AuthorTopic: Oblique perspective EGA RPG  (Read 16463 times)

Offline Adam

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Oblique perspective EGA RPG

on: March 17, 2013, 05:57:36 pm
Right, very creative title.

I had some free time this weekend, so here's how it ended.

I started with the mockup I did two weeks ago:

(Piece of paper in the bottom right corner heavily based on Arachnes fantastic cavern mockups, fence tiles on Ultima VI.)

I really liked the result, and as I was dreaming to make an RPG for years now, I decided to play with it a bit.

To be useful in my never-to-be-done RPG it there had to be tiles, so I did a small test tileset:

(Again some tiles are heavily edited Ultima 6 tiles - wattle and daub walls and the bear)

Tree recolors for autumn versions.

Unfortunately there are no oranges in the EGA palette.

GUI. Plain gray was a bit boring, so here, are some variations. I'm not very satisfied with them.


Although I liked that chubby paperdoll guy, I redid him in Ravenloft-Menzoberranzan stance to facilitate further work:

(chainmail pattern based on Might and Magic)

So that's what I have now:






There you see the different seasons, and how the tree tiles can be used for larger trees and bushes.

And some dropped tiles:

That wide ring is based on some icon, but I don't know exactly where I found it.

Any comment and critique is welcome! Especially for the GUI.
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Seiseki

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #1 on: March 17, 2013, 08:15:11 pm
I love this!
Very funky colors due to the palette.
But the skin colors are quite unfortunate :D

I've never made any pixel art with a specific palette, so I had a go at it because it looked interesting :D
And I think the bright yellow for the hair really clashes with the skin tone contrast wise, so I attempted other hair colors and skin color.



edit: Attempted to combine the two gui versions, since I really like the depth the dithering adds.
It looks too messy though xD

« Last Edit: March 17, 2013, 08:56:12 pm by Seiseki »

Offline Adam

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #2 on: March 18, 2013, 03:27:49 pm
Thanks!

Yeah, EGA skin is almost everytime that awkward.

Hmm. The game is intended to be 320x200, so at least 3x. I think the yellow hair isn't  that disturbing against the skin with that big clusters.

I really like what you did there with the inventory slots! I tried to recreate it, but couldn't achieve the same effect somehow.

Then I solved my problem with a GUI redesign: the text window was too small for longer text messages, so by moving the inventory beside the paperdoll I won some lines and lost the big empty area to fill. Two birds with one stone.

I also like what you did with the paper texture, though I think it may probably make the text a bit harder to read.
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Helm

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #3 on: March 18, 2013, 04:51:02 pm
Adam, this is lovely in so many ways.

However, I must urge you against usage of 'flowery' fonts with EGA colors at 320x240. It's just a pain to read even if it's genre and fantasy-apropriate.

One solution is to go and do a manual AA pass on each letter of the fontset to add to readability. But then you will be able to use that fontset only against the paper bg color or other really bright colors. Which might suit you fine (and you can always inverse the aa-ed fontset for use against pure black perhaps).

On your actual tiles I got nothing, I really love them.

Offline Mathias

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #4 on: March 18, 2013, 06:36:31 pm
Agreeing big time on the font choice. The phrase 'form follows function' can't be truer when a viewer is simply trying to read text in your game. It is a tasteful font, but sure could read easier. It's a balancing act of course, but I recommend weighting that balance a little more towards "function" and less towards "form".

Wow, I am not used to that perspective. Disorienting.

Offline PypeBros

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #5 on: March 18, 2013, 08:29:29 pm
Wow, I am not used to that perspective. Disorienting.
It has always been, since Ultima games.
I remember developers back then had special rendering routines for trapezoďdal tiles, to avoid something like a window to spawn over 2/3 tiles...

Offline Adam

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #6 on: March 18, 2013, 10:25:39 pm
@Helm, Matthias
The text was just a placeholder at first, though I kinda liked the result. As text will (would - it will probably never be done) only appear on that paper and tooltips, background color would not be a problem. The problem is I s.ck at AA with this palette. Colour values are so badly distributed, that there's only four or five levels, and up until now I couldn't find a way to make it work.

