AuthorTopic: [WIP] Partisan Tactics Battles : Animations, woah  (Read 241231 times)

Offline Sqorgar

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #90 on: September 29, 2006, 06:23:00 am
Actually, to be aesthetically pleasing while conveying information.
So, I guess, one out of two ain't bad?

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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.
I'm still waiting for a tight "group photo" to make sure. He said a lot of things, some will help, some won't. Only way to make sure.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #91 on: September 29, 2006, 10:37:02 am
I'm still waiting for a tight "group photo" to make sure. He said a lot of things, some will help, some won't. Only way to make sure.

persistant little bugger, arent you?  two days is not at all a long time for someone to go without reading a forum imo.  Also, if i were you, i would refrain from judging an entire game by an early set of generic soldier sprites which does not include monsters, constructs, or characters.  to say that this is without a unique thought is fairly insulting and entirely unfounded and unnecessary.



again, even without the hats, i find no difficultly telling you which job type they belong to, and the specific job class within that type comes just as readily

also about that picture, the tiles and objects are very much WIP atm, i was wary of showing them at this early stage, but i think if it is understood they are WIP and missing a huge number of tiles (like transitions etc) then its fine.  feel free to critique as such, in fact id encourage you all to because it helps me out a lot to know what the issues are sooner :P

big brother - everything you said makes sense, and im going to try and work towards that.  you are right, the symbols on the cloaks are more or less meaningless so far, only the shield on the sentinel (denoting his status as a defense soldier) and the faction badgers (the cog on the mechanist Crusader, and the chevron + circle on the alchemist gunner) actually are related to anything.  You hit on something big here too - my novice looks fancier than some of the later classes. im thinking i may en up taking the common clothes and putting the colors on them, and making the current novice into the Marksman, which currently IS too similar to the sniper class that it becomes.
Xion - you were right, taking off that highlight makes it look a lot better.  i also am tweeking the but a bit, since i realise that when i preview fullscreen (a little less than 3x zoom here) it is easy to see, but in the window mode it gets lumped together.
both of your comments will be addressed in the next update of the classes, which should come sometime this weekend or even possibly today

also, this illustrates a point i tried to make earlier, i missed a label but i think actually that you can figure out how it works pretty easily:

these groupings seem rediculously clear to me and the other designers, but if it is not so with you, please chime in, and be sure to explain what and how so!  i dont have any troubles, and i cant try and solve your problems without real examples

just one more song before i go:  i wish people wouldnt edit out posts, regardless of content!  i wanted to chew out i think it was werewolf (sorry if im wrong!) who did that earlier in the week.  If its too harsh, the worst i can do is try and make a counterpoint, no?  also, the fact that i agrue against something, or even if i consider it irrelevant to the task at hand, that doesnt make it any less valid as a statement and i could be damned well WRONG about something, especially if your opinion is echoed.  if you think something say it, even if you later think better of it.  as it is, im wondering what it was you said, because theres a good chance that it was useful.  i dont suppose you logged it?  if you really feel that it is too harsh or hot for a public forum, feel free to send it to me in a PM or Email.

anyhoo, thanks all for dropping by this thread, im very hopefull for this project and with luck it will turn out sometihng good :D
for more information on the project, please go to: http://partisan-tb.blogspot.com/
for those like me who can only barely understand french, go to http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://partisan-tb.blogspot.com/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://partisan-tb.blogspot.com/%26hl%3Den%26hs%3Df92%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official
A mistake is a mistake.
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Offline Helm

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #92 on: September 29, 2006, 10:55:15 am
Adarias: for the slope tiles, I suggest you make the east sides quite, quite darker than you have them now. They're the same lightness on top and on the side right now, and this creates such a visual problem of telling what is slope and what is ground and what is wall.


I have no problem telling what sprite is what class, personally, if I look at it for a few seconds, and I don't see why this game should read in miliseconds at all. It's a strategy game, you can take your time. You don't have to take your time every time you see it, just a little at the beginning. I don't see the problem there.

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #93 on: September 29, 2006, 01:52:02 pm
I agree with Helm, they are distinct enough. Different classes in FFT don't look that much different either among same races.  :y:
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Offline Sherman Gill

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #94 on: September 29, 2006, 05:58:03 pm
I like the way the classes look, and it's easy to tell them apart, especially with the hats.

