Pixelation

Critique => Devlogs & Projects => Topic started by: FelipeFS on January 07, 2016, 07:21:38 am

Title: Ghouls in the Neighborhood
Post by: FelipeFS on January 07, 2016, 07:21:38 am
Hello, Pixelation! I really like this place, I'm an old lurker here, and I am glad there is a gamedev section now! :)

I'm working on this game for desktop called "Ghouls in the Neighborhood", and it has a SNESesque feeling about it. Feedback is very welcome! I have car on some else places, but I feel this is the best place to receive feedback about my pixel art. So, I will post some extras here related to pixelart, and hopefully we can discuss about it.

Ghouls in the Neighborhood

Very short plot:
Ghouls in the Neighborhood chronicles the adventures of four friends on a journey to save the world from an evil force, that brings with it creatures from a reality of horror.

Title screen:
(http://i.imgur.com/heFFNMk.gif)

Our girl home, day and night:
(http://i.imgur.com/ITnAteP.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/GS7rfjH.png)

Recover your stats eating ramen:
(http://i.imgur.com/wZOoUC4.png)

Some characters:
(http://i.imgur.com/XzkhNZW.gif)
The two girls are main characters. There are two more to be made, two boys. I want this game to be more about friendship, actually.

Inspiration:
There are a bunch of inspiration. Earthbound, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Adventure Time and some mangas!

Just a bit about gameplay:
The gameplay will be very ABS (Action Battle System), like Zelda or Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Will not have many kind of stats like most of RPGs. It will be something like Zelda, only heart points and items.

Technical:
I'm trying to limit myself to 16 colors, but it's being hard to. I guess I will relax and use 20 colors palette.

Tumblr: http://felipefsdev.tumblr.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/felipefsdev

Cheers :P
-
Felipe Ferreira da Silva
Title: Re: Ghouls in the Neighborhood
Post by: Ambivorous on January 07, 2016, 01:11:23 pm
Let me start off by saying this is an amazing art style and I wish to see a lot more of it.
Saw some of these pieces on PixelJoint (I think?) and I was certainly interested. Welcome to Pixelation!

So let me get this thread rolling since you deserve a lot of attention!

(http://i.imgur.com/I9bdGJq.png)

So a few things to try tie this piece together a bit more.
Forgive me if I explain anything you already know (or sound condescending, which is not my intention), but I'll go over everything I can think of in case you haven't thought of anything, or for the sake of anyone reading this hoping to learn.

When making games it's important to give attention to important areas of the screen.
Normally this means things the player can interact with get the highest preference. Examples of this are that the character is the most important thing on the screen at any given time. All characters are. Then come things that you can directly interact with. Maybe you can ride the bike, go into the house, smash the flower pot. These things are the next important thing. Then there's impassable stuff that you can't actually do anything to, so trees, cliffs, rocks, etc. Finally comes background detail stuff that has no baring on the game whatsoever except to look pretty and give the eye something to do over the rest of the screen. Lowest priority of course.

There are several ways to attract attention from the player: contrast, saturation, detail and movement.
Since your game will not be having many colours, using saturation would be tricky, but do keep it in mind (means you'd have to set aside certain colours only for use on high priority objects).
Contrast is, on the other hand, pretty easy to use. Especially because this will often also lead to extra detail in a piece which will attract even further attention.
Movement is a way to make your characters stick out more without necessarily overcluttering the sprites, so make sure you have idle animations!

A note on your colours:
You seem to be entirely lacking in oranges (and thus also browns), which I was missing painfully while trying to make an edit, but it was too difficult to rearrange your pallet for just one extra colour. It should be noted that colour fidelity comes from the mid-range, so it wouldn't be impossible to just make one of your pinks orangey without affecting the rest of the mood, but it would require careful planning. Or you could just add some colours. ;D
You are also lacking in really bright colours, but this shouldn't be a problem.

On to the edit for now.
So for this edit I wanted to only touch on a few things (for time reasons and because it's worthless throwing everything together in one go and it all being overwhelming). The dirt-grass barrier had a lot of contrast going on for such an unimportant detail. So much that it was even distracting from your character. As stated above we don't want that, so I just dropped the contrast to deliver more attention to everything else.
The house also had too much contrast/detail on the roof which was making it the only thing the eye focused on in the scene. I removed some of the contrast, but you'll need to revisit the amount of detail you want on the roof for how much attention you want it to receive.
Oh and I edited that one rock, but looks like I've added unnecessary saturation to it, so it might even stick out more now, whoops! Reduced the contrast though at least. :P

It might be good practice to go over the piece and see what things you'd like attention to be given to and making some changes to get the desired effect.
I look forward to anything you come up with either way though, so please keep us posted!