I did played a bit with the text though.
Original text:


Original text with AA:

(I think I overdid it a bit, and just made it less legible)

Also tried to make some more legible font:








@PypeBros
That sounds interesting. I would gladly read your experiences there.
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Ymedron

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #7 on: March 18, 2013, 10:54:51 pm
I like the first clear-font type (the third picture down) but if I remember right, text is easiest to read when the small letters have different heights -> change the word silhouettes so it's not a block. So perhaps something like that... Hrm. The t:s are the most fun letters in that font, though just 'fun'ness might not be enough to justify it..?
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Offline Seiseki

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #8 on: March 19, 2013, 08:44:36 am
I really like that font as well!

For the other fonts, there seem to be a problem with consistency.
The lower cap letters should follow the same line. With letters like, lkfdbh ascending above the x-height and jygq decending below the base line.
t's do also ascend slightly above the x-height and it's important that the bar aligns with the median.



(I'm not an expert so if anyone knows more I'd love to hear it, typography is really fun :))
« Last Edit: March 20, 2013, 08:45:16 pm by Seiseki »

Offline Mathias

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #9 on: March 24, 2013, 02:11:55 am
Wow, I am not used to that perspective. Disorienting.
It has always been, since Ultima games.
I remember developers back then had special rendering routines for trapezoďdal tiles, to avoid something like a window to spawn over 2/3 tiles...
Not super rare I realize. I've just always hated it. There are better alternatives for game perspective.
What that type of perspective does do is infuse the game with a retro vibe. But this makes us realize, it's "retro" for a reason. It's usage all but died off, due to unpopularity I bet.
Same could be said for the palette, really.

Offline Helm

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #10 on: March 25, 2013, 12:14:31 pm
Please look at Knights of Legend

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.gr/2013/03/game-94-knights-of-legend-1989.html

Some of the best EGA art ever and at your perspective! What we can learn from it:

Shadows make the houses make muuuch more sense as far as readability goes. If you can spare the tiles, go for it.

It's far mor noisy but look at the beautiful 'inbetween' tiles from grass to rock around the paths.

Shadows for trees too!

Offline BladeJunker

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #11 on: March 25, 2013, 09:52:08 pm
Can't say much about the pixel art other than that it looks great. :) Yeah EGA skin color is funky to say the least, I like variety so I've used a Light Green to Grey to Light Red to Brown color ramp for Caucasians. I save the traditional EGA skin color for tan to darker people but brown skin is probably the most natural looking in the EGA palette.

Like most here I take issue with the text font, while not nearly as bad as fonts seen from those times you still have the same screen dimension constraint of those old RPGs IE. the 'Square Screen' plus Menu/HUD tab which is kind of small and awkward to sentence structures. I'm no stranger to small confines being a proponent of SD-TV and Split-Screen so I suggest the following.

-I'd definitely avoid slanting at low resolutions, it's very rare to see that work outside of large fonts and or high resolutions.

-Using no AA often looks cheap and only panned out well on consoles running on SD-TVs so 2 to 3 colors total applied sparingly would be best on VGA monitors that these games appeared on.

-Lastly have you considered using uppercase only with lowercase being a smaller version of the uppercase shape? This helps greatly in maximizing resolution for 'fancy' text in small low resolution spaces. I admit it's not proper but the combination of fancy, low res, and lowercase really doesn't work well in the long run imho especially for such a descriptive prompt.

Anyway keep up the great work, I would love to play this game if you have any ambitions to take it further. ;)

Offline Adam

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #12 on: March 26, 2013, 11:47:36 pm
@Ymedron, Seiseki:
Right, lowercase letters with different height are usually more easy to recognize. The font I did there with the funny "t" is based on the gaelic-celtic typeface, that's why the unusual letters.

