarily required, but they make things easier in some cases. Fall-through platforms, climbin areas. i'd rather use the tile approach for this. It's more reliable and easier to implement anyways x)
Yeah, i still love the density in decroded's edit. i'll see what i can learn from it.
rikfuzz: I was initially planning on making just very basic tiles and overpaint them. Now i'm not so sure. Creating this level of detail manually in every place seems like overkill. I want to get this game done eventually :)
Idea now is that i'll create a bunch of template tiles, tiling ones, but not the necessary transitions, so i can save some work there not trying to make edges, and manually overpaint seams etc. From what i can tell the seams and edges are one of the most recognizable parts in image tiling too.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Decroded on February 17, 2015, 12:28:49 pm
maybe just use the darkness to ur advantage in that u can just have it all dark blue then imply rocks here and there rather than making such a large painting. and I guess remember the brain notices the one thing that stands out more than the many similar things, which means u only need to scatter the odd different thing around the place (at minimum) to make it feel varied to the player.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 17, 2015, 01:07:17 pm
maybe just use the darkness to ur advantage in that u can just have it all dark blue then imply rocks here and there rather than making such a large painting.
Tried today to get more familiar with the techniques decroded used. Was experimenting with some climbable tiles on the far right. The one that ended up in the wall i think are actually quite recognizable as climbable. I used the top bits as base from his edit to get a feel for the shapes.
I created a ramp for the lava parts as well, and reshaped the formations to not have see-through lava bits in it. That felt quite strange before.
I did the something similar to the waterline so it works now in perspective. Though, as a result the walkpaths don't appear to be on top of eachother, so thats an issue. But the cross-section view on it really felt quite strange. Although
And then, suddenly, some kraken monster appeared in the wall. Dunno where it came from. it was just suddenly there.
Playing around with some different floor to back-wall transitions. Gonna go for some floor to below-wall/frontwall? whatever it is, the beneath part tomorrow :D and then soon start working on a basic tileset and get some actual gamedev going.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Decroded on February 19, 2015, 05:16:45 am
dude u seem to picked this up alot faster than i did :-[
that last screenshot has some really great textures growing on it well done :y: one thing to keep in mind that i still struggle with is that if u fill the whole screen with this detailed texture it really takes away from the effect. that is what i meant by using the darkness to ur advantage in that u can have large sections of plain totally dark shadow areas and then just have bits and pieces popping out into the light here and there. ur already doing it in that last screenshot and i think u can take it further with more interesting placement. its something that is hard to see when ur face is right up in the pixels so take a step back and have another look, and keep another zoomed out view (eg 2:1) when ur working to keep things in perspective. then mark out sections where it is filled with shadow and mark out some other areas where patches of rock will show. doing this adds a "structural" feeling to things in that there are the large chunks of rock which are then broken into the smaller detailed bits ur drawing now.
u can have large sections of darkness with sparse lit areas where there is lava. so once u imply some larger sections of implied structure u can upscale the cracks in the rock u have now and make them have lava flows and leaks that are a bit more epic and flow over the surface of the rocks instead of down a flat walls. and keep in mind u can have some rocks around the edges of these flows which are lit from both sides by the primary (grey-green) light and the lava.
i think the kraken thing looks great u should develop it further perhaps with different colours. im imagining it as a LARGE obstacle u need to stop and figure out how to get around/past it. so u could have some rock structure which forms a large shadowy crevice, and we see just its eyes in the darkness with a few tentacles hanging out. and if u go near it, the tentacles pull u into the darkness and its game over son. IMO that would be scarier and look more interesting/professional than seeing it just sitting there. the scale of it i believe should be relative to ur screen res but u could just rough something in until u cement that in (its hard to choose isn't it!).
i also really like that rock bridge u started on the left i'd like to see where thats going. if u wanted to u could make it a one-way street as it collapses when u run across it.
regarding the background if u like the look of it u should separate it in 2 layers. i think the back-most layer could be made into a large tile which repeats vertically and horizontally. the closer layer u could do the same or u could break it down into a 32x32 tileset or something which would allow u to make larger pieces to brick together.
anyway i could rant all day so... :-X
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 19, 2015, 06:02:51 pm
Thanks man :D
Yeah, i felt the larger dark spaces feel more natural and less busy, also reduces the amount of detail necessary, so its a win-win :D
I definitely need to play around with water and lava some more. palette cycling is just too tasty to leave out. But i will leave that until i have it implemented in the game, otherwise testing would be too tedious.
