Commercial Critique Challenge - Pokemon Red/Blue

[Ryumaru]

"Gameboy restrictions" is a more complicated issue than I thought. I will have to put in some time in to what is and isn't allowed. Certainly insightful work-arounds such as what Dusty has done with transparency and different sprite portions using different palettes are encouraged since they involve valuable concepts in dealing with the restrictions; regardless of how practical they actually are.

As a very soft rule, things of that nature are welcome and encouraged; exploiting the screen in the way Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS does it however, is probably a bit out of scope for this challenge activity.

[Azuyre]

Nice! Love that you managed to make a good looking GUI while keeping the pokeballs. It does looks a little thick though and would be nice with a bit larger margin for the text.

I tried something similar inspired by your design!



I added a lighter gray zeroes as fillers, makes it easier to see the actual numbers while still filling out the empty spots.
Not sure about the gui as it looks more bloated and goofy. But I was aiming for the target audience rather than my personal taste

With some updated Pokemon sprites that would be one sleek looking gameboy game. Nice job!

I ended up updating my previous attempt:


This time I made sure to organize things with the 8x8 tiles in mind, I had completely forgotten about it before. I liked r1k's layout so I decided to try something like that, it's crazy how much extra space you have to work with when you remove that big back sprite. I'm not too sure about my health bars, they look nice in black and white but when I color them the missing health area is too bright.

I was also trying to decide if the PP bar for the attacks was necessary, I put it there cause the empty space seemed a bit strange, but it seems like it might just be a bit of clutter.

I also borrowed your idea for using faded out zeroes Seiseki, they work really well for filling in the blank spaces.

[r1k]

looks like it fixes alot of the problems I had with mine.   I cant help but feel the lower half is a little too busy though.  I think the bar for the amount of attacks remaining might be too much, and not very neccesary.  I think using regular text for the attack type looked cleaner and it would also free up a little tile space that could be used to give each pokemon an animation frame (or so I hope).  Maybe you could get rid of the heart for the health bars.  Its not really needed to imply that its the health bar.  It would also make the players health bar align with the icons at the left, which I think is a little bit cleaner of a design.  The ground you went with is simple but pretty effective.

[Seiseki]

That looks awesome!
I'm also concerned about the lower part and how busy it gets. I love how you squeezed in level next to the hp bar and the nice looking labels for attack types.
I keep thinking about the target audience and how it's aimed towards kids.

Gonna try a few of your ideas! Lot's of good stuff to pick from

[Azuyre]

Thanks for the compliments! Glad you guys like it, I decided to try out a new version with a rearranged layout that makes it less cluttered:


I made the type icon a little smaller, mainly so it would line up better with the PP, though I guess it would also help cut down on the amount of tiles the type icons would take up in memory. I also changed the way the empty section of the health bar looks, I'm not sure if I prefer the way they look now or before though.

Edit: I updated the background a little bit and added a second version of the PP box with the written type instead of the icon. I prefer the one with the icon but I do like how the written one came out, it might not look as good with shorter types like grass or fire though.

I also just realized the background wouldn't look right on the color version, maybe something like this?


It actually looks better then I expected, I thought it might look strange having the grass in two different colors but it seems to work alright.

[Dusty]

So are the Pokemon in the battle scenes sprites or tiles? I always got the feeling they were tiles in the original games?

[r1k]

that looks good.  I made a small edit

[Arne]

I think the colored grass works great with Charizard who looks like he's causing ambient light. I suspect that water Pokémon that are not blue (e.g. Magicarp) will look less underwatery than say Tentacool who'd get a sea grass kinda feel. With a pure white abstract BG Magicarp looks less like a ...fish outta water.

The battle screen Pokémon are tiles. You can easily tell by setting up different BG and Sprite palettes. However, the splash/attack effects are sprites, and  also the very top of the backsprite during slide-in because it has to go over and across the enemy sprite.

I'd be tempted to use the extra unused font tiles for symbols like elements and attack types and stab and whatever, then throw those into the various strings.

[Azuyre]

that looks good.  I made a small edit

Looks good I was trying to think of a way to make the box take up that whole space before without having the contents off center, I hadn't thought to just split the / into two tiles though.

I think the colored grass works great with Charizard who looks like he's causing ambient light. I suspect that water Pokémon that are not blue (e.g. Magicarp) will look less underwatery than say Tentacool who'd get a sea grass kinda feel. With a pure white abstract BG Magicarp looks less like a ...fish outta water.

The battle screen Pokémon are tiles. You can easily tell by setting up different BG and Sprite palettes. However, the splash/attack effects are sprites, and  also the very top of the backsprite during slide-in because it has to go over and across the enemy sprite.

I'd be tempted to use the extra unused font tiles for symbols like elements and attack types and stab and whatever, then throw those into the various strings.

Yeah, I really like how Charizard looks with that grass. I tried it with Magikarp and he seems a bit off but Tentacool does work pretty well:


I remember seeing you mention the status icons earlier, I had made some of them but I kept forgetting to add them to the mockups. I added some this time though, from left to right at the top they're "Mean Look" which stops you from running away, though I don't think it was in this one, then defense down, sleep, and poison. On the bottom its speed up, attack up and defense up.

[Seiseki]

Awesome, this layout really cuts down on wasted space. But the psuedo 3D layout has been carried from the first game to every game in the series since then, so I feel kinda torn on the issue.
I first read the tag as 'Hater' and was like, wtf? 

Also, by having different rounded ends for the bars fill, you're adding 18 extra tiles in addition to the regular 9.