[wip] Bilou's school : Pendats goes marchin' in [c+c]

[PypeBros]

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Iterated. Hope it's getting better. (speed modification happened out of control >_<)

(what? Google is restructuring the gif89 I submit in blogger into gif87 without the transparency or delay control 0_0 ?)

[PypeBros]

Hello, all. I'd like to address thanks to all of you who have helped with the school zone revamp. A playable level is now ready to celebrate the 20 years of our blue-ball hero Bilou.



I'm still open to C+C on what I have so far... I realised last week that I have room to roughly double my tileset, so I guess there will be more activity on the graphics in the incoming weeks.

[PypeBros]

Hi again.


In my last level, I've got a place which should read as "a student's desk", the kind where you had some storage room under the desk which you could be tempted to use to hide things from your professors. I'm trying to give it a somewhat more "intimate" look than the rest of the level but it doesn't really work to my eyes. I'm trying some wooden texture to replace the current "plain color" scheme, but most of the items I think of to fill the gaps would rather be front-plane (e.g. they get too much attention).
Any opinion so far ?

(PS: the plain-white triangle is a level-editor artefact)

edit:


throwing some ideas... replacing vertical supports by twisted wooden structure (~15 blocks needed)
a paper note laying on the desk (~12 blocks)
texture (min 6 blocks)
a folder in the back (10 blocks for the corners)
I should have enough VRAM for all this ... and possibly some spare tiles to revamp the other bonus room.

[PypeBros]

Some more work done. Does it still look like a student's desk in an owl-school ?

[Iviren-lexibel]

I kinda felt like the original felt more like the kind of desk you were going for, any of those desks I've ever seen personally have always been complete metal under the wooden top. I do think making it more decorative is nice, but trying to make it feel like it was made of a different material below the top could help to portray it better.
It's decently readable as a desk as long as you have the knowledge of the area being in a classroom before hand, I think designing the stage in a way that harkens back to the environment they would be in would help make it clear what it is.
For example lining up many of these areas like this next to each other in the level, to get the feeling of how many desks are lined up in rows in a classroom.

Unrelated to the desk itself but, in this shot it feels like the background is competing for attention from anything in the foreground. The scene is readable and such but it feels a bit hard to focus on the stuff in the foreground. Perhaps lowering contrast/detail of the background a bit could help with this, although it's mainly the decorative patterns at the bottom that are so distracting.

[PypeBros]

color update trying to address the "distracting/wallpaper" effect within the desk.

it's mainly the decorative patterns at the bottom that are so distracting.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I will see what are my options to address that.

[Beetleking22]

Wallpaper looks nice! I would add little bit contrast..

[PypeBros]

Perhaps lowering contrast/detail of the background a bit could help with this, (...)

I would add little bit contrast..

My options are unfortunately quite limited here.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes#15-bit_RGB)  I'm already using almost neighbour colours of the NDS palette (5-bit RGB). There's just one or two bits difference between the over-contrasted image (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1kC0lKwPe6E/Uod0In9YrGI/AAAAAAAAFC4/4OWx-KbQppY/s1600/B.png) and the under-contrasted one. I'm open to suggestions if someone find colours I have missed, but to be honest, I haven't found anything better.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

I think the one with more contrast looks fine.

[PypeBros]

Removed some noise on the background pattern and started detailing the "claws/question-mark" thing at the top of the "pillar" for the desk. Not so easy to avoid pillow shading 0_o.