AuthorTopic: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!  (Read 11887 times)

Offline Rotflturion

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

on: March 13, 2013, 01:28:35 am
Hello, I am developping a 2D farm sim/economy type game and I could use some feedback with my pixels, as I'm more like a newbie graphic artist

How does the game look at the moment:


The player:


At the moment I am working on the player character walking animation [he's not detailed / shaded yet], and would be grateful for any [constructive] criticism - what's ok? What's not ok? Any tips on how to make his movement look better?

TIA for any replies :)

Offline Pix3M

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 265
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #1 on: March 13, 2013, 07:42:52 pm
First thing that comes to mind is how puny our character is in this enormous game screen. If you shrink it down in a manner so there are less tiles visible, it's harder get visually lost. The game screen probably shows you more of the game world than you really need to see anyways. It's also harder to make good use of your space. Your house interior has a ton of empty room but it's easier to fill up that space if that house is smaller, or if your furniture is larger (then again, it's already big enough for a giant, heheh). When there are more tiles visible, it creates a feeling of fakeness when it becomes needlessly obvious that it's a tiled world.

I also wouldn't be so concerned with shading and detailing as much as I am concerned with color. What I see are some pretty heavy colors that creates a bit of a somber mood (via cloudy weather?), but that's probably not something I see would go well with how I think of farm games.

You can use color to control where the viewer should look. The reds used on the flower is great with bringing attention to that area, and I can see potential to use that as an accent of sorts to bring attention to areas a flower would be at. I think a red flower would be better used as some houseplant though. You would also probably be interested in giving our player character some colors that makes him stand out from his surroundings.

While I lurked around this place: I found this post to be useful: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=14893.msg137131#msg137131 Hopefully you'll find it useful as well?

Offline Ymedron

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 306
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • All draw and no paint!
    • View Profile
    • My Deviantart account

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #2 on: March 13, 2013, 08:19:09 pm
Do you have any requirements on the character's appearance? Right now he is quite boring. For example, in Harvest Moon the main character has a blue cap to bring him out of his environment (as few things are blue in Harvest moon I think.)

It might be a good idea to draw out your character so you don't have to invent while pixeling. Like someone said about 3d modeling, I think it's hard to go about it as fast as your thoughts go. :o!
Also my art tumblr: ymedronart.tumblr.com

Offline Rotflturion

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #3 on: March 13, 2013, 11:03:29 pm
@Pix3M:
First of all, I realize that he's small, but I wanted the player to see as many tiles as possible, for easier fields arrangement. The house is empty, but for now it's just a placeholder that will be reshaped - I need to know what will be inside first [probably some chests, a kitchen, wardrobe? and stuff like that] - then I will divide it into several smaller rooms :)

Could you explain the "somberness" a bit closer? I'm not sure what does it mean :p The game was even darker before, like this:

But I found the trees and new weeds blend into the grass too much and brightened it up a little

About the colors - as I said I'm a newbie at PA, so any advices concerning colours, shading and stuff are mostly welcome - I find the link you provided very useful, thanks!

Also, the potted plants are a good idea! :)

@Ymedron:
Thanks for the reply!
Well, the character is a WIP at the moment, I'm mostly concerned about the animation itself - you have got a point here, I will try to make him stick out a bit more; also what do you mean about "drawing out" a character? Like drawing a big version of it to use it as a concept art thingy?

PS: That's how the first version looked like! [uglyness]
« Last Edit: March 13, 2013, 11:11:14 pm by Rotflturion »

Offline jams0988

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 346
  • Karma: +0/-1
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #4 on: March 14, 2013, 12:16:05 am
I actually like your old one more, tbh. I've never liked when games showed the inside of buildings, and I like the textured look your old one had (and your new one has, to some extent). How did you get that cool textured look on the roof and stuff? Is it pure pixel art, or did you use auto-aliasing tools like Photoshop? It looks neat. Reminds me of Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube.

Offline Pix3M

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 265
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #5 on: March 14, 2013, 01:03:24 am
@Pix3M:
First of all, I realize that he's small, but I wanted the player to see as many tiles as possible, for easier fields arrangement. The house is empty, but for now it's just a placeholder that will be reshaped - I need to know what will be inside first [probably some chests, a kitchen, wardrobe? and stuff like that] - then I will divide it into several smaller rooms :)

Could you explain the "somberness" a bit closer? I'm not sure what does it mean :p The game was even darker before, like this:

Seeing as many tiles as possible? I can see where you're coming from. I like to think that if we imagine a ridiculous extreme with 8x8 tiles on a HD monitor played at fullscreen unscaled, things would be very annoying to look at. Obviously, there must be a line to be drawn, though we do seem to draw the line in different places.



If I were to crop this so it's at a resolution of 320x240, it's much harder to get lost in a seemingly endless sea of nothing.

IMO, I can picture several possible approaches:

1. You can simply make your character bigger
2. Or, you can make your tiles smaller and cut down on your game resolution.

IMO, I think the latter is a better route because your tiles are done with a ton of single-pixel noise; if we really want awesome pixel artistry then they definitely need to be replaced with something more refined and less noisy. Pixel art is a bit of a misnomer as it ought to be more about art with pixel clusters created by similar colors touching each other, not single-pixel dot detailing. Pixel dots aren't great for detailing anyways.


