I am the sun: game tileset WIP

[Chis]

Hey guys, I'm back  Right now I'm just attempting something small to get a better grasp on programming, so I'm trying to keep it simple.



Screenshots:





The backgrounds are extreme WIP. In the second screenshot he's standing over water; I'll add a reflection when I finally get my hands on Flash 5. I used a partially transparent yellow rectangle over the bg in the third one to convey what the atmosphere should be like.

So I'm frustrated with the palettes and style. They look okay for each individual tile, I think, but collectively the game doesn't have a defining look to it.
Also, I want to stray away from the Cave Story look but I'm not sure how to give the player sprite more character.

[Tourist]

I think you've got some lovely colors.

As far as coherent theme, some ideas:
the path of the sun across the sky per Egyptian myth (they were big on this, I think), or
changing of seasons / weather.  Have plants that turn to face the hero, snow that melts as he walks by, that sort of thing

The character as is looks too much like the umbrella girl of the Morton Salt company.  This one:


I tinkered with the character a bit.  None of these are very good for a game, but maybe they will prompt you to think of something you like.


Tourist

[Elk]

Woah...cool stuff!

Just a question, is this games character representing the sun and enlighting the world somehow?

[NaCl]

AND WHATS WRONG WITH THE MORTON SALT GIRL??

I really like the backgrounds, but the block tiles are not doing it for me, they look too gaudy and repetitive. The red tiles look kinda cool but I've no idea what theyre supposed to be. Roots?

As for giving the sprite more character, bust up the pose some. Right now he is a cube with a ball on top, not conducive to character. Bend him, twist him, give him a personality through his body. Also, his outfit is vague. Looks kind of like a yellow hoodie, kind of like a rain coat. If youre going for a raincoat then try and get the classic shape of the poncho.

[Cicadas]

Hello, Chis!
I love the way these scenes look, they're full of lots of great colors and fine moods. I especially like the character, he (I think it's a he?) has a lot of charm.
However, he looks a little stiff. I think maybe you should try to relax his pose and attitude a little, make him look a little less tense.
I made an edit to try to show what I mean:

I kept the design the same, and he's the same size, but I made a bunch of cosmetic/pose tweaks.
 -Dropped the shoulders down and brought the arms out some
 -Unzipped the raincoat a little ('cause nobody goes around with it all the way up unless it's pouring) and made his neck visible
 -Flared the raincoat out at the bottom and gave it a pocket, gave the kid a pair of shorts
 -Rounded out the face and gave him a nose and ear
 -Brought out the hood and gave it a bit more swoosh and shadow

I really love this character, it's simple, yet effective. I don't think you need to add many extra details to his design, keep it kind of plain and let the bright color and simplicity speak for themselves. I have a few minor issues with some of the terrain (like what NaCl said about the blocks), but it's in a WIP state and you'll probably iron them out on your own. I really hope you follow through with this, because explore-em-ups are my favorite kind of game.

(Edit:) Bonus edit on what I meant about the blocks.

[Chis]

Wow, the Morton salt girl didn't occur to me until you guys mentioned it
Thanks for the ideas, Tourist! I had tunnel vision until I saw those. Also, I really like the idea of plants turning; I was actually going to have the roses in the second tileset blossom as he gets near them.
Yeah, the character is supposed to be a representation of the sun. Originally I thought he could just run around and light up stuff, but I just thought of this possible interesting game mechanic involving a moon, so I'll implement that and see how it works out.
You're right, I did make him too stiff. I have a better design in mind for him, but I'll keep it simple.
This is the first time I've attempted tiles, so I'm not sure how to make the tiling less obvious. Well actually I can fix the third set, but in general, how would you go about constructing a tileset?
Thanks for the edit Cicadas I wanted to make him less square but wasn't sure how. I'll post a new character design and some updated tiles soon.

[PypeBros]

There's one thing that puzzle me with those tiles -- let me number them left-to-right

tileset 1 uses "crafted" blocks, but you erode them as if they were an organic structure.
tileset 3 represents organic grass on something, and here you have blocky edges.

I'm really fond of tileset2 ... this one really has has strong potential.