Will the game be available in english, though?
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Offline Sqorgar

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #95 on: September 29, 2006, 06:21:52 pm
persistant little bugger, arent you?  two days is not at all a long time for someone to go without reading a forum imo.  Also, if i were you, i would refrain from judging an entire game by an early set of generic soldier sprites which does not include monsters, constructs, or characters.  to say that this is without a unique thought is fairly insulting and entirely unfounded and unnecessary.
Okay, let's start with the "bugger" thing. I'm not sure you know me well enough to comment on my predilection for sodomy.

Second, I comment on what I see, how I see it. If that changes later, by all means, I'll be the first to comment on it. However, after almost two dozen character sprites, of which "generic" is the perfect description... if a leopard hasn't changed his spots, it's fairly safe to assume he won't.

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again, even without the hats, i find no difficultly telling you which job type they belong to, and the specific job class within that type comes just as readily
What? You call that a group shot? By golly, they are all evenly spread apart!! Let's see some actual combat situations, where they are close enough to lick each other's balls! Heavy melee characters tend to spend a lot of time in melee range, don't you think? Luckily, I'm not on my laptop now, so I can present my own representation:



Can you honestly look at that picture and tell me what each unit is, and whether or not they are in an attacking position, being threatened by their neighbors, or within magic range of another particular unit? And I even fudged it, because I was lazy, and all the characters are pointing the same direction. You mix in different facing, and it will appear an even greater visual nightmare. Perhaps even worse is that this image all features characters on different levels, such that their entire bodies are clearly visible. If they were all on the same plane, they would obscure each other significantly... let's see how much:



THAT is unplayable.

Let's compare it to FFTA:

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ffta/screens/ffta1001.jpg
Do you see how the game uses a very obvious outline around the characters (it doesn't use hard black on the inside) to make them stand out? Such that when you've got a bunch of characters with different silhouettes, it's pronounced. The individual units each have unique color schemes as well to further separate them out in a group.

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ffta/screens/ffta1046.jpg
Here you can see that each character has three colors - head, torso, legs. These are not dull, muted colors. They are vibrant and significant, and there's infrequent or no mixing of warm and cool colors. Each character has a unique scheme - and these aren't even characters that show up later in the game.

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ffta/screens/ffta_10.jpg
Here you do see warm and cool colors mixing, but the reason that is happening is to emphasize the solid color hats. If these characters were wearing blue capes (or the same shades of orange, purple, and blue) , then the hat would become a useless blob. The artist knew exactly where the characters would stand in relation to each other, and made a special effort to color them in such a way that, if their hats were important, that the hats were the first thing you see and that there was no way for the hats to be confused, obscured, or otherwise invisible at a glance.

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also about that picture, the tiles and objects are very much WIP atm, i was wary of showing them at this early stage, but i think if it is understood they are WIP and missing a huge number of tiles (like transitions etc) then its fine.  feel free to critique as such, in fact id encourage you all to because it helps me out a lot to know what the issues are sooner :P



You aren't missing tiles. You are missing depth. Look at this picture. Can you actually tell me what is going on here, even having drawn the tiles? You've got walls blending into floors. That, what I assume is a ramp, thing in the middle is completely indistinguishable from it's own side wall and the connecting side wall - and doesn't really connect to the land tile at the top either. Also, the ramp would not be completely obscured by that tiny little half wall, so it shouldn't be shaded completely itself.

You really need to create some definition here. You can do this by strengthing your shading colors, using better judgement on what to shade, or simply use different colors altogether for ramps so there is no change for them to disappear from sight.

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just one more song before i go:  i wish people wouldnt edit out posts, regardless of content!  i wanted to chew out i think it was werewolf (sorry if im wrong!) who did that earlier in the week.  If its too harsh, the worst i can do is try and make a counterpoint, no?  also, the fact that i agrue against something, or even if i consider it irrelevant to the task at hand, that doesnt make it any less valid as a statement and i could be damned well WRONG about something, especially if your opinion is echoed.  if you think something say it, even if you later think better of it.  as it is, im wondering what it was you said, because theres a good chance that it was useful.  i dont suppose you logged it?  if you really feel that it is too harsh or hot for a public forum, feel free to send it to me in a PM or Email.
You have to understand that when I'm brutally honest, the emphasis is on brutal - especially this time.  I think there comes a time when an artist hits a place where they are strong enough to hear certain things unfiltered. I made a judgement call and decided that you wouldn't take it particularly well. I don't mean to be like that, and lord knows I've made a couple enemies giving critiques. I just don't know any other way to do it.

edit: changed to use links instead of hotlinking FFTA images. Do the copy and paste thing.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2006, 08:05:02 pm by Sqorgar »

Offline AdamAtomic

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #96 on: September 29, 2006, 06:30:49 pm
Sqorgar: I am pretty sure that Adarias was not implying that you practice sodomy.  How you made that cognitive leap, I will never know.  At least I hope I will never know.

