Super Syobon!

[Scuba Steve]

I haven't done any pixel art in a long time and I had an itch today to start some stuff.  I have been playing this stupid minigame called Syobon Action!... if you haven't played it, prepared to get raped.  The game is stupid difficult, but it has some clever ways to kill you.  More to the point, the game is pretty ugly.  I opened the resource folder and learned that the game just loads the artwork from png files... so I began doing some minor edits to make the game a bit more appealing.  I have been doing these mini edits for the last day and am hooked... it's been fun trying to see how I can re-imagine the game.  Below are a few images of the work I've been fooling around with.  Critques of the work are welcome... and one thing I want to know what people think... does the main character and objects look better with a double thick outline or a single line?

Also... if the bug bites you... feel free to post your edits of tiles and sprites in here.












Hopefully... it won't be too difficult for you guys to pick out which tiles I've done and which are the originals

[ndrake]

the castle reminds me on alex kidd on sega mastersystem.
Good work!

[.TakaM]

oh awesome, I spent a few mins prettying up that game when I played it a while ago, very nice so far

it's just a shame stuff like the warp pipes are not editable (as far as I know)

[Lee N]

Syobon? The logo says しょほん (Shohon)

edit: I'm guessing the logo is supposed to say しょぼん (Shobon - it means "disheartened" or "dejected").  Notice the difference between ほ (ho) and ぼ (bo).

[ptoing]

SYO is Konishiki and SHO is Hepburn transcription. Basically the Konishiki one just takes the consonant and then adds the ya/yo/yu to it and also does not have stuff like SHI, but SHI. Where it gets really confusing is stuff like TYA which would he CHA. </offtopic>

[Lee N]

SYO is Konishiki and SHO is Hepburn transcription. Basically the Konishiki one just takes the consonant and then adds the ya/yo/yu to it and also does not have stuff like SHI, but SHI. Where it gets really confusing is stuff like TYA which would he CHA. </offtopic>

That wasn't the part I was referring to though.. it's the HO/BO mixup, it's missing the tenten in the logo.

oh, and not really.  チ and ち can also be read as TI, so "TYA" makes perfect sense in Kunrei-shiki Romanization.

[Ben2theEdge]

Your take on the main character is wonderful; Personally I hate double-thick outlines with every fiber of my being, so I vote for thin lines

[Scuba Steve]

Usually I am not a fan of double thick borders... but the game runs in a window and it suffers from another thing I hate... pixeled games running in a high res in a small window.  The original RPGMaker95 suffered from this... I hated the small tiles and high resolution.  When RPGMaker2000 came out and ran in a perspective that doubled the size of the pixels, it was much more aesthetically pleasing to me.  The sprites get the same effect... look at them unzoomed, then zoom in once to double them.  I find them much more appealing at twice the size.  Doubling the border KIND OF gave it a thicker look that looked OK at the smaller scale... so I tried it out.

Am I making any sense?

[Feron]

Can you post some screen shots of your version, us mac users can't run that game!

[Scuba Steve]

I uploaded all the old material with some more illustrations.  Man, it has been fun doing pixeling again... I'd love to get some feedback since I feel a bit rusty.

Sorry, no screenshots... but you're not missing much... the game is still pretty ugly even with my changes.  I'd love to do some backgrounds and foreground stuff... but without being able to put them in the game... it seems futile.

[sharprm]

That game is horrible and I initially thought that the original horrible graphics suited it. However, these are looking very good. Its hard to pick fault, maybe the bear's head could be more symettrical (maybe you are constrained to use their line art?). The outline on the little cat's ear seems broken. Something about a white cat with a pink belly seems wrong to me, like maybe the whole cat should be white. Nice work on the square cat head.

[brianskywalker]

Can you post some screen shots of your version, us mac users can't run that game!

Isn't it a JAVA game? You should be able to run it fine, after all, I'm a mac user too and it runs in-browser for me, although I would like to see a sceenshot with those graphics anyways. (Also the link to the ZIP file doesn't work anyways, Yahoo deleted it. So I really can't see if that works at all. http://www.geocities.jp/z_gundam_tanosii/home/applet/Main.html // page with the applet running on it.)

[ndchristie]

a random note, but a good romanization might be Siobhán (pronounced like shə-bawn/shə-vawn), as this is a much more widely recognized name.

[Helm]

What would help would be to pull some screenshots of the new art in action. I get the feeling the selout might be too much.

[MadeyeMike]

lol, Is the rip of Pedo bear actually in that game?

[Scuba Steve]

Sorry... it's a little graphic intensive...







I wanted to try and keep a bit of the black outlines that the original characters had... but give them my own twist.  For most of the sprites I went with a very dark coloured outline and antialiased a bit into it.  The first screenshot shows off a bit of Grass I was trying with the tiles.  I also included a screenshot of the first pic as the game originally appears.

The Bedobear thing was because the original game had this hideous character that looked almost identical to him... but white.... so I just threw him in.  It's a miracle I even know what it is... stupid internet.

[Helm]

heh the selout hurts in he first few screenshots against the sky background but helps in the black backgrounds in the latest stages. I think the ground/wall tiles look oversharpened because of the strong highlights? Thought about toning them down a bit?

[Scuba Steve]

I originally had more subdued highlights... but the game runs in a tiny window at a low resolution.  When I played it it just looked like a washed out block of colour.  I've been playing it in XP's "run in 640x480" mode and it helps make the game look a bit better.  After playing I had gone back and made the highlights brighter to try and give the blocks some detail that could be seen.

What if, on the player, I changed the selout to be darker?  I want the character to retain the "black" outline look... but not be just a character with a solid black border?

[Helm]

I think selout is a horrible thing, so I'm not the one to ask! If you were developing this, I'd say go with an alpha mask, heh

[ndchristie]

if it were up to me, i'd say you were being too faithful.  the open and bland level designs are going to make this look amaturish even if you are totally badass about the tiles and characters themselves.  Still, this shows a great improvement.  I would AA/selout to a lighter gray, because you don't have to get that close to black just to fade into black, and it will help a ton with the blue.  With your light characters, you may even experiment with a touch darker sky

about the black outline, think about simultaneous contrast.

look at this work by Mirre:

zoom in on the top of the minotaur's head and see just how light the line is there, and yet how dark it actually looks because it is bordered by two lighter colors.