[Chis]

I realize the left one still looks like morton salt girl but I think yellow raincoats in general are a popular enough symbol that I won't get yelled at for copyright or something.
I thought the hood in Cicada's edit was brilliant so I tried to incorporate that. Also rounded him a bit.
I'm not sure the other design is a viable one but I thought it was cool o:

I thought it would be interesting for tileset 1 to be contrasting like that, but the blockiness of tileset 3 seems really obvious now time to edit some moar.
Oh holy crap Cicadas, you're a genius ;__;

EDIT: I completely redid the tileset 3.



It should be a lot better now. Inspired by sea grass 

[Cicadas]

Chis, that's fantastic, a million times better than your initial sprite!
I love the new, more realistic proportions, and you really nailed the oversized, cumbersome look of a raincoat. The hood is great, just a touch oversized and it's even got that sort of triangular peak like it's supposed to. The only thing I'm curious about is the lighter green pixel to the right of his eye.

As for the second design, it looks like a good literal representation of the sun, but it gives off more of a femenine vibe to me. The shoulders are also a bit low in comparison to the head, perhaps bring the head and cloudscarf down some?

The new tiles are much improved, giving off a much more believable look. It's got a nice stringy feeling to it, too, but you might want to give it a bit greener hue, so people don't mistake it for sand flowing through cracks in the rock. Also, if it's going to be organically messy and disorganized, I think you ought to keep the idea of secondary tiles to go on top of them like you did with the original grass, as it looks a bit flat on top as it is.

Keep up the good work!

[Chis]

The green pixel is supposed to be part of his eye ... 
I'm partial to the new version too, so I'm going to stick with it. I'll tinker with tileset 3 later.

Running animation:


Annd here's a new screenshot:


Do the tiles look better now?
I think the background is too saturated. I'm aware that the ladder is hard to read; I'll add a shadow under it (and all of the other objects) in realtime.

[Tourist]

I think the character is much better, and it works for me.

Thoughts on the tiles
The large crack on the right looks good.  The small crack on the left that goes nowhere does not, because its extents reinforce the square tile shape.  I have no opinion the alternating patterns.

One thing that bugs me a little is the orange walking surface at the top of the tiles.  The lower edge of the surface has some wonderful irregular shapes which contrast well against the square tiles underneath.  But the upper surface is a perfectly horizontal line, and it doesn't quite work.



I think this is better.  I don't know whether it makes sense to program the character walking over the curves or behind them.

Tourist

[Stava]

One thing that bugs me a little is the orange walking surface at the top of the tiles.  The lower edge of the surface has some wonderful irregular shapes which contrast well against the square tiles underneath.  But the upper surface is a perfectly horizontal line, and it doesn't quite work.



I think this is better.  I don't know whether it makes sense to program the character walking over the curves or behind them.

Tourist

If you edited the top line you should edit the bottom one thats in connection with bricks, too. Give it some irregular shapes too.
That's my attempt (left side is edited, right isn't sorry)

Edit: Actually.. what I mean is to make some poofy orange in connection between bricks and orange, the one thats there now doesn't go with the corner parts (The corners are way poofier).. Sorry! Ah I made myself look stupid, I'm tired..

[EvilEye]

Annd here's a new screenshot:


Do the tiles look better now?
I think the background is too saturated. I'm aware that the ladder is hard to read; I'll add a shadow under it (and all of the other objects) in realtime.

Your darkest color in the foreground is a medium purple, which you also use as a mid-tone on the clouds in the back. If anything your darkest colors should be in the foreground not the background.

Looks nice though.

[Chis]

You guys caught me I was feeling really lazy and didn't want to bother adjusting the collision test for slopes and whatnot. But now I see it's totally worth it artistically.
Actually, I guess in this case, just having character walk behind the slopes will give the user less of a headache.

Thanks for the tips and wonderful edits! I'm working on the orange grass now. In the meantime here's another sshot:



I changed the darkest color of the bg, made it more purple, and added a tree. I'm worried that the lighting looks out of place, but I can't do much about it unless I change the grass color on the tiles as well.

(Can you guys tell me if my bg is too bright now? I just viewed this thread from a public computer and the colors are completely different, and I can't calibrate the contrast on this one.)

[Tourist]

Too saturated I think.  Try something like  ... *whips out spreadsheet*  .. this?