Heh, the kraken really just happened. A happy mistake so to speak. But now that you mention it, it could work quite well ingame actually. It would sort of fit into the cthulhu mythos, and kraken are generally terrifying creatures x)
Having the bridge collapse is another nice thought. Definitely goes onto the list! ::)
Mhh having the background layers tiling is not a bad idea. I haven't put much thought into it yet. I definitely want to have it parallaxing at some point. Need some consideration on that topic.
Don't let me stop you, i welcome any feedback and suggestions :D
I'll be firing up the stream (https://www.picarto.tv/live/channel.php?watch=wzl) and work some more on it. Feel free to join ::)
worked on some floors today. got 3 different styles now. some roughly textured floor. one made of boulders, and one with bigger rocks (top row)
i tried, just out of curiousity, to tile them randomly, and surprisingly enough, without any edits, it works. mostly (left side below top row). Some unfavorable seams but oh well. thats something to work with :crazy:
Amazing how forgiving this artstyle is.
Current thinking is to have the floors with according bottom walls as interconnecting tilepieces, and the actual backwalls independent from that. It seems to workout quite nicely so far.
Going with an attempt like this i can tile and combine different parts of fore and background to create different variations all over the place :D
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: Decroded on February 20, 2015, 01:23:58 am
seeing some inconsistency now in the way the rocks are formed (http://i.imgur.com/jWTlC3M.png)
its probably fine to mix directions as long as i guess ur aware of it and control it maybe?
also new tiles are rendered a bit like rice bubbles (http://www.syrupandtang.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bubbles.jpg (http://www.syrupandtang.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bubbles.jpg)). maybe thats fine where it matches surroundings but here it looks too different to the other formations IMO.
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on February 22, 2015, 09:11:41 pm
its probably fine to mix directions as long as i guess ur aware of it and control it maybe?
I wasn't aware actually, thanks for mentioning it, i will keep it in mind and try to use it appropriately ::)
For the rice pops, i get what you mean. was trying attempts of several rock kinds to create more interesting and less uniform patterns. Still mostly trying to get better and trying to understand and use different shapes and shadings.
My favorites of those so far are C, E and F for their readability and clarity. I like the shapes of B too but its probably too rough terrain to use ingame, not sure yet. G looks sort of blurred and washed out, probably more suited underwater floors since its all rounded off without any edges. Same with A i feel.
Something thats totally missing so far is a flat, clean kind of floor without too much noise in it. Still need to work on that part so i can use that as base and throws the more interesting formations on top of it every other couple meters :D
Title: Re: Johnny J
Post by: wzl on March 04, 2016, 12:33:08 am
A good year has passed, and i felt it was about time to ressurect this thing. Surely nobody is bothered if i ressurect my own thread, but i feel with the progress it is making it's still relevant.
I started to tone down the style as introduced by decroded and keep it a bit rougher. This is still an ongoing process, while i recreate the mockup from the start and try to work out how an actual tileset would work. There's a lot of copypasta going on just so i have something to work with still.
Also i started to add some more environmental features. The climbing sections are now vines or roots for more visual clarity, which i hope i achieved, and then there's a crumbling block, if you can spot it. I started a segment that is man-made (or not quite man-made) with the columns, the big rock with its inscriptions and the start of an interior design on the bottom row. I try to get the triangle pattern slightly visible in the big columns (although the cracks hide them pretty well) and in the floor tiles throughout the architecture. But i have to reconsider the walls, they dont quite work out like that. And that just gave me another idea.. stay tuned :lala: