Some sprites I'd appreciate some criticism on

[mtmbTomSmith]

The palette and your the player character looks really dull and flat..
The character is also really dark and doesn't have much contrast between colors. If I squint my eyes he just disappears into a dark blob.

I had a go at it and went a bit overboard.. The colors are too crazy to fit in with the levels..

I actually really like that~!

The player sprite is animated in those grays that i initially posted, and we change his color on the fly in game. Originally we  planned every level would give you an upgrade you could select from the mission hub to use in the next level, and that loadout would give you a new color scheme, changing your health bar color and weapon energy color as well. That way when people played it would be immediately obvious what upgrade they have (extra hp, one grace fall into a pit, momentary invincibility, etc).  Your attempt here got rid of his armor plating and made his body all one color, instead of the two i had going on previously, but sacrificing that let you shade him. I dunno! It's definitely not bad, man.

as for him being really dark, when i started this i was using the 'nes palette' you get when you google the term, which had a really vibrant red. He was that, originally, and was much higher contrast because of it. After doing some digging around i realized the palette i was using was incorrect, and he got a little duller.

[Probo]

I think the game looks lots of fun!

I wouldnt worry about using a few non-nes accurate colours. People in general wont notice if a red is too red, as long as it fits with the nes's saturated palette.

Its not a problem, but can i ask how come you went for the high tile-size and resolution (compared to a nes)?

[michelcote]

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. 

Hit the nail on the head. I had a bit of a knee-jerk reaction myself when I saw these earlier. That being said, this looks really good. The only thing that bothers me is that the NES-style backgrounds clash a bit with the character's style (looks like he came out of a DOS-era game). You have plenty of room for both outlines and shading detail, I think. The animations are nice though 
The game from your gifs looks rad, and the slash-jump blobs look like a fun mechanic!

[Seiseki]

The player sprite is animated in those grays that i initially posted, and we change his color on the fly in game.

If you change the colors why do they have to be gray? Can't they start at the default colors?
He does look very monotonous, since you're using just dark reds. Which makes for a really dull and dark looking sprite, which is hard to see and especially telling shapes apart.

Or just make different sprite sheets with different palettes, plenty of image editing software allow you to replace all colors in an image at the click of a button.
And performance wise it shouldn't matter much, especially with pixel art.



I tried getting the sprite to stand out more and look a bit more interesting.

[mtmbTomSmith]

Or just make different sprite sheets with different palettes, plenty of image editing software allow you to replace all colors in an image at the click of a button.
And performance wise it shouldn't matter much, especially with pixel art.



I tried getting the sprite to stand out more and look a bit more interesting.

It's funny, the middle one is basically what he looked like before i changed the game's palette across the board to be more accurate.  And the one on the right is pretty rad, actually! Got some ironman thing going on with the red+gold, but i like the face. The slices in the metal make it look a bit less ambiguous, and more robotis. And the guy's got a monitor face, so that's not a bad thing.

Its not a problem, but can i ask how come you went for the high tile-size and resolution (compared to a nes)?

Well, it was a combination of things. The game is a bit higher than an nes game, but that's more to fit it into 720p/1080p evenly. With 640x360 internal, 24 pixel tiles gave us 15 vertical tiles, and 26(and 2/3, egh). Considering how much bouncing around there is in this game, having that much playspace seemed like a good match for the tiles. In hindsight, we'd go with something that uh

you know, perfectly divides into it so we don't have 2/3 of a tile on one side when the camera's locked, say, in a boss fight :T but

yeah.

The player sprite is animated in those grays that i initially posted, and we change his color on the fly in game.

If you change the colors why do they have to be gray? Can't they start at the default colors?

Oh, he's those grays only internally. The player never sees him like that. There's actually a number of decent er, outfits, we made with different color combinations, but the default was to be the red. I dunno here's some of them.


each row represents a fill area (one of the grays in the default sprite). The first number is a swatch's x coordinate on the palette grid, and the second, the y.

Anyway these were going to be assigned to the player when you equip a boss upgrade in the mapscreen. It would stick with you for the duration of the next level, but none of that's implemented yet. At the moment he's just red by default. Screens taken before the clouds were animtiles.

[9_6]

And the guy's got a monitor face

Maybe there shouldn't be the brightest point of the character on it then or else it's a really shitty monitor that reflects all the light and makes seeing things on it impossible, especially since the helmet seems to reflect absolutely no light.
That highlight should probably go on the head since it's armor and would look harder that way.
The brightest red could also be one note brighter so he pops out more and if the darks on the screen are black, the value range on him is so high, he'll stick out on every background.

[mtmbTomSmith]

And the guy's got a monitor face

Maybe there shouldn't be the brightest point of the character on it then or else it's a really shitty monitor that reflects all the light and makes seeing things on it impossible, especially since the helmet seems to reflect absolutely no light.
That highlight should probably go on the head since it's armor and would look harder that way.
The brightest red could also be one note brighter so he pops out more and if the darks on the screen are black, the value range on him is so high, he'll stick out on every background.

I could use the visorhighlight(the spots along its top left edge) on his helmet, and see how that looks.
I also spent about an hour screwing with the run cycle, and here's the new one.


Yeah let me look into the highlight on his armor.


oh, and the boost and double jumps you get later in the game. Boost is limited to the bar under your health. you get it back by killing an enemy with melee, or standing on special energizing tiles. Double jump is pretty straightforward.

egh. This will show it off better

and

[questseeker]

One thing that you inherited from Megaman the wrong way is the posture of the character: he should lean forward a little when walking, and even more importantly when jumping forward.

In Megaman the character normally stands upright, or leans back, in preparation for an upwards jump and/or for the iconic slide forward with raised legs which is important enough to deserve some anticipation in other animation states.

In your game jumping up is uncommon and the slide forward is a marginal move at best: the level mockups are mostly based on precise forward jumps, and therefore forward jumps are the animation that must look as best as possible, at the expense of the others if necessary.

[Crow]

As a non-artist, I just want to chip in and say that I really like these gameplay GIFs. Please keep us updated on the progress of the actual game, this looks very promising.

[Mathias]

Personally, I love what I see so far.

And glad you weathered the rip-claims as professionally as you did. I'd rather see this project grow, not disappear.

I could never do an NES restrictions game. I would want to break the rules all the time.

Yes, it's definitely extremely similar to the original Megaman series, in appearance. But that's one reason I like it - I love the old Megaman's and the character himself (colored a friend's megaman lines a while back).
You wanted to create a Megaman look-alike. So what? Not a crime.
But in order to avoid reactions like you've already gotten, you might just say right up front in your marketing something like "homage to the blue bomber". Ya know . . . something to quell the comments before they even begin.

Visuals aside, you already have movement mechanics that go beyond the old Mega games. I like that.
In platformers, a powerful, capable character is what you want to play as.

You got some great tiles.
Those flora tiles you just posted also distance your game from Megaman - nearly everything in the old Mega's was metallic looking.
Like everything is made from metal. Look at Woodman's tree's even:


I agree with the protagonist issue. He could use some sprucing up.
He kinda looks like a diver, as in a deep-sea diver. Not an LCD mask but a glass visor.
If his face is a screen, why not flash crazy RGB patterns and symbols and different colors and stuff per certain events? Something dynamic like that. It never changes. Only displays rarely-changing eyes therefore doesn't give off a screen impression, to me.


___


I'm reminded of this article:
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2012/05/24/the-guide-to-implementing-2d-platformers/
Just in case you haven't seen it.