[Edit] Added movement to the list of important things to attract attention with some explanation.
Title: Re: Ghouls in the Neighborhood
Post by: FelipeFS on January 08, 2016, 12:29:49 am
Yeah, my palette is tricky!  >:(

I experienced the same dificulties you did. Also, add new colors arenot that easy (for me). I try to be perfectionist. I have some "neutralizer" colors on my palette, which are used as shade or light for two different colors, sometimes three. The second darkest color, the purple (#53275c) for example. Add new colors is tricky since I will need to add a new shade color. Check this:

(http://i.imgur.com/BMIHlqD.png)

This happened when I added the blue. I had to add a darker blue, cause the purple didn't match well egnough with the blue.

I agree that the grass limit with the sand is attracting attention. It uses the darkest color (black) and the purple as shadow. I guess the fact that the black dots are discontinuous are contributing to that. I will try to reduce the contrast and making them more continuous.

Orange. I missed it too.  :crazy: When I was building the palette, restricting myself to 16 colors, I had to ditch orange tones. I will relax more on the restriction and try to build a 20 colors palette, maybe. I also wonder if 24 colors would be too much. (I like to keep it multiple of 8).

I like the roof. A lot. If I show you the previous one, you will like the current more:
(http://i.imgur.com/8xIL8p4.png)

 :lol:

I plan to make more pixels and post here next time. Also with a new palette. Thank you for the advices, @Amiborous!
Title: Re: Ghouls in the Neighborhood
Post by: Ambivorous on January 08, 2016, 07:41:22 am
Few quick points.

I normally find I have two hues for my darkest shade (usually a blue and reddish-brown I think), so it's not surprising that you need two. ^^
I wouldn't restrict myself to 16 colours at this stage of your project yet, but 24 sounds nice. Not because you can't do it, but because it might make you limited in the choices you make later, but if you have 24 colours there is always the option to reduce colours later if you want (it's easier once you know what all assets you have and what colours they're using).

You seem to be getting away without orange though, so maybe 20 colours is fine.

So my point of the roof was not about the main area (truly it is beautifully simple while still conveying a lot of information), I just meant revisiting the white area around the roof that is attracting so much attention (both because it's white and it has massive banding going on). I think a simpler border for the roof will do wonders, unless you want roofs to attract some attention of course, then just drop the white like I did in my edit.

Glad to help! Look forward to more art. ^^
Title: Re: Ghouls in the Neighborhood
Post by: leveler50 on February 01, 2016, 10:07:27 pm
Your night doesn't look like night because it has too many colours in it. At night you don't see many colours because the eye cells are not capable of processing the light so well. I made a "night-edit":

(http://i68.tinypic.com/1z2fwo0.png)
Title: Re: Ghouls in the Neighborhood
Post by: FelipeFS on May 10, 2016, 06:13:17 am
Long time. I was away from the development for a while, taking care of college stuff.

(http://i.imgur.com/kODx6OX.gif)
SNES cover.

(http://i.imgur.com/OlVYELM.gif)

(http://i.imgur.com/7gkckpZ.png)
Our notebook! It will be useful.

(http://i.imgur.com/GxweUWq.png)
The current iteration for a street.

(http://i.imgur.com/hSrv2RP.png)
When equiped with the water gun, a water drop show the "ammo". When equiped with nothing, a empty hand is shown. The equip system is like the one in Resident Evil: you might be equiped with the gun, but you click a button to hold it. This is useful, because if you click the action button holding the gun, you shoot, if you click the action button with nothing in hand, you are checking something or talking to someone. Pretty much RE implementation.

(http://i.imgur.com/PgLmhme.png)
Still unused.

First Boss
(http://i.imgur.com/m7Atvug.png)
First iteration.

(http://i.imgur.com/kowmKAI.png)
Current iteration.

BACK TO GAMEDEV!   ;D

@leveler50 Thanks! I agree with you. I will change the night palette.