WIP: Soldier game

[Koyot1222]

Probably usual part:
Hello Im new here

Unusual part:
Ive started to think about creating new graphics for classic new amiga game.
This is very early project, i was thinking that maby some profesionalist could look on it and teach me how to pixel graphics for it properly. I just started to use as less colours as it possible. Maby someone have good idea how to improve it. Of course the game would be very ascetic, just few colours, 320x240 resolution, i dont realy know if there will be paralax support.
i was watching old amiga game for reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFtf8FSkRGs

After that ive made somthing like that:


I was trying to make some graphics for some amiga games earlier, like Archmage or Diver(aka Tereasure chest). Some people said that graphics for those games was quite acceptable, but it makes me such long time to invent the way how to draw those graphics and prepare them. Thats why im looking for people who could help how to prepare new graphics properly from the begining.
Thanks for any help post.

[pgil]

Looks like imageshack ruined your mockup 

try imgur or photobucket.  They don't mess with your images after you upload them.

[Koyot1222]

<a href="http://imgur.com/YkHPp" title="Hosted by imgur.com">http://imgur.com/YkHPp.png[/url]
Direct link: http://i.imgur.com/YkHPp.png

maby this would be bether

[Joe]

One more step, put it in between image tags and it shows up like this



But of the piece itself, first thing that stands out to me is that the sidewalk has two points of perspective, one from the left and one from the right.  But in this perspective you've chosen, the lines should all be parallel.  Oh, and another thing.  You re-sized your image to 2x before you uploaded it so we could see better, but you don't have to.  This forum has a zoom function where you click to zoom in, ctrl+click to zoom out.  Here's a small edit where I also suggested some cracks in the sidewalk:

[Koyot1222]

wow, now its looks a lot better. Thankyou, ill try to fix it, this is very good idea

[Decroded]

Mate, please can you edit your original post (press the button at top right with "a][") and put the correct image in there instead of that compressed one you have.
Also, please don't scale up the image with bigger pixels, in this forum you can click/shit-click on the picture and it scales it up and down so please just post it at 1:1 pixels.

[Koyot1222]

Ive made some more changes:


Littlebit more futuristic, i found also more interesting palette to use.

[EyeCraft]

Oh nice, I like the direction you moved in.

I started this edit the other day before realising you wanted to work with a really restricted palette:



Regardless, the concepts I applied I feel are still very relevant. They are:

- Priority. Sprites should take visual priority over backgrounds. Lowering the contrast and colour dynamic of your backgrounds and increasing them in your sprites helps this.
- Interest. Your player will be looking at the player sprite a lot, so it should be interesting to look at. Rounding out the form with stronger lighting, adding interesting colours and just boosting detail in general are all positive things for a sprite.

If you want to translate these concepts over to an extremely limitted palette, you'll have to make a few sacrifices, most likely to detail. But it's better to have a lower detail, but colourful sprite, and lower detail but correctly-prioritised background than it is to not have those things but have lots of detail across all elements.

What I mean is, have nice colourful colours in the palette JUST for sprites, and then lower-key ones for backgrounds that may also find some roles in the sprites. This will mean you have less total colours available for the background (resulting in less tools to render detail with), but you will have much more functional graphics.

I hope that makes sense... 

[Koyot1222]

Wow, im so amazed by your vision of player sprite  Thankyou, ill paste it into my work and ill try to use your advices about painting background.



I found also some interesting tutorial about pixelart basics. Ill study them and ill try to redrawn all sprites also useing your advices.

[Decroded]

Your background is looking good Im interested now to see where its going.
I agree that eyecrafts's sprite looks fantastic but u r missing the point by just pasting it into ur artwork, rather u should look at what he did did try to work out how he did it so u can learn to do it urself.
Surely that is more rewarding.

Or r u also looking for people to donate artwork?

So u r not trying to stick to amiga specs are you? Just something new that carries the feel of the retro games?