All: Unless this game plays RADICALLY different from other tactics/strategy titles, this entire argument is pointless.  As character's turns come up, a dialog box of some type is always displayed, showing information for that character that is sometimes not otherwise readily available - like hit points, magic points, charge time, etc etc.  These boxes ALWAYS include the player class or job in large easy to read letters.  These games aren't like RTS games, where you have to be able to pick out all your units instantly and on a time-based scale.  The characters could all be big gray boxes, and it would have no affect on the core gameplay.

Adarias: Now, that said, I do think that the bandanna/small-hat-wearing classes are the hardest to differentiate.  The larger hats and helmets are VERY easy to read, but there are a few characters from the light support classes all around the circle that do run together a bit for me, speaking as someone who has followed this thread SOME but certainly not studied the classes.  To be fair, the idle animations MAY clear up a lot of that confusion, because they will convey even more information about the player's costume.  But as they stand, I think the smaller, less unique headwear is hard to identify.  SO, if this IS a major concern or interest despite its lack of affect on the gameplay, I think the bandanna-type characters could probably use a little love!

Offline Darien

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #97 on: September 29, 2006, 06:36:32 pm
Sq:  Although Adarias may have skewed his example in his favor, you've only skewed your examples in yours.  Adarias already said that there would only be about 6 units on the map (besides constructs) on each team at one time.  In yours there is 16 or more all colored to be on one team.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #98 on: September 29, 2006, 08:10:17 pm
Sqorgar - bugger, at least in the sense i know it, does not connote homosexuality, i had no idea there was even the vaguest of connections.  furthermore i did not mean it in any sort of derrogatory manner, so i appologize for offense it caused.
also, i wasnt aware of skewing the shot in my favor, it was my understanding that you asked for 9 men on an isometric map, and i gave you a shot with 10 crammed into a rediculously small map, though now i do realise that what you wanted was something a bit more specific from that which you asked for.  you also, as darien has pointed out, have clearly skewd the shot in such a way that i think did your point more harm than good, by cramming in many more soldiers together than there ever would be in that tight an area, and none of them are characters or constructs.  as far as i can see, you havent really made a point with those images
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Can you honestly look at that picture and tell me what each unit is, and whether or not they are in an attacking position, being threatened by their neighbors, or within magic range of another particular unit?
yes...i can
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Heavy melee characters tend to spend a lot of time in melee range, don't you think?
and, apparently, so do riflemen?
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You have to understand that when I'm brutally honest, the emphasis is on brutal - especially this time.  I think there comes a time when an artist hits a place where they are strong enough to hear certain things unfiltered. I made a judgement call and decided that you wouldn't take it particularly well. I don't mean to be like that, and lord knows I've made a couple enemies giving critiques. I just don't know any other way to do it.
Helm I think puts it best when he says, "I am not your little sister."

Helm - thats an excellent suggestion and one i think will follow, i was striving for flow and organic shapes, but im well aware that i havent taken readability into account yet, and it reads badly atm.  My old tiles showed space much better, and i plan to draw upon what i did with them as well as people's suggestions.  Its a very early mockup to be sure :P

Sherman - yes, the game so far as i know is going to be made in english and french, and possibly (though not planned at the moment) in other languages as well.

Adam - yes, the smaller hats have thusfar given me the most trouble creatively.

If anybody has ideas for different hats or different cape badges, please voice them.  Pixelopolis/Pixelation is already going into the "special thanks" portion for all of the suggestions ive gotten :D
A mistake is a mistake.
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Offline Feron

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Re: [WIP] Fantasy Tactics : Updated 9/25!

Reply #99 on: September 29, 2006, 09:32:19 pm
How about a warlock/mage?  It may be a bit more Warcraft than FFT, but it will be fun to create and adds more variance.

About hats - I say make a man in a top-hat, for all us british people.

Serisouly these are damn sexy, I wish i could sprite like this  >:(