Atari 2600 RPG mockup

[Helm]

I'm not sure about how the rasterline color limitations work yet so this could be out of spec, but the critique stands. READABILITY. Detail is secondary. Consider symbolizing more.

[HughSpectrum]

I am not good at drawing fires admittedly.



I ended up removing the light hitting the ground and removing a lot of the light hitting the rocks.

There was more I wanted to do before posting this change, but I am not sure I'll get around to it today.

[BladeJunker]

I'm not sure about how the rasterline color limitations work yet so this could be out of spec, but the critique stands. READABILITY. Detail is secondary. Consider symbolizing more.

Took a closer look and for the most part this is within limitations except 2 lines at the bottom of the flame that have 2 colors occurring on one scanline. Missile line segments set to the appropriate color and width could fill these exceptions but its a lot of code for something so small and I assume you're not that attached it based on the majority of the image. Otherwise your camp fire graphic is very nice, captures that iconic symbol recognition style very well.

[infinitegames]

I am not good at drawing fires admittedly.



I ended up removing the light hitting the ground and removing a lot of the light hitting the rocks.

There was more I wanted to do before posting this change, but I am not sure I'll get around to it today.

Your fires are pretty hard to read. I suggest looking at the above edit. It's definitely easier to tell that it's a fire.

[HughSpectrum]

As good as it is, I don't want to copy it outright.

The first fire was just plain bad and I still need to clean up a lot of rough edges on my latest fire, but I think it'd be helpful to know what you're seeing if not a fire, so I can easier fix my mistakes.

[BladeJunker]

You don't have to use this but I thought it might benefit the forum to see a demo of what I was describing with your previous Camp screen design.


Here's one that incorporates Playfield based fonts which as you can see are quite large. I used one mid-line color change to give the stats there own color zone which wouldn't be too expensive with only 2 zones. And moved the camp fire graphic over one Playfield pixel since it was intruding on the Playfield column next to it by only a small degree, better to confine that graphic to the first 20 bits of the register in this layout.


Here's the same thing but without a mid-line color change where the stats share the same scanline colors as the camp fire graphic, not too bad as the gradient adds something to the numerals.


In the last setup the icons at the top are both Player objects be multiplexed to display 2 icons each. The 4 numerals per party member are split into 2 groups of 2 numerals done by multiplexing the Player object that isn't the character sprite while the second set of 2 numerals is rendered using bit constructed sprites made from Missile1 which uses 2 copies and multiplexes to produce the 4 pixel segments needed for both numerals.
While flicker is needed it would likely be minimal and perhaps with a mid-line color change applied to Missile1 and the Ball may allow them to fill in the spots being multiplexed by Missile0 instead which could get rid of the flicker or at least reduce it.
At the bottom I included the closer spacing option just for comparison.

[r1k]

I think the shape of the new fire is good, I just dont get why its only an outline.  I think if you fill it in orange it will read more as a fire.  Heres a quick edit making it a solid shape and probably way out of spec


Im not sure what all the letters are in this screen either.  first one looks like "HP", then a backwards R, then D, then some kind of D E combination.

[BladeJunker]

You don't have to use this but I thought it might benefit the forum to see a demo of what I was describing with your previous Camp screen design.


Here's one that incorporates Playfield based fonts which as you can see are quite large. I used one mid-line color change to give the stats there own color zone which wouldn't be too expensive with only 2 zones. And moved the camp fire graphic over one Playfield pixel since it was intruding on the Playfield column next to it by only a small degree, better to confine that graphic to the first 20 bits of the register in this layout.


Here's the same thing but without a mid-line color change where the stats share the same scanline colors as the camp fire graphic, not too bad as the gradient adds something to the numerals.


In the last setup the icons at the top are both Player objects be multiplexed to display 2 icons each. The 4 numerals per party member are split into 2 groups of 2 numerals done by multiplexing the Player object that isn't the character sprite while the second set of 2 numerals is rendered using bit constructed sprites made from Missile1 which uses 2 copies and multiplexes to produce the 4 pixel segments needed for both numerals.
While flicker is needed it would likely be minimal and perhaps with a mid-line color change applied to Missile1 and the Ball may allow them to fill in the spots being multiplexed by Missile0 instead which could get rid of the flicker or at least reduce it.
At the bottom I included the closer spacing option just for comparison.

Actually scratch what I said here since I forgot about the SCORE bit which makes this design completely easy to do as the 50 50 screen split of color for the Playfield is supported in hardware. So duh on my part for calling this a mid-line color change.