[WIP] Partisan Tactics Battles : Animations, woah

[ndchristie]

sqorgar, i can see where you are coming from, and the identification issue is real.  the hats, not shown here on the away-facers, will hopefully help a lot.  Im most likely going to tweek any number of things before the project is done, too.


but there are several things that you havent rally taken into acount. 

Firstly, the uniforms must all be the same color in one army, because they are professional soldiers fighting under the name of the person whos personal heradry they are boasting, in this case red and blue.  this is mostly because when i play a tactics game, my first question is not "is this guy a wizard?"  but rather, "is this guy mine, his, his, his, or just in a very bad pot?"  the men fighting with you will all wear your colors, but the men fighting under an npc will wear his colors.  rag-tag groups, such as will occasionally be encountered, will have randomly generated colors for each mans outfit, making them appear as though they are not in uniform(which in that case is proper).  to add to the individuality, every man in the game has a randomly generated combination of skin and hair colors (not pictured in the example) as well as hair types, making it very easy to find a familiar individual on the field

Secondly, several classes look the same because they are embellishments upon the preceding class, and anyone who is playing the game will know exactly what job types build into which. There are, in reality, 8 job types, with 4 lower levels, 8 regular levels, and 8(16) master levels with each pair being roughly equal in strenth and duty (though with slightly differing skill sets based on their creed).  For example, the warrior, knight, paladin, and crusader are all hard-hitting straight-forward attackers, and this is rather easy to see in the set i think, you look for guys who have armor and who may also have shields.  At the very least, the player will know that when they have a warrior, a guy that looks an awful lot like their warrior will most likely be or act a lot like their warrior.  Even at the most basic level, you will still be able to guess, based on costume, which person is going to hit, which is going to shoot, and which are going to be mainly support, and if you cannot do this, please let me know.  Even in the case that a person cannot tell at all what someone is supposed to do, they can always hover over the character and the information will tell them.

third, you say put nine men out?  at least for this game, nine men is a crazy number for one team.  most teams will have a leader, between 2 and 5 soldiers, and 0-5 Constructs (which are robots for the mechanists, demons for the alchemists).  i also tried what you said, with far too many soldiers, and i could instantly identify them even from behind (when they all had hats on), and even though im the artist and have looked at them for a while, i doubt the player would have any trouble either once they have played the game for enough hours to have different job types.

anyhoo, i your taking the time, but much of what you said simply doesnt apply to this project so far as i can see.  perhaps i am wrong in thinking this?

also, does anybody have any crits about the pixelart itself, aside from the design?

[Xion]

When they face away...the part of their head to the extremity which they are facing looks like
a) a giant nose
b) a wierdly lit ear
c) or a really pointy cheek.

Since I can already see they have ears just behind that spot, I can rule that out, and I'm sure you weren't going for that to be a nose, because even from the front they lack noses. So it's a cheek. But pointy. I think it may be due to the fact that the outmost pixel is a hilight, making it stand out from the rest of the head even more.

Also from behind, the topmost, second from the left has a wierd butt. That hilight makes it look like a single, central cheek. 

[Sqorgar]

Firstly, the uniforms must all be the same color in one army, because they are professional soldiers fighting under the name of the person whos personal heradry they are boasting, in this case red and blue.  this is mostly because when i play a tactics game, my first question is not "is this guy a wizard?"  but rather, "is this guy mine, his, his, his, or just in a very bad pot?"  the men fighting with you will all wear your colors, but the men fighting under an npc will wear his colors.  rag-tag groups, such as will occasionally be encountered, will have randomly generated colors for each mans outfit, making them appear as though they are not in uniform(which in that case is proper).  to add to the individuality, every man in the game has a randomly generated combination of skin and hair colors (not pictured in the example) as well as hair types, making it very easy to find a familiar individual on the field

Hmm.... I don't think that's going to work particularly well in practice. I don't think I've seen a series of sprites that have been this hard to tell apart, and given their size and muted colors, it's going to be a very confusing battlefield indeed.

Thinking through all the different tactical games I've played (which is all of them), color and shape are by far the most important determining factors - the ones where the colors were all the same (Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Super Robot Taisen) all had very unique and discernable shapes to make up for it - they were also overhead, tile based games where units don't overlap. Your guys are all built on the same base, and if you blacked them in, their outlines would be almost identical in most cases. You just don't have the variance for shape alone to matter. Think Chess. White versus Black, but the individual units have extremely different silhouettes.

third, you say put nine men out?  at least for this game, nine men is a crazy number for one team.  most teams will have a leader, between 2 and 5 soldiers, and 0-5 Constructs (which are robots for the mechanists, demons for the alchemists).  i also tried what you said, with far too many soldiers, and i could instantly identify them even from behind (when they all had hats on), and even though im the artist and have looked at them for a while, i doubt the player would have any trouble either once they have played the game for enough hours to have different job types.

Why don't you post it? I've certainly had experiences in the past where my pixel perfect knowledge of my own art was not quite shared by the average person.

anyhoo, i your taking the time, but much of what you said simply doesnt apply to this project so far as i can see.

