What makes you think that your work is in isometric-perspective? It's not, the tree is drawn from a side-perspective.

The texture of the tree (ie. the leaves) are drawn nicely, in my opinion. About the purple "back-color": I don't see it working. Maybe try to make it darker (less brightness) or change the hue to blue (blue works quite nicely in that position on vegetation).

Heh, no worries, I already did exactly that, I rendered the sprites in parallel perspective so there is no distortion in depth. Good call, though, in my first tests, I ran into exactly that problem and ended up with a very weird feel from all the different perspectives in-game.

Okay, so I have it broke down to two methods to render units in 12 or 16 angles for RTS-games:

• draw a unit in "DDP-pixel-art"-style in one direction as sketch, then redraw every geometrical element (each box, cube, ramp), rotate those in all angles with the method described above, put them all together and then refine with details like in the sketch image.
• render images in a 3d-program for all angles, then go over the sprites and touch them up individually with details, shading etc.

Quality-wise, I prefer method #1, but I suppose method #2 is a lot quicker and causes a lot, lot less headache. So, at the moment, I'm trying both ways out to see which I'll stick to. Thanks for your input so far, please feel free and encouraged to write more, especially if you have experience with the problem and managed to overcome it somehow.

Hey,

I'm trying to work on sprites for a real-time strategy game. Since I'm not yet a very accomplished pixel-guy, I stick to the stuff I think I know. So, I recently made that enemy for Dodonpachi and now I think this style might look really good in a strategy-game as well.

The only problem: while Dodonpachi sprites only have to be one-directional (most enemies face down), I need 12 or 16 angles (north, east, south, west and either 2 or 3 directions in between). Now, that sounded pretty impossible at first, but then I realized that the Dodonpachi-style is geometrically very easy, so if I am able to draw a box correctly in all those directions, I should only have to apply the same method to the boxes and shapes on my sprite and, all of the sudden, it all seems pretty doable.

So, I started studying the box in 16 directions, but I can't get it to look right and I start to wonder whether there might be any tricks or anything I don't know about. Here's my current attempt (which I know, sucks - shifting volume, shifting position):



Can anybody give me any tips or quick sketches etc. to help my here. Or, has anybody any experience in drawing the directions for RTS-units? I know that it's common technique to use pre-rendered graphics in those game (mostly because of all the directions, I guess), but I'd really like to stick to pixel art, here.

Oh, and here (shameless self-promotion) is the Dodonpachi-styled enemy that I posted before and now want to turn into a RTS-unit:



Any help is appreciated.

Ah, okay, I see the problem now. Well, it's just a mock-up. I'm a programmer, but I'm currently just working on the gfx, put short, this project is not meant to be realized. And if it is ever realized, I'll most likely do it on a PC. So, let's leave it at that.

I also quickly threw the (new and color-reduced) spinning coin in an animation:



Any other improvements necessary?

Hey guys,

I've worked on this, my second more serious mock-up, for quite a while now and think I'm finally ready to post it here. It was done with the rules from the MF3 in mind, but since it's an original "game idea" and not a title-demake, it doesn't qualify. Anyways, here it is:


Please ignore the player-part in the UI (bottom-left corner of the screen).

I'd like to know what you guys think, suggestions and paint-overs are very welcome, as always, so don't hesitate. But keep in mind that the palette is fixed (so: no palette-edits) and that the original Gameboy tile-dimensions (8x8) and sprite-dimensions (8x8 or 8x16) apply.

Problem areas are the wooden crates, the spikes and the kinda empty top-part of the screen as far as I can tell, please help me there. Also, do you think it reads well? Readability was my main goal, but I have looked at it for a too long time to still be able to tell how it does, I need a fresh pair of eyes to be the judge there.