@Seiseki:
I actually taught typography, but that seem like a hundred years ago. "The lower cap letters should follow the same line" seems a sensible guideline, but some letters (d, p, b...) do seem a bit inflated when I strictly follow this rule (in pixel-height not percieved height).

@Mathias:
Well, both palette and perspective communicate the player that he/she has to put effort into the game. But to be honest it was just me being lazy: I don't have to struggle to manage an own palette, and don't have to draw that much directions for the actors.

@Helm:
I already spotted you on that blog in the comments some time ago.
I dropped shadows in my initial game design because it emphasizes the small cheats I've done with inconsistent lightsource shading. Beside that day-night cycle is also intended, and  a static shadow could be awkward,I thought. Nevertheless I did gave it a go now. I'll be studying those screenshots, though I'm trying to avoid that much noise, as I'll display a lot more interactive objects, and they'd go lost in that much noise.

@BladeJunker:
Yeah, I'm still not quite sure why a large number of games do use white as skin color.
Slanting is now scratched, but I'm putting text AA on ice for a while until I find a way to pull it out nicely with these colours.
I wouldn't really like to use lo-caps text. I always read, that non-capital lowercase letter are much legible. I might do some experimenting there though.

So I haven't progressed that much this time. There's a new sceenshot:


With (my) programming limitations in sight I decided to use 50% black dither for shadows. It's probably not the finest, but it does work, and I try to avoid larger pure black clusters, for they will be used for non-visible areas.
Changed the wattle and daub tile colour to white, inspired by those "Knights of Legend" screenshots.
And a bit more text test. I chose to carry on with the last font: it still has some fancyness and maintains a clear and recognizable typeset.

Also tried a different style on trees:

It looks quite good in 1X in my opinion, but somehow falls apart if magnified.
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Parkerbaby

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #13 on: March 27, 2013, 12:11:43 am
To me the bear seems like it is out of perspective. I don't know if it really is, though. It gives that impression because it looks like it could almost be in a side scroller as is. My mind keeps wanting to rotate it in 3d space.

 I am afraid to even attempt to edit it because this perspective scares me.

Also, I really love the art so far!  :y:

Offline Helm

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #14 on: March 27, 2013, 05:58:40 am
If you DO drop shadows, I would drop them in the direction of the flow of the building, not in the complete reverse, personally!

Offline PypeBros

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #15 on: March 27, 2013, 09:29:35 am
If you DO drop shadows, I would drop them in the direction of the flow of the building, not in the complete reverse, personally!
seconding that. Seeing a bright wall and then a shadows is translated by my brain as "the castle is hovering 2m over the ground. Should it land here ? I'd rather not adventure just below it right now, if I were in charge..."

Offline Adam

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #16 on: March 27, 2013, 10:32:18 pm
@Parkerbaby:
Yeah, the head and legs probably suggest a slightly less skewed projection, but as trying to remedy this only made the poor animal really weird.

@Helm and PypeBros
I was thinking that dropping the shadow the other way would show a lot more of it. But had a "Knights of Legend"-like try at it too now:

I'm starting to like the non-dithered, strong shadow.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2013, 11:33:59 pm by Adam »
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Ymedron

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #17 on: March 27, 2013, 10:56:04 pm
Oh man, that strong shadow looks awesome. It has a really great evening light mood to it that makes the dithered one look weak.  :o

This might be a direction worth investigating. :3c
Also my art tumblr: ymedronart.tumblr.com

Offline Facet

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #18 on: March 28, 2013, 12:40:51 am
Seconding strongshadow love :y:, of the lot actually! The solid black is a lot more punchy and complements all the brightness/high sat. elsewhere else; looks like high summer sun

The new tree is improvement too imo although maybe a bit toony in situ, the old is a tad 'spray-can', a lot of stuff is hard going with that palette though, The only bit that stands out to me atm is that inventory sidebar you mentioned earlier, I'm sure there's something more could be wrung out of there, I'll try and get back later with some ideas to that end. 
« Last Edit: March 28, 2013, 12:44:34 am by Facet »

Offline PypeBros

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #19 on: March 28, 2013, 08:22:16 am
I'd have been tempted to suggest to drop the shadow only 1 frame out of two and let our retina average the two, but there's no chance the EGA hardware would have supported that ... Plus, we're talking about fairly large areas and strong contrast difference. The flickering might not have been as comfortable as for a waterfall.