That's entirely fair, and I'm by no means trying to push you around or anything. I do have some experience in this area, and thought I'd point out a problem I've had to correct at great cost in the past. By all means continue in the manner you see best, and I do hope you'll continue posting follow ups

[Larwick]

Personally i don't think they are too hard to differentiate from each other. The teams should be very easy to tell apart, and in a strategy game, you have the time to see who's what. In fire emblem i'll even click R to find out more about the characters when i highlight them, even if i do know who it is. It takes no less than 2 seconds.

I'm only saying this because Sqorgar is making a very strong argument against the current setup and style, of which i think is fine and needent have a significant change. There'll always be some who will find it hard to see a clear difference between each character (at first glance), but i think with these games, there's tonnes of time to learn what each look like closely as you continue through the game - and soon it would become second nature. Perhaps.

I really like this so far Adarias. I think Xion put up some good points in that the eye on the back of the character looks more like a crevace in the face (especially because of the neutral grey background).

Blah blah blah hope that made sense.

~

[Sqorgar]

Personally i don't think they are too hard to differentiate from each other. The teams should be very easy to tell apart, and in a strategy game, you have the time to see who's what. In fire emblem i'll even click R to find out more about the characters when i highlight them, even if i do know who it is. It takes no less than 2 seconds.

Game graphics have one function, and that is to convery information. It is not uncommon for game graphics to fail spectacularly, like having an enemy that blends in with a background or invisible walls. When games try to put style over function, you end up with lots of little annoyances. Those annoyances add up. For instance, if it takes you a full two seconds to locate which of your units is a thief - how many times are you going to do that in a game? How many times per level? How many times per turn? Trust me, you'll be checking the same units over and over again just to recognize them to the point where you either become totally frustrated and quit, or you completely rely on this secondary system for information that you might as well not even have graphics.

You have to trust me on this one. This isn't something you can just get out of with excuses. This stuff has teeth and it will bite you on the ass and tear away a chunk of meat the size of a bowling ball.

I'm only saying this because Sqorgar is making a very strong argument against the current setup and style, of which i think is fine and needent have a significant change.

This isn't a style issue at all. It's a character design and function issue. It doesn't matter how technically capable you are, because you are aiming at something beyond mere brush strokes. You are aiming for recognizability and for units that you can emote with. From a functional level, these guys are too similar looking to tell apart, even at 3x and higher resolution. At a character design level, they look like popsicle sticks with different jackets on. Both of these things together are going to make for a particularly pretty, but completely devoid of personality game. It's going to look like a generic me-too game without a unique thought in its head. I don't know. Maybe that's exactly what it won't be, but nobody is ever going to bother to check it out except for the people he personally asks because it's going to be frustrating as all hell to play, and has all the personality of a made for tv movie. If you want to make a game that people will play and characters people will connect to, it takes a special effort.

Now, I can't help with the personality thing. Well, I can. I have a lot of experience in that area as well. It's just that discussion would not be short and that's not what he asked for. But he posted a bunch of characters and my critique is that I couldn't tell them apart if you drew circles and arrows on the sheet - and believe me, I'm probably the best bet you have in that area given my video game and pixel art backgrounds. That's going to really fuck up the game big time, which is sad because they are technically quite proficiant creations and I can see the hard work that's been put into each and every one of them. It's just that some of that work was wasted or misspent, and the end result is technically great and nothing more.

[Larwick]

Okay, alrighty then. Just to note when i said 'setup and style' i just didn't have any better words to use. I think i got the point across though.

[Akira]

but nobody is ever going to bother to check it out except for the people he personally asks because it's going to be frustrating as all hell to play, and has all the personality of a made for tv movie. If you want to make a game that people will play and characters people will connect to, it takes a special effort.

That's a very large assumption you're making. Even if everyone can't tell the characters apart, this is a turn based stratgy where the player has the time to find out. And seriously, once around the map looking what characters your enemy has and you won't forget their positions or classes. I often find it hard to tell the difference between classes on final fantasy tactics but i'm still addicted to that. Characters don't need to connect with the player when you have large numbers. There are no main characters to build up a storyline or plot with. it's just make a good army that'll kill the other guys army.

[big brother]

Here's a way you could make them more recognizable without changing the shapes drastically (although that's still the best answer):

Make the details on the characters go simple to complex as their class becomes more advanced. For example, the basic low level grunt could have larger areas of plain color with fewer accessories (really exaggerate this -- remember, gameplay comes first) while the master level guy could have intricate accessories (feather cap, baldric, armor pieces, etc.). The player might not be able to distinguish the a unit's class from a distance, but she can tell whether it's a weak or strong unit.

As it is, I think you're going to have the most problems when a unit is facing NE/NW, because several of the units are differentiated by a non-intuitive design on the back of the cape. I realize the hats are not on those sprites yet, but I'm having trouble seeing the progression of hats. My gut reaction was that the stronger the unit was, the bigger and more elaborate the hat, but I'm not seeing that. The sizes seem to vary irrelevant of class or rank.

When I zoom in, the sprites are quite competently drawn, but your average player isn't going to understand that beyond the initial visual impact.

Regardless, great work so far. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.

[Sqorgar]

EDIT: I decided this post was a little too brutally honest, and not in a good way.

[Xion]

Game graphics have one function, and that is to convery information.

Actually, to be aesthetically pleasing while conveying information.

And Adarias gave enough in-game reasons for them to be distinct and easily-recognisable. Looking at the fronts, the hats make them easily distinguashable, and I would assume it would be so with the back views as well.