[Koyot1222]

(...) but u r missing the point by just pasting it into ur artwork, rather u should look at what he did did try to work out how he did it so u can learn to do it urself.(..)

Dont worry, im also trying to figure it out how it was created Ive just pasted it and now im trying to make some other parts of the graphics as good or similar as player sprite was created

Or r u also looking for people to donate artwork?

No, i dont want to steal somones ideas.

So u r not trying to stick to amiga specs are you? Just something new that carries the feel of the retro games?

Ill, but as i wrote earlier, first i wanted to learn how to make pixel properly. Probably game in the future could use 32-64 colours, and it could be run on classic hardware and uae also.
Our latest "production" called treasure chest will be available for free soon It uses 32 colours and it can be run on even amiga 600 without any accelerator, or any amiga upgraded by graphics card.

As you can see, ive spent hours of drawing but latest view doesnt satisfy me. Im very glad that someone said how to get to the problem from the begining
Ive started from nothing, early concept:

Right now thers still plenty work to do. Thats i was started to think that good idea will be to chose another way of redrawing the old graphics.

This was the first amiga game i was working about:

As you can see there was nothing done properly from the begining But the concept wasnt so bad after all.

[Koyot1222]

i was trying to add some more space.

[Chris2balls]

i like your archmade and treasure chest work!

those white pillars in your current mock-up are really bothering me. they're really distracting and i have the impression they're flattening the scene.

anyway, looking forward to more!

[pistachio]

A suggestion.

I'd like to see some more cracks running throughout the pillars overall. Right now some surfaces seem shiny, unbroken, and good as new, but a foot below have a huge chunk of destruction burrowed halfway through them. Surely it would be more evenly distributed somehow (or have a larger radius)?

Then I'd like to see lighter outlines inside the soldier, leaving darker ones reserved for shadows or the outer outlines, and perhaps larger pixel clusters to further improve readability. See EyeCraft's sprite edit. The cluster of pixels on the soldier's armored lower torso is larger, and there's a larger blob of flat color on the pants. Then the values on the helmet may be too bright, and comes off as either yellow-green (rather than green) or just really, really shiny.

By the way, you used some sort of filter to get those background planes didn't you? They're very jaggy but I suspect this will be fixed and can't wait to see what it'll look like polished up some more. Not to discourage you from working on the foreground elements, of course.

[Koyot1222]

A suggestion. (..)

Very interesting ill try to consider that
Graphics update

Another update

Feel free to coment.

[crab2selout.png]

I think the latest is a bit of a step backwards. You're losing the clean, sharp edged look taht made your original attempts so attractive. The dithering is flattening everything in the image because of how you're throwing the shadow into the highlighted areas with the dither pattern. If you look at things in real life, you'll see there is a noticable difference in the values found in a highlight and shadow. You might take a look at Henk Neiborg's Contra 4 contributions. He handles the destroyed cities really well and you might get some ideas out of it. I find it interesting how he chooses to focus on showing the destruction in specific spots. I think the contrast of the destoryed against the mostly surviving contruction is what really sells the effect.

I think you're losing the form of the helmet with all those speculars. You might be trying for dither, but it's really just obscuring the shape of the helmet

Aside from those, I really like the proportions of the characters. Very appealing and the mockup has a playful, dynamic quality.. Looking forward to your next update

[Mathias]

True crab2selout, but I also found the previous versions a little visually austere. The new gritty look is a good idea, but perhaps overstated. Everything is rather "noisy" now.

[pistachio]

True crab2selout, but I also found the previous versions a little visually austere. The new gritty look is a good idea, but perhaps overstated. Everything is rather "noisy" now.

True. Frankly, I didn't mean that much of a radius, just, perhaps, a centimeter (not in actual scale, as it appears on the screen) more. And I didn't mean holes all over the place, more like cracks such as those you used to have in the concrete in the earlier version (but perhaps slightly less pronounced as it gets further away from the wreckage):



Right now everything is just bullet holes. Or maybe overdone stylistic dithering. Just saying, they all look like bullet holes. If you're not faint-hearted, or very emotional, consider looking at real destruction for reference.

