GR#224 - Castle of the Winds - Gameart Revamp

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

I agree light grey works very well. Looks very frazetta esque, so in other words, awesome  .

Keep at it!

[Ryumaru]

Would you do anything different with the backgrounds? I'd love to see you do some actual tiles proper for it, that still allowed for the procedural generation. The backgrounds were easily the most bland thing of the game from what I saw in the lets play.

[Chris2balls]

What you've done so far is a considerable improvement over the originals, I like the style you've got going!
That being said, I'm not happy with the way the yellow stands out from the white, so I made some edits with a black outline and a few other tweaks:

I hope to see more, especially background tiles as Ryumaru pointed out!

[Facet]

Hey! Thanks guys

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I am quite pleased with the grey flesh, I like the way it brings out his nipples.

Mr Fahrenheit:
Frazetta and corny retro-fantasy stuff yes! Even a bit ‘Fighting Fantasy’ maybe.

Ryumaru:
I’m been a bit stuck on the tiles actually, to follow the original in the dungeon areas I’d have to go without variants, and most patterns in that palette quite quickly become intrusive. I have already strayed with (just-about) animated sprites though, and I’ve no plans to try and make this playable at all, at least not right now, so probably I should go in for proper tilework, should be fun!

Chris2balls:
Liking the solidity of your female edit thanks, and the black too which really surprised me, original looks a bit skinny compared. I took another pass on a compromise. I know contrast is an issue and full outlines would make sense as 9_6 demoed also… but my ever so artistic vision, it leads me a different path . Did you see the newer greyshade version for the male char?




(I'll have to redraw this one for the animation, so I'll beef it up with more black then)

There will be more! I was caught off guard a bit by this late interest, I should’ve had more work to update. It's fair to say I’m losing momentum a bit, I’ve considered sticking with static sprites ‘cos trying to make the limited animations work is what’s taking time and discouraging me from knocking a few out whenever I have opportunity. I’ll persevere with them for the moment ‘cos it’s been educational, and I think that kind of visual feedback would have improved the game a lot; the only indication of any hand-to-hand combat is the status bar which can make for some rapid and confusing deaths early on.

[wolfenoctis]

Cool stuff Facet
I made a little edit of the male and female, your upper arm is a little too short in my opinion:


Hope these will be of use to you 

[Facet]

Ah, a bunch of interesting rendering ideas there, thanks; a lot softer than I usually go in for, I'll definitely have a play with them later.

It does look like you've shortened the guy by decreasing the head ratio, which would impact on the arm size. Generally I feel you're trying to flatten out limbs to the camera a bit? I've been pushing more foreshortening simply 'cos there's the opportunity when I don't have to match the backgrounds, god knows it can get confusing at this size though and I think the animations help a lot with providing volume context which is lacking in a still, though it should read singularly too.

I didn't actually explain before but my idea was that you'd see monsters in approximately first person (with allowances for the read), and gain quite a lot of pictorial space that way; letting really big stuff appear big without extra tilespace and keeping small stuff at a reasonable detail level without appearing as threatening. Here's a sketch of the kind of thing I was intending for the girl: 
Spoiler

[Facet]

er... picking this back up:


Fixed - Crow :p

I felt like a bigger, showier piece might make the whole bunch a bit more interesting/accessible to more people, myself included.

I was actually intending to go for something a bit more dramatic; stencil-black shadows, mid-action, deep perspective, lightning bolts etc... but this was the first thing I sketched and I considered that maybe the kinda dorky pastiche, graph-paper thing is a better fit, idk; any thoughts welcome. I may well sketch up some other directions also.

edit - forgot to include the original. Title & sub are separate images on a black bg, and they're both pretty strange dimensions (441x230?). I just took the full height and narrowest width but I guess that would take some tinkering if I actually attempted to re-inject this stuff.



edit edit - this is the titlescreen btw!

Also: I realise the original font is oddly gothic, so I’ll probably be switching that out along with a few of the other elements borrowed from more generic high fantasy archetypes as I get to them. I think it’d be nice to play with some more consistently Norse alternatives to the usual tropes.

I have worked on the character sprites & a few other things, which I'll sort out sometime later. Just about every other component is a piece of piss compared with the animated monster thing I set myself so I might make better progress this time.

ta, Crow!

[wolfenoctis]

Some rough thoughts mainly on the characters:

I moved their hands closer together since they were obscuring the torsos and "cutting" the figures. Hope it helps 

[Facet]

Totally metal! I may in go for a bat plague, I wish I could do snake-projectiles too but perhaps the in-game counterpart (the nuclear tadpole-looking 'magic arrow') is too characteristic to mess much with, dunno. Do like.

My original impulse was to keep a dark background for the contrast and creepy dungeon monsters but I found getting the limited skin tones to look anything like natural under ambient sort-of light was pretty tough, so I tried the in-game sprite/dungeon palettes and kinda liked it.

Are the arms across the chests an issue? I don't see the cutting and I'm not sure what of importance that they could be obscuring (one very historically accurate viking sports bra?). I find the extreme foreshortened alternatives a bit harder to read/a less interesting silhouette anyway.

Don't really understand the yellow-washing of the figures: better contrast?

I guess it's hard to say without playing the game but I'd really like opinions on the appropriateness (or otherwise) to the game this feels while I'm thinking about trying other things.

[wolfenoctis]

The arms cutting the body isn't necessarily a bad thing, I just think its suboptimal. I thought it would look better with the arms pointing toward the viewer. On the yellow-washing, yeah contrast, though you could go for an alternate color for the shadows(see below), I just don't like the gray shadows since the yellow has such high saturation.