[WIP] Partisan Tactics Battles : Animations, woah

[Sqorgar]

Sqorgar: You seriously need to cut back on your assy way of commenting.

Yes, I know. That's why I removed that post.  I only reposted it because he very obviously resented me removing it.

Also he never said that the colourscheme is final, it's one that can be changed.

I was more bothered by his priorities, I guess you could say. It only came out as an obsession with color schemes because I didn't want to commit to a full scale discussion about it. Oh well...

You are extremely condescending and at the samy time very paranoid, taking everything as a personal attack.

I thought this was a particularly funny statement. See if you can spot the hypocrisy!

Maybe you should go breathe some fresh air more often. In any case if you keep posting like you did up until now your stay on this forum wont be a permanent one. And don't reply to this in this thread, if you have problems with it pm me.

I'm going to do it here for two reasons. The first is that you aren't the only person who is going to respond to my post, and I wanted to publicly underscore the fact that I deleted the post in the first place, only to post again by reluctance. I will take full responsibility for the content of that post, but I won't be tar and feathered on behalf of my judgement in posting it.

The second is to save you a little time and excuse myself from the forum on my own terms. I don't really like being threatened all that much, and the line I crossed is one I would gladly cross again. My critique was harsh indeed, but it was a critique none the less. It has value, regardless of how hard it is to hear.  If anybody here wants a similar critique on their work, they'll have to ask for it through PM. I'll not volunteer one in the future.

[Feron]

I think ptoing wanted you to pm so you wouldnt derail this thread even more.  All i've seen from your posts are trouble. 

Adarias - about the "create your own NPC" are you going to create the sprites or, if we are good enough and match your style, could we create them?  I also think the Link sprite i think snake made at the top would be a cool thing to add in, he sorta fits the era and would be a cool reference to some of the legendary games.

[Meta|Fox]

I also think the Link sprite i think snake made at the top would be a cool thing to add in, he sorta fits the era and would be a cool reference to some of the legendary games.

Only if they want to be sued I'm afraid.

*working on NPC *

[Feron]

Only if they want to be sued I'm afraid.

Sued for having a character in green with a fairy?  I doubt they'd find a lawyer to back their case of sprite in green, unless nintendo own the right to green clothes?
  Obviously you don't have to say its link, but most gamers would recognise it.

[ndchristie]

Adarias - about the "create your own NPC" are you going to create the sprites or, if we are good enough and match your style, could we create them?

i know that most of the people here are very talented, much better than i am in many cases, so feel free to pixel a character instead of showing a drawing, but understand 2 things.  First - every character that is battle-ready has 120+ frames of animation, so unless you are feeling very industrious, Im going to be doing the lion's share of the pixelling, anyway.  Second, the sprites as they are now are still WIP and constantly changing, so what you pixel now might be irrelevant tomorrow. see the small update at the end of this post..
 

I also think the Link sprite i think snake made at the top would be a cool thing to add in, he sorta fits the era and would be a cool reference to some of the legendary games.

Being that the game is to be 100% free and it is easy to not contain direct references to names etc, i think it would be a fine easteregg if snake should like to have it in

i cant wait to see what you guys might be cooking up, theres so much creativity on this board

----------------------------------------------

UPDATE:
Ive been doing experiemnts with the outlines/inside lines of the characters, and so far i like the results.  here is an animated gif, and i think you can see which is the newer:



I also have been experimenting with the tiles, and am equally pleased:



both the tiles and the characters still have a long way to go, but i am happy thusfar with the progress.  Certain comments have not been addressed in this animation, but dont worry, i am listening.

