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Commercial Critique / Re: Commercial Critique - Shadow of the Beast
« on: April 14, 2007, 08:06:25 am »
Sorry if this is considered necroposting, it's a few weeks since the last post, and the topic was posted ages ago!
Wow.. This thread was the straw that broke the camels back and got me to join the board.. It's really good to see people discussing SOTB. Was one of my favourite old Amiga games, and though not 100% because of the graphics, it was in large part.. The combination of graphics/music/atmosphere really grabbed me.. Well something must have, as the gameplay wasn't too hot!
I think the 1989 thing is a good "excuse" for the odd technique.. Some of it's definitely sloppy and pillowy.. But a lot of the gradients remind me of some older airbrushed fantasy art - which you don't see so much anymore.. The smooth gradients showed off what at the time was a crazily big colour palette, too. Its hard commenting on such an old game.. Where would this guy have learned spriting back then? Messing around in the demo scene as practice with DPaint, and no online communities for feedback or anything - I think he did an insanely good job. Especially if what I've read is true, and the entire game was put together in 9 months.
As Lackey touched on; I love the consistent inconsistency in the monster designs too.. They are totally random seeming.. But they add to the alienness of the world and made it more rich, I think. The world/backgrounds though I'd say were very consistent - something jarring there and the atmosphere could be completely broken.
Has anyone played the Marty/FM-Towns version of SOTB? I think that showed that increasing the colour palette and "improving" the graphics could seriously mess up the atmosphere.http://sotb.free.fr/Fichiers/screen_fmtowns.html - a bit of a travesty, it's like they completely missed the point when redoing the graphics *and* music..
Technical spec of the A500.. 32 colour palette + 4096 colour copper gradients (the background sky) except using 64 colour halfbright mode (which I'm pretty sure SOTB didnt, as it ran on the A1000).. By making the critters all 4-6 colour mono, at least you got some variation between the different enemy cols within each section of the game.. In games like Xenon2 (mentioned earlier in the thread) the palette of each level could be pretty overpowering.. Everything coming at you in orange/grey.
I think the field you start off in, with the parallax and the sky and everything is what really sold the game, and lots of Amigas..
Looking at it now I still think it looks crazily good for 32 colours + a sky gradient. Brings back memories.. Watching the youtube movies.. The "paff!" noise when you punch enemies, and the way they just fall off the screen.. Brilliant, haha.. Shame he didn't do enemy death anims for some of them at least. .. Sorry I haven't really added anythign new to the thread here, its.. Just.. SOTB!! I had to write something.
Wow.. This thread was the straw that broke the camels back and got me to join the board.. It's really good to see people discussing SOTB. Was one of my favourite old Amiga games, and though not 100% because of the graphics, it was in large part.. The combination of graphics/music/atmosphere really grabbed me.. Well something must have, as the gameplay wasn't too hot!
I think the 1989 thing is a good "excuse" for the odd technique.. Some of it's definitely sloppy and pillowy.. But a lot of the gradients remind me of some older airbrushed fantasy art - which you don't see so much anymore.. The smooth gradients showed off what at the time was a crazily big colour palette, too. Its hard commenting on such an old game.. Where would this guy have learned spriting back then? Messing around in the demo scene as practice with DPaint, and no online communities for feedback or anything - I think he did an insanely good job. Especially if what I've read is true, and the entire game was put together in 9 months.
As Lackey touched on; I love the consistent inconsistency in the monster designs too.. They are totally random seeming.. But they add to the alienness of the world and made it more rich, I think. The world/backgrounds though I'd say were very consistent - something jarring there and the atmosphere could be completely broken.
Has anyone played the Marty/FM-Towns version of SOTB? I think that showed that increasing the colour palette and "improving" the graphics could seriously mess up the atmosphere.http://sotb.free.fr/Fichiers/screen_fmtowns.html - a bit of a travesty, it's like they completely missed the point when redoing the graphics *and* music..
Technical spec of the A500.. 32 colour palette + 4096 colour copper gradients (the background sky) except using 64 colour halfbright mode (which I'm pretty sure SOTB didnt, as it ran on the A1000).. By making the critters all 4-6 colour mono, at least you got some variation between the different enemy cols within each section of the game.. In games like Xenon2 (mentioned earlier in the thread) the palette of each level could be pretty overpowering.. Everything coming at you in orange/grey.
I think the field you start off in, with the parallax and the sky and everything is what really sold the game, and lots of Amigas.. Looking at it now I still think it looks crazily good for 32 colours + a sky gradient. Brings back memories.. Watching the youtube movies.. The "paff!" noise when you punch enemies, and the way they just fall off the screen.. Brilliant, haha.. Shame he didn't do enemy death anims for some of them at least. .. Sorry I haven't really added anythign new to the thread here, its.. Just.. SOTB!! I had to write something.