Also, the flag on the right is off perspective-wise, and pops out too much. Unless it's, say, important to the storyline somehow--maybe it's the flag of an allignment or government you're against--I'd suggest letting it reside in the cool color scheme you already have going on.

Edit? Probably.

[Decroded]

Mate I tHink this is coming along great and I'm really interested to see how it goes.
I agree with all the recent comments.
You need to recede the closest background a little more and bring out the foreground that the player is actually on as that is more important and should be clearly visible to the player at the edge of the view as watching for enemies and incoming bullets is more important.
hues, brightness and contrasts are the most obvious that well help here but also as others said, limitthe noise and "fine detail" of the background so it is not competing for attention with the sprites.

[Candy Man Criminal]

i was trying to add some more space.

i think you should start back at this one and add a much smaller amount of grit
some cracks, bullet holes, general dirt and weathering

right now your scenery is screaming while it should just be a background chatter

[Koyot1222]

probably the best idea for me now will be remake all of sprites. Good thing ist that you gave me good idea how to fix it

[pistachio]

Remake? IMO they're fine, just need some reworking, more like it. But ah well, whatever you want to do.

[Koyot1222]

oh, dont worry in my home we use to said "there is too many mashrooms in the soup", sometimes two or three steps backward could make much more good than one forward Im very glad that so early project has met so nice welcome. As i wrote, im very fresh and my abilities are very poor becouse i have not to much experience Im very glad that so many person gave me very constructive and usable advices.  

[Decroded]

oh, dont worry in my home we use to said "there is too many mashrooms in the soup", sometimes two or three steps backward could make much more good than one forward Im very glad that so early project has met so nice welcome. As i wrote, im very fresh and my abilities are very poor becouse i have not to much experience Im very glad that so many person gave me very constructive and usable advices.  

If you did all those Archmage sprites and tiles, I would not consider you "very poor".
Some really nice ones in there...

[Koyot1222]

Few steps backward

[Helm]

Koyot, are you sure about all that single pixel noise shading? I don't see how it's helping anything. What are you trying to achieve with it?

[Koyot1222]

theyre suppose to be looking like rubish in the middle of third plan. When whole picture was colored only by one colour i was thinking that this is looking too flat, thats why ive decided to make it more noisy, more rubbish. Maby you have diferent idea, ill be very glad to listen For now im trying to make less noisy secound and first plan. (sorry for english, hope ive explained it clearly, ididnt wanted to offend you)


Maby this would be more interesting effect, ill try to work it little bit more time.

[ptoing]

I agree with Helm here. The dither stuff everywhere denotes exactly nothing as far as texture goes. Neither in the fore- nor the background. Edit coming up.

[Koyot1222]

(...)Edit coming up.

Thankyou if it wont be a big trouble. Illbe waiting

[ptoing]

Here I made 2 small and a bit sloppy edits to show what I think would be a good direction as far as detail goes.



I think the strong planes are very nice, you do not need to have detail everywhere, especially not nondescript detail.
Add stuff like breaks and such and make sure the moving units read well infront of them.
If you do colour tints try and have them make sense. That green you have on the exposed concrete does not look nice imo.

For the background trash kinda stuff I would do 2 or 3 colours, all very dark and subtle and then do some general junk and some detailed bits and bobs sticking out here and there.

I have to say I like tho what you have so far, just not the texture on the latest stuff.

[Koyot1222]

Wow, so simple so amazing Thankyou, ill go this way

Update:

I was tryed to do something similar... Hope it would be enough for a background.


I was tryed to fix the columns problem as good as reference... but i wouldnt able to this as good as reference was. I slept over it and painted it as good as i was able to..

[Koyot1222]

Very early concept of changeing direction. Few steps back...

[Decroded]

I love the new streat texture and pavement, especially where the concrete slabs are all messed up.