Offline Adam

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #20 on: March 29, 2013, 12:15:17 am
@PypeBros:
That's an interesting idea, though I don't know if it is worth it:


@Facet, Ymedron:
That ("looks like high summer sun", "evening light mood") is exactly why I'm not so sure about it. Those shadows clearly define an environment light, which I would avoid if possible (allowing day-night cycle and seasons).

Anyway, here's an other attempt wit color-swapping:


And some dolls:

As usual, female ones didn't turned out that satisfying.
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Ymedron

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #21 on: March 29, 2013, 12:52:38 am
Hm, that is difficult. I don't know the limits of this palette, but I think there are some limits to what you can do. Making the shadows dark blue might make them look less sunset-like, though I have to say the darkening shadows (that you did based on pypebros' suggestion) feels artificial and even distressing for me. (I get a distressed feeling when a game world breaks my immersion and starts feeling enclosed, like a snowglobe.)
Making daylight like the black!shadow version and then adding a fade to black -> bluish colors with black shadows would be as far as I'd go with the day-night cycle.

oh god why do I feel so anxious looking at that pypebros-suggestion picture. D:
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Offline PypeBros

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #22 on: March 29, 2013, 07:33:26 am
Well, I've never seen a woman taking such a stance. You need not to mimmic the man' stance just for the sake of consistence. The man is inbetween ready-to-action, whatever the action might be. Try and find a similar ready-to-action stance for a woman.

If that still doesn't work, how about 2/3 poses instead of one, so that your character turns "ready-for-tussle" if you equip hands with blades, "ready-for-sneaking" when you equip with camouflage cloth and graplings, and "ready-for-charismatic-shopping" once equipped with rings and silk ?

edit: the EGA card could have up to 64KB of video memory, and one screen is 320x200/2, slightly less than 32KB, so the trick is doable by having the two pictures in VRAM (w/ shadow and wo/ shadow) and hopping to the other half of the screen on vertical retrace. On CRT screens, that should work well and un-noticed.

as for the skin colour, you could also explore the full colour palette (64 colours), and not simply stick to the CGA-backward-compatible tints.

Quote
I get a distressed feeling when a game world breaks my immersion and starts feeling enclosed, like a snowglobe.
I feel that after 5 minutes using a Windows operating system 0_0
« Last Edit: March 29, 2013, 07:51:28 am by PypeBros »

Offline API-Beast

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #23 on: March 29, 2013, 09:22:34 am
Are you saying that you have seen a man in that stance  ???

Offline Mu

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #24 on: March 29, 2013, 12:26:47 pm
I mainly just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of the art in this thread. I like the old and new character equally. One small thing I noticed was that all of the trees seem to be angled a bit too far to the up and left, giving the impression that in 3D, they are actually tilted down toward to the northwest. However, it could very well be that I'm not used to the perspective.

Offline Ymedron

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #25 on: March 29, 2013, 01:14:59 pm

A pose suggestion for the "ready for action" pose.
I showed only two weapon options, but I can imagine them holding a staff or something. A bow would be more troublesome (the female has a better pose for that)
Feel free to make the female more aggressive looking, I might have been subconsciously influenced by the portrayals in media.
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Offline Helm

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Re: Oblique perspective EGA RPG

Reply #26 on: March 31, 2013, 06:24:32 pm
The EGA palette is so high-contrastvalue that pure black becomes a great friend in rendering. Personally the red shadow is less effective.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2013, 06:26:40 pm by Helm »