As for the somberness, a quick looks outside tells me that grass is a much lighter color than what you have done for yours. the colors also seem to suggest some really dark weather as well. Why not go for sunnier weather, with much stronger contrast between lights and shadows, with a touch of hue shifting to suggest a warm light source and such? I find that the really dark grass just makes this graphical style feel a lot more depressing.

As far as I've figured game graphics, game graphics should be done in a style that complements the game play. Picture whatever game you happen to know with a cartoony art style. Imagine how that looks if it used a realistic 3D graphical style instead. I've made similar mistakes before. Game graphics shouldn't try to be real just for the sake of being real; realistic pixels go best with games that try to be real and serious. My ideal of a farm game - it should be all 'Hey, this is just a game. Chill out and have fun!.' A cartoony style ought to go well with that mood. I see realistic art styles to be more like "This is srs bsns bro. Step up your game". Maybe something for FPS games, but I have difficulty seeing that work out for a farm game.... unless by chance it's an educational game?

What I've been doing lately is look at examples of game graphics out there just to see what's possible. Have you thought about doing that? Sometimes it really helps to see how other artists approach things so you can learn something.

Offline Ymedron

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 306
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • All draw and no paint!
    • View Profile
    • My Deviantart account

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #6 on: March 14, 2013, 02:35:51 pm
Yes, I did mean drawing a concept art drawing of your character. It'll help you figure out how to make your character work for the game you are going for. (Remember to try many different solutions, and don't just go with the first drawing you make. You never know if the first one is the best.) Your main character is the most important part of the graphics, after all. In general you should know what kind of a style you are going for, so we can best help you get there. It's not very efficient if you have a ton of finished sprites in entirely different styles.

I can't really say much about the animation, as Im not very proficient in small scale walkcycles. They seem pretty typical for a three/two step walk, though.
Also my art tumblr: ymedronart.tumblr.com

Offline Rotflturion

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #7 on: March 14, 2013, 05:08:46 pm
I actually like your old one more, tbh. I've never liked when games showed the inside of buildings, and I like the textured look your old one had (and your new one has, to some extent). How did you get that cool textured look on the roof and stuff? Is it pure pixel art, or did you use auto-aliasing tools like Photoshop? It looks neat. Reminds me of Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube.

I kinda want to implement roofs in the future, like when you go close to them [doors/windows] they disappear and show the interior
The roof was made of millions of small beams, and then shaded using the brighten/darken tool - I use GIMP

@Pix3M:
I will try to redraw the grass again, with less noise and if it looks better then the other sprites - I do admit I use noise a lot, to try and make things look more ... random

About the resolution, do you mean something like this? [A game I was making with a randomly generated island thing, 64x64 sprites]


@Ymedron:
Yes, I think I will do just that, and draw some bigger sized characters - I am still trying out different styles :)

Offline Pix3M

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 265
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #8 on: March 14, 2013, 09:06:26 pm
Yeah, I find that more comfortable to look at. Then again, I also thought of another alternative to scrap the need for a player character. The player will just be an imaginary hand who makes stuff happen from thin air, and you're sure to be able to get away with having more tiles in the screen.

And besides, not that I played many farm games, but it may be worth making the game less busy so instead of tending to so many individual crops, you focus on fewer, but they are more rewarding. That sort of approach will definitely go better with a non-srs cartoon style though... it would be funny selling a single ear of corn in a realistic world for like 5 bucks or whatever your in-game currency is.  :)

I also wouldn't agree with a 'random' approach to game art. Interestingly, I don't know if I've seen great stuff made 'randomly', except maybe Jackson Pollock. In the case of grass, would rather doodle little grass-shaped clusters to make a grass tile. I'm not yet comfortable with making my own grass tiles as an example, so here are a couple of grass tiles I've found:

http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/som/sheet/15951
^I think this is an interesting example of drawing grass by just drawing plant-shaped clusters around instead of using pixel-dot detailing. I prefer this style over noisy grass tiles because you can look at the clusters and go 'oh, that's a plant!' You can't really do the same for other grass styles full of dots which you can't easily point at and say what that dot is supposed to represent.

http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/lozminish/sheet/6483
^Other possible styles that focuses on pixel clusters tend to convey grass by just drawing relatively few blades of grass on the actual tiles. What I really like about styles like these is that they're kinda powerful with suggesting that all the details are there but it doesn't draw in that many details.

For both examples I posted, where the grass borders the dirt, there are many more blades poking out over the dirt to show that the dirt path is lower than the grass. Could be a useful trick to try out  ;D

Offline Rotflturion

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: 2D farm game - Feedback welcome!

Reply #9 on: March 15, 2013, 02:00:53 pm
Hmmm... Tell me what do you think about this style of grass:


Or... this [new weeds too!]:


I think it looks a bit better [I agree the realistic look doesn't really fit a farm game of a type I have in mind - not a realistic educational simulator thing, but a Harvest Moon style] - if I decide about such approach I will just save the current graphics for a more ... serious game [maybe someday an RPG? :)], and redraw everything accordingly
« Last Edit: March 15, 2013, 06:40:42 pm by Rotflturion »