AuthorTopic: GR#069 - Minefields Project - Scenery, Menu  (Read 15757 times)

Offline ceddo

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Re: Junkyard/City ruins scene (updated)

Reply #10 on: August 17, 2011, 09:54:15 pm
Well, sorry about the huge delay but I've been gone on holiday and back, and have been mainly working on enemy robot sprites. Seems like our game is heading more and more towards a shoot-em-up style! Here's what I've been working on:



I now consider the background and junk tiles finished, although I'm open to any final adjustments that would benefit! I also tweaked the armor of the ship, think it looks much better now.

@Pistachio: thanks for your cc, it helped a lot! The background is actually parallax compatible, and yeah I plan to revamp the gold armor upgrade (maybe ditch the gold altogether)
@Koyote: Wow, I'm honored! Your ship is great, it has character! I suggest fixing those jaggies though :)

Next priority is making these destructible rocks, but I've been having difficulty creating natural looking tiled rocks.



Here's a robot enemy that shoots red fireballs at you. :)
« Last Edit: August 17, 2011, 10:02:56 pm by ceddo »

Offline Batzy

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Re: Apocalypse Junkyard (UPDATE!)

Reply #11 on: August 17, 2011, 10:35:07 pm
Wuzaa! and here is a bomb for you to look at hehe...

1. Power up or what ever that "P-logo" is just don't look good
2. Same thing with the lifebar(hearts), also white outlines don't just fit the style i'd remove them : P
3. Bg only needs a bit more rendering with those white/red clouds :/ if you want to keep it pretty simple.
4. Rock tiles well you got that already in your remake list eh? hehe
5. Player ship, yea it is something you maybe don't want to stuck with but i'd trash it and make a new one with simpler design and definitely with umm... a fresh color like blue. Coloring is pretty much same with the enemies currently so yeah i'd add a heroic color into it!

I'll make an edit if you don't get it... rimmed well eh?  :)  but yeah that's pretty much all i have to give now

Offline ceddo

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Re: Apocalypse Junkyard (UPDATE!)

Reply #12 on: August 19, 2011, 12:39:38 am
Thanks for the critique Batlorder :) I agree with the P logo, I'll remake that - but I actually like the rest of the UI. I agree that having the player's ship as the same color as the enemies is quite misleading. The player actually begins with a dinky ship and can upgrade it with weapons, armor and paint jobs.

I tried making it blue, and as you can see it didn't work out so well. The windshield is driving me crazy, I just can't get it to look good. Something else I did today, which was a big priority in the project, was begin work on a custom bitmap font.

Offline EyeCraft

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Re: Apocalypse Junkyard (UPDATE!)

Reply #13 on: August 19, 2011, 01:13:37 am
Scrap the hazard line for the bars in the HUD. Hazard lines are ULTRA CONTRAST because they are designed to catch people's attention and they are absolutely dominating the priority hierarchy of the piece at the moment. Not something you really want for a HUD; if the player wants to check something there, they'll deliberately glance at it.

I agree about losing the white outlines, as well, for similar reasons.

The background is very patchy/blotchy, which kind of gives it the effect of noise. Perhaps try a more composed arrangement for the clouds.

The mix of cool and warm speculars on the sprites and tiles is disharmonious. I do like the priority gained on the sprites by the temperature contrast, though. One thing that could work is to not make the ground tiles so... specular-y. Shade them more according to planes, rather than edges and corners. This will make the warm light appear to be ambient, rather than direct, "sort of" explaining the temperature difference. Or you could match temperatures on the sprites and tiles, but hue shift them in opposite directions.

The floating stone blocks don't really fit at all, imo. The fact they differ so drastically in both theme and shading approach to the ground tiles is a prime reason for this. Also the fact that everything else in the scene has some physical explanation for its state (jets on the mines, junk in realistic piles) whereas the stone blocks are inexplicably floating. Oh I guess the missile pack pickup is floating too... I actually didn't even notice that was there until just then. Might want to increase it's priority a little by differentiating it's palette from the other elements (similar to Batlorder's suggestion on the player's ship).

Keep it up!  :)

Offline ceddo

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Re: Apocalypse Junkyard (UPDATE!)

