Strategy Battlegame

[Pawige]

The colors are excellent as usual, you've got a good eye for color use, but the units seem a little too busy. It was very difficult for me to make out the forms at a glance, I had to zoom in and study it to start seeing them right. The mounted units are even harder to make sense of. I think it's the darkest blue pixels here and there that are causing the most problems.

Edit: To clairify, it's not the blueness of the pixels that's causing the problem, it's the places they're put. Too dark to be used on the bright helmets without breaking them up a lot visually.

[Rerg1]

I am sooo playing this game XD.

[fil_razorback]

Sorry for being OT but please Adarias, check your PMs

Pawige => I think it's not a problem of colors, it's just that there are (too ?) MANY details in these TINY sprites.

[Ryumaru]

also the details are easier to see when on a darker background.

[ndchristie]

The colors are excellent as usual, you've got a good eye for color use, but the units seem a little too busy. It was very difficult for me to make out the forms at a glance, I had to zoom in and study it to start seeing them right. The mounted units are even harder to make sense of. I think it's the darkest blue pixels here and there that are causing the most problems.

these are intended to be complicated and harder to read at a distance (the way real people are) because i dont want them made as cartoony game-art, partly because, since i have no coder interested yet, this isnt *really* a game, but also because i wanted them to be more interesting to me personally.  i could make them less busy pretty easily, but i dont really want to. in rome total war http://rometotalrealism.org/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=27&g2_serialNumber=3 its nearly impossible to read individuals, but i like the look of it.  i am comtemplating doing these over in say, an advance-wars style, but i dont think it will be nearly as interesting.  personal taste.

by the way, these also should ideally be viewed on a much darker background since thats how they will normally appear, running across fields etc, kinda like this:

[junkboy]

No crits, I just think it's very inspiring to see how you've been able to squeeze so much detail into these sprites.

[Tremulant]

Beautiful stuff as always, Adarias. Your colour choice is always an inspiration. that said, while I respect your vision, I have to agree with Pawige. The first thing that struck me when I saw the coloured ones was how busy/confusing they look (at first accentuated by the light BG, but nonetheless...) I think, maybe through a bit of palette tweaking, you could soften these a bit, make them less confusing, without losing to much by way of detail/style.

Then again, this is probably a personal taste thing on my side, and as you're the artist, the importance of your personal taste far outweighs my own as far as your own work is concerned. They're lovely regardless.

[fil_razorback]

It looks completely different on the grassy background. Much better IMHO ^^

[Rox]

That is amazing. The insane amount of detail and the colors make me think of some DOS game from the 90's. The time when pixel art could be obscenely detailed because each pixel was half an inch big. I really hope you can make this game come real.

Nice field you found for them, too. The football goal made me giggle.

[ndchristie]

heh, yeah i hadnt noticed the goal there untill id already resized and started pasting in horses

on a note unrelated to the discussion of readability, ive begun animation test of the horse, beginning with the simplest part of the charge, the charge itself.  ive decided that each horse will have animation independant of it's rider to add more variation and to make my animating job easier.  this is mostly for death animations; if they are separate, the horse can roll or crumple or fall sideways or even just stop, turn and bolt, or keep running forwards, and the rider can be unseated in a number of equally satisfying ways (the only thing he cant do is remain on the horse)

but thats getting ahead of myself.  i have never done a very good human run animation, and never even tried a horse before, let alone my semi-deformed little mount ive got here here.  visually based on http://www.chemeketa.edu/programs/ITCD/horse.html , i personally like it, but i know nothing of horses (im not even sure if i have the legs on the right sides of the horse >.<) and i would love to get some crits on it



and a few of them together, so you can see as a group (though if this ever becomes a game i hope they wont be synchronized)