This is something I've been doing for fun since I got the game from the Humble Bundle.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/ftl-remastered

It was always on my radar since everyone I know liked it, and I knew it used pixels, but seeing it up close I realized a lot of it was pretty ugly so I figured I might try to do something about that (it turns out it's really easy to mod, just unpack - edit - repack). Still not very far, especially considering the ass loads of ships I'll have to do, but it's playable. Right now I'm kind of stuck on what to do with the UI.

I just started my first paid work after putting it off for years (now I really need the money), but inevitably ran into the obstacle of sucking at drawing people, a terrible condition I've lived with my whole life. So this is more about the figure than the animation. The pose is okay and most of the body isn't terrible, but the real problem is the head and trying to fit some kind of recognizable face shape in an area that small, rather than a fleshy blob with half a coconut on top of it.

It's supposed to be an RPG perspective although I'm definitely cheating in favor of a side view, but with relatively realistic proportions a more accurate 3/4 view looks pretty goofy (long arms and stumpy legs) so it's an acceptable sacrifice. Plus it looks fine in action.

I was looking through the Ramblethread, and anyone who was in there four years probably doesn't but might remember the idea of a pixel art wiki for consolidating all the kinds of things we talk about in critique, which was decided against at the time for several reasons.

But it might be worth it.

As long as I've been around, which isn't as long as a lot of people, there's never been one reliable place to get information. Over the last couple of days/weeks I've seen maybe twenty people try to explain banding on separate occasions in separate places. There are a lot of great tutorials, but none of them have everything, and what they do have is all one perspective.

Basically I think it's about time this happened.

Ideally, it would have two things-

Technical things like the mechanics behind techniques, color theory, and more general knowledge stuff like old console restrictions,

and-

Subjective explanations of techniques and theories, preferably with multiple perspectives. Naturally, and this is what this forum is built on, the best way to learn is by getting a lot of varied and unique input.

So on the hypothetical dithering page you'd have-

Dithering

This is the definition of dithering and other things about it.

Sub Header

Person 1: Here are some things about dithering I've learned.

Person 2: This is how I use dithering to buffer shades.

Person 3: This is how I dither to add texture.

And so on.

This thread posted itself early so I'll edit in the rest of what was meant to be here.

(And that's done)

As far as running it, what could work-

-Having two different types of contributors, public editors who can do all the typical wiki things, and pre-approved VIPs who would be the source of the detailed explanation. As far as what it would take to be one of them, I couldn't say, but it would definitely try to avoid being too exclusive.

-Wikia gives each wiki a dedicated forum. Being able to discuss articles was one of the big concerns in the Ramblethread, so maybe having a forum thread dedicated to each page (which would be linked to in the page) could take care of that side. What I would even do is have particularly well-written discussion from the thread be put up on the page, and going along with that first point that might be a way for a user to become one of those VIPs.

EDIT: The pages also have their own Talk section that I somehow missed until now, so it can be split into discussion of the page itself in the Talk section and discussion of the content in the forum.

-With relatively strict control over editing and separating the two types of content, moderating should be a pretty easy job of just making sure no one screws with it. At least while it's not too populated.

And there would be the obligatory tutorial dump, less educational pages on certain games, etc.

This one's pretty simple. Just a 32x32 whatever which I'll then make with card stock squares on a base.

The only outstanding thing is that my supplies are very limited. I only have 24 colors to work with that I didn't choose.



And it's pretty much all over the place. The best parts of it are the variety of dark blues and that nice red-yellow ramp, but other than that, it's a bit of an obstacle, especially with such a big gap between the shadows and highlights.

Now, what I make actually doesn't matter, so the main focus of what I do is if it can be represented by that palette.

I started off with a beach at sunset that didn't have anything to to bridge the blue greys and yellows, tried some green mountains that could almost fade into an ugly grey sky, and this morning I actually paid attention to the colors I have and did this-



-zoomed for people like me whose browser blurs when it scales-



-which I'm not a terribly big fan of, especially because of how it doesn't work well zoomed in, which is how it would be viewed once the actual thing is made.

So it would be nice to get some input from you professionals that know a whole lot about palettes, since I've never taken the time to get into it. I usually just wing it and edit.

And again, "standing torch thing at night" is every kind of tentative. I think I'd probably prefer to do something different, but the colors are the main priority. I could even go completely abstract if I wanted.