Almost done with exams, so I thought I'd update this thread.
I renamed the game so it's a little more catchy. I changed the dino's legs to make the perspective less wonky. I also enlarged the ice cube and tried to make it look more like ice. Not sure what style I want to go for with the text yet.
Can't you give him some eyelids?
Better now?
Here are the new tiles so far. I'm still in the process of softening up the rock tiles.
The requirements for the slippery tile set changed somewhat, so now I'm trying to emphasize the grid to make it easier to imagine the block paths. I ended up with a style of tiles which doesn't really give the impression of
smooth ice. I was thinking I could add some brighter, diagonal lines on top to indicate smoothness or something like that. There's also the issue of style consistency within the set, which I'll have to focus on in a final pass.
Another important thing is the lighter borders around the edge tiles. Here's an example, where one of the ice blocks has been pushed onto an empty tile. I'm wondering if I need to emphasize the borders more or if it's easy enough to tell the difference between the two cases.
I also made a GUI mockup for the level selection screen. It looks fairly similar to what we have implemented, except we're not using a separate tile set to draw the miniature level.
At this stage, it doesn't seem worth it to add separate tile sets for the miniatures, but maybe once we're closer to finishing the game (or if enough people complain about it
).
Oh! I just noticed that the colors in the screenshot are more washed out than in the mockup, so I'll have to look into that.
Edit: For some reason, images I save in Gimp won't appear correctly in Firefox.
Quick color edit:
I really feel like the icy environment is not having nearly as much of an effect on the dino's colors as it probably should. The highlights especially, I felt, were too warm. I pushed the highlights and shadows into blue, tried to keep midtones somewhat green.
I see what you mean, and I'd probably go with something less cheerful if it were any of my grimmer projects. I think the sunnier tone fits the mood better for a silly, cartoony game like this, though.