Commercial Critique June 06: Cave Story

[goat]

I think we know the drill by now, go!

You can find Instructions for downloading the game here.  For Mac users, lazy people, etc, screenshots can be found everywhere.  Hotlinking is a victimless crime bad!!!

Since this CC is a week late, it will run a week into next month.  Next month's critique will start on the first so for a week both will run at the same time. Didn't want to upset the regularity or anything because of some dumbassery on my part.

[toastie]

I would just like to say that the .pbm files that cave story uses for its graphics are actually plain old bitmaps, so if you wanna see all the character sheets, just rename them to .bmp from PixelBitMap

[Ayavaron]

You don't need instructions on downloading it. I have a .zip of it on my website with the English language patch preinstalled.

http://www.ayavaron.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/Cave%20Story.zip

I think there's also a savegame in there by mistake.

[Akira]

mac version can be found here: http://www.gameflaws.com/cavestory/

oh and on a side note, could the completed commercial critiques be added to the wiki somehow? they are a pretty good learning resource imo.

[Ayavaron]

[Actual critiquing! Gasp!]
I notice from that spritesheet the sprites are actually kind of weak. They completely lose all of the definition when viewed from a dsistance at high resolution.

However, at higher resolutions, the sprites look much better. The lack of contrast in the shading becomes less and less apparent.

The colors that Pixel chose to use are odd because they lose visibility on black and white backgrounds. This is especially odd given the fact that much of the game takes place against a black background.

I decided to try adjusting the colors a little bit and I think they look better. The increased contrast, I think, adds more to the definition and makes him a little more distinct as a character. Of course, it doesn't help much with the low-resolution but it does add a better separation from those little green things and his face.



I tried to put this into the game though. Wouldn't work for some reason.

[Opacus]

I played the crap out of that game.
It was totaly awesome.

I really loved the charm of the sprites in the game.
It just had something that caught my eye.

[.TakaM]

okay, it appears no one wants to start this one

so, I'll give it a go
the backgrounds in cave story were almost always pretty dark, most likely because it was inside caves but this helped a lot with most of the sprites, easy to aa the edges because almost every time, every sprite would be on a dark background. nothing terribly clever about this.. but I guess its worth mentioning

I cant really think of much to say lol, so I'll bring up some sprites with techniques used I found interesting in the game
this sprite is really quite rough, i think pixel may have been intending for the object to look as if old/damaged or whatever.. but I think it ended up just looking messily made
just a few strange decisions made with the aa-ing, atleast to me >_>

and I like the colour choices in


I think something pixel tried in a lot of areas was, where the lightsource hit each sprite, there would be little anti aliasing between the colours, and as the sprite progressed to a darker colour he aa'd more
take

for example, the lightsource is from the top-right, so he didnt make the top right edges aa into the background and in the few places where the lightest and second darkest I think it is hit theres no use of the middle tone to ease the transition, sometimes he even goes out of his way to make the darker and lightest tone touch jaggedly.. logic behind this?

[Larwick]

Wow, the first sprite to me seems to just have the eye edited scrappily on top of the older image (although there are some changes to the area around the eye, it really doesn't seem to help atall).

And i agree about the AAing on the frog.

~

[Crazy Asian Gamer]

I tried to put this into the game though. Wouldn't work for some reason.

All the PBMs aren't exactly purely BMPs. They all have a file signature appended at the very end, and if the executable does not detect this signature, the game throws an error and flips out. The file signature appears to be "(C)Pixel", though I've yet to load up a Hex editor and confirm this.

(Yes, the following are JPGs. I just don't get web designers these days, and I'm too lazy to take my own screens, haha.)




These are 2 screens taken from the plethora of end-game screenshots. There are very strange differences between the two. The second is more profusely AA-ed than the first, which lacks AA in certain parts here and there. In the first screen, the bottom half seems to be sketched out and abandoned (this may be due to the number of colors there are, the fact that the bottom half is darker). Pixel seems to have used different palettes for Quote and Curly, because that are planty of shades to AA with on Curly that ever see a drop on Quote in the first, whereas in the second, shades are more frequently reused. Perhaps the first screen for the credits was actually a WIP?

Thread Hijacking:
I want to thank people for pointing this game out to me. Even if this CC doesn't pick up, much thanks. The game itself is bloody amazing. I'm fairly certain I can call it the best platforming I've ever laid hands on since the old-school megaman games on the NES.
Kudos to Studio Pixel. Madd kudos. Especially to the coder(s) and level designer(s). The game is incredibly well programmed, scripted, and designed.
Especially the Sacred Grounds/Hell, which boasts what's gotta be the most absorbing, tiring, spasmodic, relentless, and again, amazing level in a platformer I've ever played.
This game = WOW.
... WOW. Thank you guys. I would have never bothered to check out Cave Story if it wasn't for this board. (Heh, the name turned me off. It reminded me of some corny anime RPG, a genre that's been shamelessly exploited, sadly.)

[Dusty]

for example, the lightsource is from the top-right, so he didnt make the top right edges aa into the background and in the few places where the lightest and second darkest I think it is hit theres no use of the middle tone to ease the transition, sometimes he even goes out of his way to make the darker and lightest tone touch jaggedly.. logic behind this?

I personally think this is because of colour count restrictions. For the lightest to second lightest colour, this is no available colour to use to AA unless he added a colour, so he was limited in what he could actually AA and ended up recycling colours to AA instead of having dedicated AA colours.