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Messages - Groggeneral
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Pro:
- the basic idea has potential and I can see how it can appeal especially to younger audiences. Drawing an own character, making a house and furniture, chatting with people.
- I talked to some children playing and they genuinely enjoyed building their houses and showing each other cool stuff. There is a lot to explore. It seems to be a very family-friendly experience so far - big plus!
- the game encourages using one's own drawing skills compared to other sandbox games and give creativity more room that way. That's really cool :)
- flying, changing characters, custom animations.. there are a many fun things to explore.
- as far as i can tell people can create their own worlds and visit each other.
- the community seems nice so far.

Cons:
- I tried for half an hour to figure out how to place blocks. There is no information on these limitations ingame. still don't know how to do it but that might be because of the next -->
- I share ptoings notion: I don't want third party companies to use my google or fb account as my login. That's a clear no go for me. Also, people without these are forced into creating one then.
- seems like people can place blocks in your homeworld too? heard someone complaining about that
- There is literally no instruction on any function. Where can I access my inventory? Where is any menu at all? It's user-unfriendly this way, so tool tips and a beginners tutorial would be superb.
- the starting character looks.. scary

Further suggestions:
- The world lacks an opportunity for orientation. Maybe having some kind of mock-up "worldmap" where the "standardmap" is in the middle and usermaps are locations spread around? Anything to give an idea of the scope of the game would be neat
- unregistered users don't have many things, but there is no information on that. Show me the menus but leave them greyed out so that I see that there is more once I registered
- Own useraccounts. Logging in with amazon, google or fb is a no-go for many.
- for my taste, the text disappears too quickly and the space for text is too small before it is force-sent. A chatlog that can be toggled and that only shows the chat from players in line of sight would definately be an improvement.
- The piano music function is fun - I wish it could be accessed by keys instead of by mouseclicks. That would make playing melodies easier.
- You have said nothing about the goal of the game or you as developers so far. As I see it, you want to make a game that revolves around creating one's own experience? Nontheless, creating an optimal starting experience should be important. Maybe let people start in a starter-room where they can immediately pick a nice charactersprite they can identify with. Also explain to them how things work there. make sure they like what they see at the start and make sure they feel welcome. How about you have two charactersprites of the developer (or a fictional "representative") at the start, telling that people can create their own world and that you are happy that they're around? Something like that maybe. dunno.

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Pixel Art / Re: house
« on: September 24, 2014, 08:52:41 pm »
thanks for the tips I'll keep those in mind when making another character!

however how would I make those legs and arms better then? I had a littlebit of a trouble making those because they or looked to thick or looked ugly ":S
(I'm also planning on animating this character once I'm done with the sprite itself and if the sprite is to small or too narrow it will be hard for me to animate it)

That's a reason why I referred you to charactersprites from others games. Draw inspirations from different approaches to how it could be done and just well, try around until you find your own solution. Manupix also pointed out the parts which are particulary inconsistent. You can see how other more trained people solved these difficulties and you may then get an idea on how you could do it, too.

I would recommend fixing the issues before you animate it as that would just mean that you carry over the things without learning how to do better next time.

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Pixel Art / Re: [Finished] MOOSEBOX
« on: September 24, 2014, 05:34:30 pm »
Wow. What an amazing level of quality, not just Pixelwise, but the voice overs, the concept and the great jokes! Flawless animations! Catbox's "I with u *cuteface*" made me laugh hard :D
Fantastic!

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Pixel Art / Re: house
« on: September 24, 2014, 12:54:26 am »


As for the general concept of the image - it's interesting (and/or because it's a bit contradictory). The house looks rather rundown, but the girl looks rather petite and tidy. I like the petite frame of her :]

The Eyes need some refinement - the black borders suggest that she may be wearing glasses (but the sprite lacks the nosebridge for that). The way the pupils are positioned, it also looks like she is looking at the ground. If that's intended - good. If not, it's an area for further improvement

Considering the small pixelsize of the girl and the detail of the arms, you could boil down the eyes to 1 or 2 pixels each

What's important is that in this case one can see in which direction the girl is looking to.

To change the direction where she's looking at, also consider how you look at stuff -> you move your head.

So if you want her to look to the side, you can play around with the alignment of the eyes and the perspective of the head. maybe not completely lose the right eye but you get the idea.

I recommend to look at some sprites from snes or nes games to get a sense of how pixels can be placed in the face area
Example: http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/chronotrigger/ or http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/ff6/  (http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/ff6/sheet/6707/)
giving the eye a black outline imho makes the outline too bulky at that pixelcount.

Hope that helps :]

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Pixel Art / Re: Holy Demon Statue
« on: September 22, 2014, 10:59:10 am »
+1 for the one on the right. It vaguely looks like a skull and fits the body. Pretty much demon Jesus!
Great use of colours, too. Since you mentioned the wings yourself: I like them, but wonder whether it would make demon jesus look more menacing and powerful, if his wings were larger. They're currently around Gargoyle level. In comparison, I would imagine angelwings to be wider in spansize and demon jesus should certainly have more majestic wings than those puny angels  ;)

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General Discussion / Re: Method: Shape & Cluster approach
« on: September 08, 2014, 09:00:04 pm »

Some quickly grabbed examples from Deviantart:
http://blazt01.deviantart.com/art/Some-Monsters-474028619
http://shademist030.deviantart.com/art/Gift-Levi-Pixel-Doll-Neko-Systeme-480594917
http://jazminj323.deviantart.com/art/eos-sticker-version-ART-TRADE-480971622

As you see all of them have lines but there is no underlying form. With underlying form I mean that there is no feel of depth or 3-dimensionality.
Even if we are painting on a 2-dimensional surface it should be a goal to convey 3D forms, unless you don't explicitely want to break it.
 the difficulty is to get away from "thinking with outlines" and to advance to "thinking with 3d forms"

The dimensional difference between outlined sprites and ones without outlines really is amazing, I didn't realize that until now. Thanks for the good examples!
So clear outlines always foster a sense of "sticker optic" / "lack of depth"? I thought it was mainly a matter of good shadowing to reach a high sense of depth/dimensionality but an ordinary (real) 3d-form (like a garlic) doesn't have an outline that distinguishes between the body of the form and its border. It's all just a set of bodies forming a whole object, no borders inbetween there.

I can see how it would be more difficult to develop a sense of depth working with a lineart-approach. So a lack of clear border lines and good shadowing could be considered the core of creating dimensionality? Is there something else?

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General Discussion / Method: Shape & Cluster approach
« on: September 08, 2014, 07:35:13 pm »
Hi everyone,

 i'm new to Pixelart and I have a few questions about the Shape & Cluster approach (as explained by cyangmou at deviantart

I was looking at a progress roll gif of one work by Thu (See here (For the progress roll see here and wondered whether that is a good example for the shape & cluster approach. In the garlic example by Cyangmou, it looks as if he just did the whole shape perfectly right from the start. As I understand it at the moment, the Shape & Cluster approach tries to develop shapes a bit more organically by staying away from the line-art approach. The organical development comes out quite remarkable in the work of Thu, so I wondered whether that is actually meant by Shaping & Clustering ?

I'd greatly appreciate more examples or tips on how people approach their pixel art from the scratch other than going by line art.
Thanks so much! :)

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