The hair is green so that the shades are easier to identify when Fil puts in his recoloring system.  the hair of the characters in the earlier images is recolored much the way it will be in the game.  the 3 shades of Red and 3 of Blue also are setup to be changed, and the 2 shades of the skin.  this is so that we do not have to hand-recolor every single piece an incredible number of times to attain the level of variation we desire

i believe i mentioned earlier that i was working on tall grass, and you can see some of it in the first picture, but it is also a walkable tile that the player can move between, and it will be animated.  here is a still shot of characters standing in the tall grass:



Thanks a lot to ptoing for helping out, i am currently using a system where each grass tuft is a single object on each tile, and i think that this is fine for what i am trying to accomplish with tall grass, but what do others think?  Ptoing i know wants me to use the house of cards method, with a piece of the object in front of the character and another piece behind, but this would require some real alterations to the coding thusfar to allow for this, so unless people really do not like this look, i dont think we will pursue that as a course of action yet.

please keep the C+C coming!  Thanks everybody for the help!

[big brother]

It's looking great! The outlines and the new tiles contrast nicely! When you're satisfied with the sprite style, let me know, and I'll make an NPC.

[Feron]

The new tiles are awesome!!  the changes to the sprites also enhance there beauty.

I think maybe a few more oldschool game sprite eastereggs would be a cool thing to include, obviously nothing that will stick out too much like megaman or sonic LOL.

Anways I'll try and create a tophat character soon, but im pretty busy recently.

[AdamAtomic]

VAST improvement adarias, very nice stuff, eager to see how the grass turns out!

[fil_razorback]

Time for a town & shops mockup !

Before I show you anything, I want you to know that :
-The sword is a placeholder. Adarias has not made icons yet
-The map is a placeholder. We'll show the town, not a seaside thing ^^
-Some things are not pixel art



Browsing the town, from building to building :


Entering a shop :


Buying :



C+C about the interface is welcome

[Sqorgar]

Ive been doing experiemnts with the outlines/inside lines of the characters, and so far i like the results.  here is an animated gif, and i think you can see which is the newer:

I also have been experimenting with the tiles, and am equally pleased:

I think the difference is like night and day. The soft internal lines with the hard outline really make a huge amount of difference. For the tiles, the shading literally brings out the definition. The one thing you should think about is making the ramp tiles noticably darker than the flat ground tiles, and make ramps one direction noticably darker than the other. The definition of the land is literally defined by the negative space. You aren't creating the three dimensional shape by what's there, but from the shadows themselves. As such, the ramps create sort of a muddled look - especially towards the bottom where you've got two ramps going two different directions on two different planes. It creates a visual confusion - but that may just be because you've got a ramp leading up into a mismatched ramp, so it doesn't flow together as well.  The ramps are not so much an equal part of the landscape, but a transition between layers.

It's like... have you ever seen a map for a roguelike game? Most of them represent it as simple gray squares with something like blue doors. But if you don't fill in the doors and just use a floor tile, the map looks over busy and kind of... spirally, if that makes any sense. If you fill in doors with wall tiles, the map feels too claustrophobic. But explicitly defining the doors as neither wall nor floor, you create this sort of node based map with connectivity. It compartmentalizes each room while still creating a distinct impression of how the floorplan flows. It's really weird to explain though.

And you might consider - I've never tried this out nor know if your engine can handle it, so this is just a brainstorm thing - adding a 1%-2% darkening to each layed (0% on the top layer, 2% on the next down, 4% on the one below that) creating a sort of darkening depth thing. That may look funny doing it dynamically, but I've created some (non-isometric) game art that did it manually - I knew the floor would always be exactly four tiles back, so I had a different set of tiles at a different darkness and scale to give the illusion of depth... plus, it paralax scrolled really nicely. The trick is, and I've gotten in trouble for saying this before, to make it almost invisible to the naked eye but explicit enough that the effect works.

i believe i mentioned earlier that i was working on tall grass, and you can see some of it in the first picture, but it is also a walkable tile that the player can move between, and it will be animated.  here is a still shot of characters standing in the tall grass:

I don't have time to comment on this right now, but I'd recommend making the grass shorter (about waist high) and use a harder outline where it overlaps the characters - not black, but a harder dark green, maybe.