old -> new

I always missed the body of Bilou, but the rayman-like animations are polishing him up very much. What about making the jumps more dynamic?

And the walking bottles (?) could walk a bit faster. They look too lazy.

edit: oh, these are pencil sharpeners? Then there should be walking pencils, too!

Oops, yes... No orange as block color. Mehh... so there's red sand now, which does not make me very happy. Maybe I should sacrifice a global color for the sand. Yellow blocks should be fixed now, I used the block color for the hilight and the dark color. Saw that trick on some Turrican screenshots...

Also tried to use 2 layers of backgrounds in the 2nd mockup: dark grey and dark brown has background blocks and the red blocks for a 2nd layer behind. The red blocks could also be used for some parallax scrolling, if the game would have scrolling.

So many great pictures! What a motivation-boost. I am working at my limit here and it was so hard for me to push the pixels a bit further. At least I like the result now. I wanted to concentrate on the tiles, so no raster splits this time. (They do not help much in this pic, anyway)


@PypeBros: Rounded edges, changed top-hilights, no roots climbing up. (thx for that one) Although, I like everything about Arachne's mockups, I couldn't fit these vines in there.

@Helm: These dark dithered patches are excellent. Especially the brown version; the blue area looks a bit like an underwater scenario. I tried to implement such patches: Hires blocks in the inside area, and multi color wide pixels in the outside area. I am not sure about the green dither. Your green blocks look better, but they are also more noisy. I also have the same feeling about my green leaves in the outside area.

@Carnivac: Hey, the blocks inside are hires, but do not have single pixels. So what does your pixel-eye detector say here? I didn't like single hires pixels on the C64, they always caused some color distortion on my TV. I guess that is why the C64 font has double pixels.


Here's a variation of the hero: Cyan shirt, brighter shoes and red outline. That works well in "the cave", but might cause some issues in other mockups.

@ptoing: I think the maps allow full height sprites up to 19-20 pixels. (reserving 1-2 pixels for the running bounce) With your big helmet, he looks even smaller. But I like the helmet. The hero could maybe start without hat and this could be a powerup.

@bladeJunker: The hires pixels are there with or without raster splits These splits just add 1 or 2 extra colors. I don't think this is a big deal, because the game would need splits anyway to show more than 8 sprites.

@Grimsane: I like the big-head-hero, too. But I shrunk his head because of the running animation. But this is a different story. Anyway, the head-size is not final... Cool overall outfit!

Adam: Wow, I also tried to darken his other side, but failed. This sprite is awesome!

Thanks for the comments!

@BladeJunker: Didn't realize that there so many games that use overlay sprites. Interestingly, they all seem to use the overlay sprite for a black outline.

@Grimsane: Brown as dark color and to replace the red blocks? Clever, I like it.

@STE86: Yes, blocks can be hires. I just was too lazy to make the red bricks hires and used copy & paste.
The "soulless" screenshots are really great. So many details and very clever use of hires blocks. Sometimes too many colors maybe.

@ptoing: Programming and map design with raster interrupts would be a bit tricky. Yes, probably. But if you want to go the easy way, you wouldn't make a C64 game anyway, would you? ;-)

@PypeBros: A raster interrupt has more overhead than just poking the colors. You have to save registers and clear flags first and doing anything reverse after. So you cannot do tricks every line like on an Atari 2600 or on the Amiga, I guess.


Yes, the colors of the hero are blending a bit... Let's see... Blue is interesing, but what about red?

On the right side, there's an early version of the hero. (which would force white and orange as global sprite colors) Never liked sprites with 2x2 pixels on the C64. No way! ;-)


Update: Here's a new mockup which uses the Uridium-method (thx, STE 86) for gettings some unusual color combinations.

I think the area of the hero with the "little brown squares" looks a bit odd. But I cannot figure out what's wrong. Do I have to fill the black area here like on the 1st floor? Any hints?

This is my 3rd try to make a game about collecting aegyptian treasures. (no, it doesnt pretend to be a Pharaoh's Curse sequel) I used the C64 graphics to make it easier for me to concentrate on my problems in creating maps and tiles. (that's why I stopped last time)

Sorry about writing so cryptic stuff...  short version of this screenmode:
- In multicolor charmode, each 8x8 block can only have one of the lower 8 colors. The background color is the same for all blocks. (for each 320x32 pixel zone)
- a 8x8 block can be a multicolor-block. Then the block has double-wide pixels and you have 2 additional colors that are the same for all blocks. (for each 320x32 pixel zone)

@rikfuzz: I wouldn't name it "sequel", but... well, ok, yes, there's this Pharaoh and he returns... sort of. Right now it's just a mockup. (Your screenshot looks like Atari, by the way)

@pypebos: yes, there's too much grey in there. Selecting the colors is actually my problem. But I have examined some C64 screenshots and they all have more or less the same strange color combinations. So maybe there's no optimal solution. (Yes, i could set the block colors to black and use that black for background, I have setup the 3rd zone in the 2nd pic like that. That works, but as you have observed, it looks very grey...)