Eh, my color fu is weak.

Tourist

[EvilEye]

The previous contrast issue is fixed ( although it's not the strong contrast I would prefer, but that's just my style preference ).

But now the character looks to be part of the tree background ( love that tree BTW ), which makes me wonder why you have the character so light and detail-less. Something more along the lines of your avatar ( in terms of contrast and detail ) would be appropriate.

[Cicadas]

Your recent backgrounds have been gorgeous, but like others have said they're a bit too saturated (and the most recent one is a little bright on my monitor). Tone it down just a smidge to help differentiate it from the foreground. In that vein, try to keep foreground and background colors separate, so as to avoid color confusion.

On the subject of the tiles, while the "degraded" texture has improved greatly, the tiles themselves still seem quite flat to me. Try to add some depth to them. It doesn't have to be much, but try to make them seem more substantial.
The only problem your ladder has with readability is closeness in the light brown to the reddish pink in the tiles.
As for irregularity on the grass, it's a great idea, just keep it withing a few pixels from the ground so you can cheat and just make the character walk flat behind it.
On the tree, why does it seem to be entirely backlit? Is the lighting coming from that planet in the background? Otherwise, it has fine shape and composure, very organic looking.

The running animation looks a bit like skipping/bounce-walking to me. Maybe tone down the bounce a bit, and give the overall movement a bit more fluidity. It looks a bit stiff in the body as it is.
(!Personal Opinion Inbound!)
I've always found side-facing movement animations to convey the motion better than their 3/4 counterparts. Just a thought.
(!Exit Personal Opinion!)

Another thing I'm noticing is that you're making the backgrounds increasingly more complex and detailed, which kind of clashes with the charming few-color-to-a-sprite tone that you had going in the beginning. This also makes the character sprite look somewhat out of place. I suggest you decide now what graphical path you want to take with this game.

On the one hand, you have the simple, low color option that you started out with. This style is easy to create for and work with, and can be quite elegant and atmospheric if done properly. This is the easiest to animate with, because everything is going to be mostly one or two colors, and you don't have to worry about detail as much. This style is considered niche by most, but well-recieved within the independent gaming and pixelart community. (Just be prepared for people to tell you it looks like Cave Story, even if it doesn't)

On the other hand, you have higher detail with more colors and rendering per sprite. This style is slightly more time consuming to work with and create for, but the payoff of a shiny, polished-looking game is nice. It is slower and more difficult to animate with this style, as you have to first block out what you're trying to do, get the core animation done, then sweep over all the frames and add detail and revision. This style is more mainstream, and will probably be well-recieved by the majority, but completing a game in this style takes more time and effort.

In your situation, I would reccomend the former. You seem to be making this game for your own sake, and for practice. The graphics of a game are where many game designers will get hung up and quit in development, and in your particular example it doesn't seem necessary to try and make the next Braid. Save it for when you're more confident in your abilities.


I look forward to seeing this project's continued progress.

(Edit): Sorry for this huge wall of text, I didn't realize it was this big until I posted it.

[Chis]

(Sorry that the left edges are still so primitive, but I'm using Game Maker and don't know how to flip tiles without making an entire new set so I'm just holding out for now.)

Desaturated background, tried to bring out the ladder, added hills and variety to the grass. I didn't really know how to make the tiles un-flat so I just added more unevenness at the bottom. If it gets too repetitive I'll probably make some variant tiles, but I'm worried I have too many as is. Out of curiosity, how many tiles do you guys usually end up with in one tileset?

Yes, the tree is totally backlit, although I guess the character himself could be a source of light. I'll mull over that some more.

About the run, I dunno - I kind of wanted the stiffness and bounciness to give him character because of how childish it looks. If it's still bad practice I'll change it but uh ... I'm actually not sure how to do that either

And you're totally right about the graphics. I sorta got carried away and forgot what I really wanted to do with the game (including finishing it, haha). This is as complex as it gets, really! Also the tree will be an interactive object in the foreground if that makes it any better.
I think the longer I work on something the more clutter I tend to add to it, so please feel free to throw additional critiques this way but I'll be starting on other characters/tilesets.