Reply #14 on: August 19, 2011, 07:38:06 pm
Thanks for the great feedback as usual Eyecraft. I've scrapped the hazard lines but the health bar seems a little bare now. Maybe a little bubbling animation would remedy that.

However, I'm struggling so much with making modifications to the ship. I've ditched the warm ambient lighting and attempted to render the ship's lighting by planes rather than edges as Eyecraft suggested. But so far it's not giving results, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong - an edit would really help me out if someone wants to point me in the right direction. I have the impression my brain just isn't capable to picturing how the light would fall realistically, and this may be why I've been so dependent on speculars - to compensate for my weaknesses in simple plane shading. Any thoughts?



Don't worry if I haven't brought up other points you mentioned, I will take them all into account when reworking elements of the scene.

Offline ceddo

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Re: Apocalypse Junkyard (UPDATE!)

Reply #15 on: August 22, 2011, 02:31:57 pm
So today I just finished a mockup of the ship upgrade interface with which I'm quite happy. I still haven't reworked the ship as I said I promised I would, but since I'm on a deadline I'm working on /reworking things by priority rather than sequentially. Therefore, I'm going to rename this thread "Minefields Project" and it will contain all my progress on the game. Again, I really appreciate your comments and feedback, and although I may not implement them right away, I am definitely taking them all into account.

So here goes: the shop interface!


« Last Edit: August 22, 2011, 04:31:52 pm by ceddo »

Offline coffee

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Re: Minefields Project

Reply #16 on: August 22, 2011, 06:00:21 pm
I havn't commented on this thread before although i have kept track on the updates and I really enjoy looking at this. Very neat!
As of everything else the shopping i.f. looks wicked. like the coins a lot and the letterset matches it all very good.

I had a look at the Iphone screen aswell as a normal android mobile phone screen and I can see that it will be scrolling about whatever space is left out when you fly around as the background is bigger then the actual screen of the phone (Having an iphone myself) with the same size of the shopping interface as the background of the playing screen I take it you will be moving your finger about to look all over it, either that, or you will move your finger on the screen and it will switch between the shopping windows? CONFUSED! I might have just looked at this wrong and they will all actually be split up?  :-[

If I remember it right the normal size of a android/Iphone is 398x234

If im totally wrong, I am sorry!

Other then that, good luck!

EDIT:
Will you release it for Android?

Offline ceddo

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Re: Minefields Project

Reply #17 on: August 22, 2011, 07:50:16 pm
@Coffee: Thanks for the kind words! I'm also quite glad with how the font and interface turned out. Sorry for not clarifying, the window of in which you see the ship in the shopping menu will simply be an animated demonstration of the upgrade - no gameplay here. The interface shows up between levels so you can upgrade your ship. When you're actually playing the game, it's full screen :)

We don't have any plans to release it for Android yet as we're just focused on getting the iPhone version out for the moment.

Cheers!

Edit: one more update tonight, I'm working on the online level browser.

« Last Edit: August 22, 2011, 11:11:10 pm by ceddo »

Offline ceddo

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Re: Minefields Project

Reply #18 on: August 25, 2011, 10:27:55 pm
Update for the level selection interface... it's alright but I find it too busy, can't figure out how to simplify or make it sleeker.

Offline Mathias

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Re: Minefields Project

Reply #19 on: August 26, 2011, 05:39:36 am
A favorite quote - "Perfection in design is achieved not when there's nothing more to add but nothing left to take away."


The less a UI has in it the more usable it is. The more it has, the more capable it is but less usable - more time is required to take it all in and understand it. It's a trade-off. Strike up a balance.

I can see plenty of opportunity here to simplify (though I don't think it's overly busy as is) :

Get rid of unnecessary edges, borders, lines, color breaks, details. All these things force the eye to decipher them. Too much of this could be called noise - superfluous distraction, clouding the interface.


Application examples:

1) Change "--Sort by...--" to "Sorting"
2) Remove outlines around level thumbnails.
3) Reduce contrast of white text on black
4) Make all buttons grey instead of colorful, remove their outlines, reduce text's contrast

Let the content speak. Suppress the UI elements so that they're there but not screaming at you. Use color when it has meaning.