GR#129 - Labyrinth - RPG Projection Sprites and Tiles

[StarRaven]

An average college student is on spring break when his rich, eccentric, great uncle suddenly passes away. On a whim, he gets together a group of friends for a bit of looting the weekend before crazy Uncle Horace's mansion is to be sold. What could go wrong? It's not like the place is haunted and they'll get trapped there after nightfall and be slowly picked off by the demonic entities that have taken over the house or something.

...So anyway, here is some stuff I have pixelled for the project. Decided it would be fun to severely limit my palette (ho ho ho) so 16 colors, not including the grey background. I know the tiles are kind of bright for a haunted house, but I'm hoping to have some kind of shadow overlay that is cleared by light sources, so it wouldn't be super-bright everywhere. Hrm. Anyhoo....

A character (concept here), some enemies, my palette, some items, some tiles, the UI frame thing.

I'd be grateful for any critique! I'm so terrible at those interior tiles, especially. If anybody knows any games with interiors I could look at, that would be nice, too.

Thanks for looking!

[Facet]

I like ghost stories Lovely sprite and an interesting art nouveau frame; is that intended as a global UI? it's kind of big.

A mock-up of the tiles & sprites in action would help critique, if only so we know what kind of perspective and gameplay you're aiming for here. It could also give you a better idea of what elements you might need to populate a scene.

Regarding ref; Castlevania is a no-brainer, but why not go straight to the source and google yourself up some first-hand, bona fide abandoned houses for inspiration?
 

[Tourist]

I think you're channeling Scooby Doo a bit.  A group of teens, a spooky mansion, a mystery to solve.  There was a 2002 spin-off where Shaggy had a rich eccentric uncle who disappeared and named Shaggy as inheritor.  And the character design looks like half Velma (outfit) and half Daphne (hair).  If the 'demons' turn out to be old man Withers, who would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those kids, then you're definitely pulling from a single source too strongly.

I like the door quite a bit, and the overall look of the scenery so far.  I think the perspective is inconsistent, but maybe it won't be such a problem when an entire scene is assembled.  If you have the time, maybe throw together a small mockup to see if ti works.

Tourist

[StarRaven]

Facet:
Thanks! Yes, the frame is meant to be a global UI. I wanted to design it a little big; I was hoping to give a sort of cramped/claustrophobic feel as well as use it to limit the player's view somewhat. If it gets in the way too much, I may have to scale it back, but that's my plan for now, heh. :3

You're right! I forgot about a mockup. I'll get right on that.

It's haunted but it's not abandoned, so I'm having a little trouble with the atmosphere. I'm hoping some darkness will help. I Googled "mansion interior" and have been using the pictures I found for inspiration thus far. Thank you for the link!

Tourist:
Oh man! I didn't even think of Scooby Doo! The only thing that I was directly thinking of was Sweet Home. More boatloads of inspiration, for sure. If the story seems a little cliche, that's because I wanted it to be reminiscent of a campy horror movie, and Scooby Doo has a lot of the same tropes. Only, you know, less gore and death.

Just for that, I will have to have a character that insists that the monsters are just the groundskeeper in a costume. Until someone dies horribly.

Urrgh I'm pretty sure the perspective is inconsistent. I'm so awful at top-down perspectives. I'll keep working at it.


Mockup:

Incredibly boring so far. I'm not 100% sure how I'd like to do the lighting yet (not to mention that I haven't pixelled any light sources yet) so I left everything as-is. I'm thinking of adding a black shadow to some of the other stuff, to match the sprite.

[michelcote]

Adding dark tiles for the walls in corners that you can flip could help with the atmosphere. Also I think the tables in the corner are the only objects noticeably out of perspective. Your palette so far is wonderful, and the character is quite charming.

[StarRaven]

michelcote:
Thank you for the compliments. :3 I'll work on the tables. I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind when you said "dark tiles for the walls in the corners" but I think it helped me anyway, haha.

Added shadows and outlines on some stuff to match the sprite. Still working on some other stuff.


Some enemies. Most of them are just sort of... concept... things. I'll do some proper animations for them later, after I finish some characters. They look so much better on a dark background! Maybe I shouldn't have made them transparent. Hm.


And a little two-frame run animation. Still working on it. I want to make it a little faster but I don't have a program that will make .gifs (just the free version of GraphicsGale.)

[Wes]

hey man i LOVE the concept and the style. this project seems awesome. i like your bright colors too

what jumps out at me from your mockup is the ceiling—it's so harsh against the nice green walls and has a strange kind of distracting incompleteness to it. imo adding some kind of border to the tops of the walls will smooth it out and help solidify the walls and bring it together really nicely.

here's my suggestion:



kind of a lame quick edit but it gets the idea across.

as for your running animations—is there a reason you're only using two frames? i can imagine that sprite having a BEAUTIFUL run animation with 6 or even 4 frames.

also could you explain the HUD? i'm really not a big fan of it as it is but I would love to know more about your plans for its gameplay applications

good luck dude and keep us updated

[kriss]

i like the design and the color choice, the shadow ennemies are.. so beautiful 

I'm agree about the 2 frame animation.. it will be better with more frames.

I like HUD, but maybe it take too many place in the screen, as if we're looking looking the game through a tv ^^

[Sharm]

The table should have the same curve as the pillars and be oval not round.  That should fix a lot of the perspective.  The door looks like it's in the middle of rising from the ground because the bevels don't have a bottom.  Is that on purpose?

I've been using Microsoft Gif Animator to make my animations until I found out how easy it was to make them out of layered images in GIMP.  Both are free.  I would also like to see a beautiful animation cycle for this girl, but I think you'll need 8 frames to do her charming character justice.

[StarRaven]

I can't see using eight frames on a sprite this size; that seems like overkill. I definitely can't see doing eight frames per character! I don't think I could manage to get that done in any reasonable amount of time. I might try six if four doesn't cut it, though. :3
Started working on a four-frame run animation: Frames:

Wes:
I was thinking that too, that the ceiling needed some transitions. I like what you did there with the gold a lot!

Sharm:
The pillars actually do have the same curve as the table (in fact, I copy+pasted half the table to get the right curve for the pillar) so I dunno what's up with that. I don't know if it's the character being pretty much full-on side view that's making thinks look wonky or what. I think I'd rather change the tiles though, at this point. I'll squash the tables and whatnot somewhat, and hopefully it will look okay. Thanks for the advice!

I've been afraid to try to put GIMP on this machine -- it's just a little netbook and I'm afraid GIMP will be a CPU hog.


Thank you all for all the compliments.

For the HUD... I guess I just kind of had an idea of what I wanted (I thought something like an antique frame?) and went for it. I have plans to fill out the other parts of the HUD with some other stuff but I haven't gotten to it yet, and there's some stuff I want to change. (Those circles in particular I'm not very happy with.)