[Cicadas]

Lookin' good, there.
The blocks don't quite seem to be 3d themselves, but the crumbling edges define the shape they make up as a whole as 3d, so that works out just as well.
Those edges are great, by the way. You seem to have a real penchant for making tiles irregular enough so that they don't necessarily need variety tiles to mask the grid. That ladder especially. It's so wonderfully asymmetrical, I seriously had no idea it was one tile until I deconstructed it to start editing.

I didn't do much to it, just cut down some of the shadows a bit, applied some nonintrusive AA here and there, and AA'd the bent rung to smooth it out a little.
I also removed the 1-pixel dithershading on some of the rungs, because pixels in groups of less than two end up making shading look sort of noisy at this resolution.

On an unrelated note, I did up a run cycle to sort of demonstrate what I meant about side-facing animations. I don't know if it looks childish enough for the character, but I gave it my best shot. (It's on a black bacground because I had to use some AA for more subtle motions and it doesn't show up well against Pixelation's grungy green background.)


Also comes in grizzled war veteran variety (to see the legs and torso more easily)


Looking back, I didn't add enough bounce, the arms pretty much suck, and the whole thing is pretty stiff looking (and that's without mentioning that I mirrored the animation).
But, it gets across the general idea, I hope. The only reason that I think side-runs are favorable to 3/4-runs is because in platformers, 3/4th runs always make it look like the character is running diagonally instead of side to side, and it always seemed to me like they might run right off the side of the narrow platforms that all side-scrollers are made of. Just my two cents.

Edits 'n stuff aside, I'm curious about the role of the main character, the kid in the yellow raincoat. Who is he, and what does he represent?
Is he a god-like figure taken physical form, a la Ameratsu from Okami? An avatar of some sorts? Is the sun he's representing even spiritual at all, or is it just a ball of flaming gas?
Does he derive his power from the sun, if he has any? Is he bringing light to the world, like a manifestation of daybreak? If so, why? Does it happen every day, or is it something more heroic, like a sacred duty to bring light to the world after it has been swallowed by darkness? Does the moon make an appearance? What is the significance of the raincoat? Is he chasing away a rainy day?

I'm sorry for bombarding you with all these questions, and I don't expect you to answer all of them, probably in order to preserve the mystery for the actual game. Just a bit of closure, about why he is the sun, and why his raincoat is yellow.

[Chis]

Oh wow, the ladder looks a lot better now. I tend to overdither things a lot, but I'll make sure to clean those pixels up. Thanks!

I really appreciate the side run edit you made and actually the arms are probably a lot better than what I did, and I totally know what you mean about the character appearing to run off the platform, but I think I'm going to more or less stick with the 3/4 view: first because the idle stance is also in 3/4 and I think the transition might be jarring, and second because I personally like being able to see more of the character's face   and third it doesn't feel quite as stiff as when facing perfectly to the side.

So actually I think the lack of plot is what's screwing me over (and why I'm having trouble updating). I did the unthinkable and pixelled the characters and tiles without creating a story first, and now I'm at a temporary art block because I'm not sure what to pixel. I have these vague ideas about kid in raincoat possibly being 1) lost and trying to find his way back to the sky, 2) being someone's 'inner persona' and resolving some psychological conflict, 3) helping other NPCs resolve their conflicts, or 4) something cliche like lighting up the darkness in the world. 2 intrigues me the most; not sure where to go from there, though. The moon would be a helper character, but also playable. Speaking of which, I attempted to block her out and came out with this:




Yeah, the run is WIP because it kinda really sucks. I wanted to make it more like she's prancing/leaping (she's light), but animating small pixels is still an art that eludes me  

Edit:

[Chis]

Well, since it's just a practice game and all, I might as well play it improv
Here is the (scaled down) concept art for level 1:



Started making tiles for it below. I actually have no idea how I'm going to tile the entire left side of the building, or if I will at all for that matter.

[Twirly]

I really dig your style man, also i really enjoy watching this develop!
On the new tiles: I'd just make sure that they don't blend in with the background

[Koi Kami Mauro]

If I may make a suggestion regarding character design, why not take some cues from Egyptian mythology? Give him Ra's head, or some symbol that makes him the sun. Maybe a bright halo on him. Something like that.