AuthorTopic: [C+C] Side Scroller  (Read 7316 times)

Offline ChadHachey

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[C+C] Side Scroller

on: September 04, 2010, 12:18:43 am


Any crits? I'm debating on whether or not to remove the clouds, they seem out off place to me. Any help with the ship design would be nice too! I suck with that sort of thing ;p Oh and this will have parallax scrolling if I ever end up making a game out of it.

Edit: Started adding windows, not sure if should continue because it kinda kills the minimalist style I was shooting for, your thoughts?
« Last Edit: September 04, 2010, 09:41:16 pm by ChadHachey »

Offline blumunkee

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #1 on: September 04, 2010, 11:09:06 pm
Foreground windows: yay. Background windows: nay.

There is too much contrast between the pink and red in the sky. It pushes the sky too far into the foreground.

Offline ChadHachey

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #2 on: September 05, 2010, 04:58:04 pm

Finished adding in windows, fixed? the contrast problem with the sky, and a few enemy designs.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2010, 05:02:02 pm by ChadHachey »

Offline FRAWG

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #3 on: September 05, 2010, 07:17:42 pm
The main player ship does not stand out at all, i would get lost very easily.....

Offline Tourist

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #4 on: September 05, 2010, 10:31:02 pm
The sky is looking good to me, but maybe reconsider the clouds.  Everything else that is a background element is connected in a long horizontal fashion.  Ships and enemies would be small discrete elements.  The clouds more resemble the ships in that they are separate discrete elements.

One solution would be to have the clouds stretch for long spans horizontally like the other sky elements, another wold be to delete them altogether.

Just my 2 cents,
Tourist

Offline FRAWG

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #5 on: September 06, 2010, 02:09:05 am
Something i notice is that all of the comments on the images are about how things do or don't fit in. One problem with making a game independently is that you know what is there, and what is what. If you don't overcome this thought, you'll never get a visually "perfect" game.

Look at your projects as if you were a critic, what would you do differently? What is really happening? Is it too hard to focus on? What is good about it, and should i continue that?

When someone looks at something for too long, it changes. This change makes what you are looking at more common and natural to you. For people who have not seen it before, this is not what they see.
The pixel work is nice,  very retro, and with motion involved would probably be a lot easier to follow.

And one last point, i think that it is the black edges that are trailing the character and enemies off. The black seems as if it were another obstacle, instead of just plain sky. If the point is for them to be in the foreground, then it should be more emphasized, otherwise they seem to attempt to blend themselves into the background.

Offline PypeBros

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #6 on: September 06, 2010, 08:52:08 am
I'd suggest coloured clouds and white ships. That might pop out better.



edit: it definitely does. Fun ahead. Keep moving!
« Last Edit: September 07, 2010, 07:49:17 am by PypeBros »

Offline ChadHachey

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #7 on: September 06, 2010, 11:00:33 pm

Man that white is trippin' me out, can't say I like it.>:( Anyway maybe the menu will add more readability.
« Last Edit: September 06, 2010, 11:03:02 pm by ChadHachey »

Offline buddy90

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #8 on: September 06, 2010, 11:14:10 pm
You could just give more than 1 color to the sprites, you know. In most games where the sprites have 1 color, the background is usually one solid color. Like in space invaders. But your background is certainly not that simple, so why should your sprites be?

Offline PypeBros

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #9 on: September 07, 2010, 07:52:41 am

Man that white is trippin' me out, can't say I like it.>:(


could work. Imho, at least the player's ship needs to stand out more. The best way to figure out is to ask alpha-testers whether they manage to shoot the targets and dodge shots with one or the other option. That might also depend on your platform ... a phone screen may not render it the same way as my PC LCD screen ...

I liked it better with the alien's eyes, btw.

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #10 on: September 07, 2010, 02:57:41 pm
as Frawg stated, motion will increase the clarity of your graphics. You can tweak a still forever but the best way to figure out if it works or not is to throw it in a game engine. I've found the same to be true with animation. If I keep pumping frames into an animation just for fun without testing its value in game, I might be heading in the wrong direction.
For a lot of mockups it would take longer to make a test room and I understand why most people don't. But something this simple would take like 30min to an 1hr.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline ChadHachey

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #11 on: September 07, 2010, 06:47:49 pm

I'm pretty happy with the background now and that's the reason why I started this. When I get less lazy I'll boot up Game Maker and apply all of the other critiques.

Offline blumunkee

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Re: [C+C] Side Scroller

Reply #12 on: September 07, 2010, 07:03:20 pm
Oh yes, that's very cool. Going completely windowless may work the best. Less background noise.

As for the black vs white thing, you gotta remember animation makes a big difference. When the ships are actually moving around, its not hard at all to see them. But, some differentiation might help. Maybe all ships are black, but they put off white plumes of fire behind the engine, and they have different energy colors, etc.