GR#124 - Action Adventure - RPG Projection, Gameart

[Tourist]

Get Medieval did it like this:



Steep angle on the sprites.  They also used large doors that folded into the floor rather than anything that covered the top.  You can still find the demo on the web, less than 20mb, but it doesn't run on Vista or newer.

Tourist

[tehwexxl0rz]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Update:


Not too satisfied with the "feel" of the arm movement, but it'll do for now... must keep moving forward!

I gotta say, I'm not really interested in changing the projection for the walls. I put a LOT of thought into it (as the folks in IRC can attest) and I've found sloped orthographic walls are the best way to convey all the necessary information without "cheating" or blocking too much of the action.

PypeBros: Nice edit, but there are a few features I'd like to keep for style even if they aren't realistic (like the slouchy shoulders and exaggerated boots.) The angle of the eyes in your version is definitely more accurate, but I want to leave some some to animate her mouth when attacking.

Facet: You're absolutely right about the doorway clipping. I actually made another version with taller doorways but it didn't look too good, so I didn't upload. I think I'll bump the tile size up to 24x24 which will take care of it. Regarding the south wall obscuring the action, I think you misjudged the thickness of the wall at the base? It's actually quite thick - 4 tiles thick and only 2 tiles tall. The south wall should only obscure the action by 8 pixels if my calculations are correct.



Grimsane: I swear I'm not using perspective. (See above animation for "proof.") My tiles are currently 16x16... I appreciate the character edit, but your version is a pretty major departure from the style and physique of the character. I'm not really sure why you suggested the door funnels?

rikfuzz: Thanks for the example, but like I said, I'm planning to keep it all orthographic. Nice tiles, anway!

Tourist: Thanks for the example - that actually looks almost exactly like what I'm doing but with shorter walls! More like barriers than walls I suppose. Good too see this technique employed in some form out in the wild.

[rikfuzz]

Despite your proof animation, I had to make it in 3d to actually make sure this was actually correct with the vertical bricks.  Of course, it is correct, I just have a lot of trouble seeing it correctly for some reason.  It could just be cos I spent the past few months working on the game my example tiles are from, and I'm expecting it to be similar, or it could be counter intuitive, because we're all used to seeing non slanted walls?  Pixels are all nice anyway, I'm sure it'll be less ambiguous once the edges are pixelled and it has some kind of shadows etc. 

[Grimsane]

weird I put a 24x grid on it and it lined up with your wall tiles 
and yeah I realized the style departure, and If you have quite a few areas where you see it like that, and can walk through the door into another room Vs single rooms, or alteast animated transitions I think you'd reinforce your tile logic in the players mind relatively fast, or you could have the levels load like that animation everytime you walked into an area stupid in terms of the amount of work and breaking the illusion of a real world i know but that'd look pretty awesome

I understood what you were doing and I said perspective effect, like a few other's that commented it provides a perception conundrum, maybe just due to games of the past getting us used to other projection methods and and "camera" angles and if you get down to semantics even orthographic shares much in common with perspective, just lacking foreshortening. when we talk game perspectives in 2D art it's implied perspective, because of the 2D limitation even Isometric perspective is orthographic. that and perspective is used as a valid term for view point, not exclusively to describe the effects of distance on objects to the lense(even eyes are lenses), you wouldn't use the term look at it from his perspective if you were talking exclusively about perception of distance on things but yeah that's all a bit pedantic i suppose.

I actually like the perspective, and the funnels are used in conjunction with their collision bounds to force the player to walk through them in such a strict way to avoid the potential clipping, but you can do that with invisible bounding boxes at the door itself, but if the door is too narrow and the player moves hastily it's no fun trying to have trouble walking through doors, games you can only move in 4 directions, I'm not talking 4 animated directions i mean with no diagonal movement

you've captured the same animation dynamic quite well after the rescale 

[Facet]

(the walls are) actually quite thick - 4 tiles thick and only 2 tiles tall. The south wall should only obscure the action by 8 pixels if my calculations are correct.

Ah yeah. Yours could just be perceived similarly; like a visual illusion, a tangent created by the inclines that's hard to process visually. tbh I just wanted to compare approaches with Zelda. On that note: slick stuff, Rik

Animation fluid as usual, does look like quite a power-walk with those flaired elbows and torso rotation; that girl means business

[tehwexxl0rz]

Update:


No more clipping! The south wall should hide only 16 pixels of floor space.
I'm putting off texturing the bricks with the hope I'll find inspiration for something more unique. :/

Couldn't help myself from tweaking the run:
Made the arms a bit more relaxed, did some sub-pixel blending on the chest rotation and removed the twist from the abdomen (might bring it back though, can't decide...)

[PypeBros]

I'm putting off texturing the bricks with the hope I'll find inspiration for something more unique. :/

Bricks are bricks. Trying to make them unique will just make the wall repetitive, imho. How about some ornment instead ? tapestries, in-wall statues, niches, decorating armors or lamps ...

- -

Here's a serie of edits I made to one 'Oracle of Seasons' dungeon in order to make it look less "flat and un-appealing" that more or less show what I have in mind.

* PypeBros love the tweaked run, btw.

[Tourist]

For texture inspiration, have a look around at some free texture packs.  Not pixel art but food for thought:



Will this environment have some vertical levels?  Stairs up to balconies, or raised platforms?  If so, consider how the stairs must be drawn to make sure they are visible (particularly descending northwards).

Tourist

[tehwexxl0rz]

NECROOOOOOMANCYYYYYY!!! I'm working on this again!

Here's an update on the character facing north/south/east/west:


Thanks to cyangmou for his critique in IRC!

Thanks for the the suggestions PypeBros. When I said "unique" I was referring to the general aesthetic rather than a specific pattern - I agree that would look repetitive.
I'll definitely break it up with special ornamentation. First things first!

Thanks Tourist! Unfortunately the image link is now dead, but I remember it was helpful at the time, for what it's worth!
I am indeed planning to have some vertical exploration and I've put a lot of thought into it! Here's an example 4-way stair case:



PS: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

[tehwexxl0rz]

Started working on the east/west walking animation:



Still very blobby and the perspective isn't quite high enough....

It's kind of a power walk now, but I think I might change it to an all-out run. Thoughts?