The reason it's so difficult is that you've done a lot of edits to its graphics, and in some cases (like the floor spikes in the gif) you just about retain the exact look of the original sprites/tiles.
Originally the game was going to be a quick, thrown together not-megaman game. The player design, his walk cycle, etc were all supposed to resemble the original. As time went on, we kept throwing more and more into it until we decided that we should move it away from its roots.
I must point out though, that there are no borrowed assets. The tile size in this game is 24x24. Even if i wanted to yank something out and use it as a placeholder, it would be way too small.
but if you don't understand why those features existed in the original sprites in the first place (and judging by your edits, you don't), you're better off making completely new designs with different palettes (i.e. don't use Shadow Man's colors/stage to start with --
What? It's shadowman's stage insomuch as it's orange with lava, and plumbing. I specifically wanted it to feel 'sort of like that'. Is it too much? I mean you've gone right off the bat claiming i basically edited a ripped tileset, i'm not sure if i should be offended or flattered that you thought so :S
That said, your emphasis on placement (i.e. your lack of confidence in drawing your own pixel stuff completely from scratch, instead using edits of others' work to start) tells me you don't understand how to create forms with color contrast, which is limiting you drastically.
? What? You think the enemy sprites i have up there are also edits? Okay :T show me what they're edits of if you're so confident about it. There's a difference between going 'man your stuff looks pretty bland and samey, like old mega man stuff' and going 'wow way to post a bunch of ripped recolors on the forum'.
I came in here expecting to show off my work, and have people tell me that things didn't move very well, or that the enemy designs were boring. I didn't really expect all that garbage.
a lot of the larger sprites in megaman (i.e. the mini-bosses like the penguin in Gemini Man's stage or the Lantern Fish in Bubble Man's stage) clearly show the flat-colored sprites still take into account form and lighting, and a lot of the level tiles show this accounting for form and lighting as well.
The larger sprites are rendered like cell shaded anime characters. Megaman is supposed to look like a cartoon show. The box art has it, the large ingame sprites (megaman gets equipped, etc) as well as the larger bosses all follow that design. I was under the assumption i was doing a similar thing. Black outlines (again, as a cartoon would do), broad fills and simple shading (with a light source in the top left, generally). Also 'flat colored' and 'lighting' don't go hand in hand. If something is truly flat colored, then it has no shading at all, and is evenly lite from all angles. What are you talking about. Please provide some examples.
Your game wont look like a simple Megaman clone -- if you apply what I'm trying to teach you here, it will look like something uniquely yours.
I guess what i can take away from this is that the game as a whole looks too close to its inspiration, and that is setting off some red flags for people.
Here's hoping that manually quoting will work.
and to 9_6
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The legs appear to snap into position rather than moving since some inbetween frames just have them stay in place.
If you want a floaty walk that slides over the floor more than actual walking that's fine I guess.
If not, you need to smoothen the inbetween leg positions out a bit more
The edit does look a bit better. His sprite was pretty much the first thing i did, back when so we could get the test build running with something better than a rectangle. His walk cycle does look like he's skidding his feet across the ground, which would be cool if he had slippery traction. But, he doesn't. I'll definitely give the walk cycle a go over, since you specifically pointed it out.
-- to slimeblaxun
Background looks like Airmans background.
I definitely looked at airman's really cool clouds to see how they were animated. You edge the blue in from the outside, and there are three steps. it looks great. Are you going to claim that a waterfall made by cycling three blues over a tile is also an edit? Pretty much every game ever did it that way.
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In summation, yeah, i was definitely drawing from the classic mega man games as inspiration, but everything here is work i've made from scratch in aseprite (or pyxelEdit for the tilemaps). I didn't realize trying to make it look like it would fit in was going to activate the ICBMs.
ps, the trispikes. They're similar to a spike that faces downward underwater in some level, i don't remember which. They're a brilliant idea, they fill up the hitbox very well, and look like they'd cause damage when approached from any point. You can rotate or flip them and they'll work anywhere. I used the idea, but it's a totally different image.
There's a lot of games with similar ideas. We have logs that you ride down a waterfall, too. Mario 2 did that, one of those bible games did it, and i'm sure someone else did. If people didn't reuse ideas in their games, there wouldn't be any games.
