2d sidescrolling (C&C please) [WIP]

[allaze-eroler]

hello folks, been a while i haven't posted here, alot of thing happened lately

by the way, there what i'm working right now :



it's really kind of emptyness XD;

for the moment, it's still in wip, i plan to add more stuff and i'm still wondering in which direction i will use... hoping to make it as a small game.

main inspiration : http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/16452.htm by Helm

feel free to give me any C&C

[Daimoth]

The colors you've chosen for your tiles are highly suggestive of moonlight. Perhaps change the sky accordingly?

[Fizzick]

you have a good start but your palette seriously needed reworking so i played with that

circled areas with really obvious repeating, but i don't know much about that so wait for someone else to help you there

didn't bother to AA the sun just pointed out the color that would be used

keep going! never give up

[AlucardX60]

I generally just lurk but I got a strange urge to see what I could do with this. Mainly I just messed around with the palette.



First thing I did was change the sun to a yellow hue and make the AA colors lighter so it wasn't as rough looking. I also added a pixel to the end of the curves for the same reason. Then I changed the clouds to a more stereotypical white/blue. I decided to make the water a teal color because I felt it fit better with the rest of the colors. The rock I decided to make a saturated brown rather then a boring grey, I wanted to make the outline lighter too but I'd have to add colors. And finally I made the grass highlights brighter, though in retrospect I probably didn't go far enough.

I was going to try to fix the repetition too but I didn't feel confident enough to be able to copy the style down pat, plus I'm getting a little tired. I analyzed the tileset though and I think I see the problem. At first I thought it was 32x32 with isn't necessarily a good thing in this case. You have two different versions of some tiles to break it up but I think you just edited your original tile a bit and called it done. When I want to break up tiles I redraw the same kind of tile from scratch and see what I end up doing differently.

As for the emptiness I'm inclined to say just add more life to it. Plants, people, animals, a few more clouds, hills in the background maybe. Also adding more grass to the tiles instead of the 'moss' you have right now would help.

Sorry if this isn't as well written as it could be. I don't usually do this and it's getting a bit late.

EDIT: About making the rock's outline lighter it later occurred to me to just make it two colors instead of three.

[allaze-eroler]

hello everyone, first of all, thank you very much for your incredible feedbacks ! it's what i needed so far !

now, there my new progress so far :



i did alot of adjustment as you asked me to do and it look alot more better than the old version, i started to add more stuff as promised, i'm not sure if i pictured well the statue i did there, i bet that i can improve it even more with your helps

for about the repeatiness, i added some more variation since i'm stuck with the 16x16 system because i plan to make a 1280x720 resolution, which why the pic is half sized XD; and beside that, i'm trying to limit to 5 5 5 bits per channel color. (it goes same for alpha)

well, there the complet tileset so far :



feel free to add or change this tileset, it will be an open source by the way.

i will do the parallax background later, as usual, please, feel free to give me any feedback 

[Fizzick]

Really like the changed you made, especially to the palette and the new background thing. I think unless you're really shooting for a constrained tileset with few pieces. The statue you added would be much improved by adding contrast. Right now it is very washed out, which makes it appear fogged out and distant. The effect distance has on light does many things, but one notable one is that it 'lifts' dark colors and washes colors. In this way, the statue looks like a part of the background that happens to be bizarrely aligned with the ground. Increase contrast. I recommend you use any three out of your darkest five greys to recolor the statue.

You probably know that there are still issues with obviously repeating tiles, but again, I don't know a lot about that. At this point I would look some guides to the topic up.

[allaze-eroler]

hello everyone, new progress that i mostly fixing the repeatiness :



and the tileset with 4 extra tiles :



as promissed, there the parallax :



any feedback for the statue ? i'm stuck with this design :|

[allaze-eroler]

hello, i recently decided to turn the mockup as an actual game so, there how much i managed to make :



i was wondering if there is any restriction for an amiga (the lastest version of amiga computer) ?

i will soon start redoing the statue because i'm not totally satisfied with it :|

[allaze-eroler]

hello, i finished designing the new statue that will be serve as a game save, but i'm not sure if i did it correctly... for moment, it's in greyscale mode so we could fix the lighting of it :



feel free to give me more feedback so i could improve it even more !

[allaze-eroler]

new progress of my statue, i discovered a new technique that i never heard of so, i hope you will find it very usefull :



from left to right :

the first one is done manually in pure pixel art, the second statue is a brutal color and size reduction. the last one is done with the new technique that i discovered from this article : http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop it's so far one of the best technique i ever see. it was a relief i could improve drastically my pixel art skill, and i even had fun doing it !

so, i hope you find it usefull with this new technique

as usual, C&C is welcomed.