Fire Emblem

[Vagrant]

Henceforth, this topic shall be concerned on the commercial critique of the game called Fire Emblem.

But I don't mean the american FE7 release, but the actual first Fire Emblem instead: Shadow Dragon. This is an in-between projects micro-activity of mine which aims use the GBA Fire Emblem game limitations/specs to replicate the first iteration of the series, to my own whims and taste.

Some of you may know that I like to do GBA revamps here and then, like the Pokemon Emerald Mock-up in PJ. This should be no different.
There's just something about it that's enjoyable.

I'll begin with the Lord himself...



Good old reliable Jeigan is also underway...



Basic limitations include 15 colours and fitting in that box there. Concept-wise, I may borrow from Shadow Dragon DS alot, but not always.

[Kazuya Mochu]

Love these! So freakin clean and neat!
If I had to say anything, and I'm really struggling, is that maybe the cloths could be a bit more saturated... I mean, maybe...

but awesome work!

[ErekT]

I'll be bookmarking this I think.

Wow, so very nice shading! Nothing to crit here, just had to say.

Bottom dude looks like Harrison Ford.

[Ryumaru]

Will you be doing anything with the tiles and sprites? No doubt you're going to kill it on the portraits, but I'd love to see what you would do with the other assets.

[Vagrant]

I could've sworn I wrote up there what I was aiming for... How could it have been deleted? Eh. My bad. 

Well, I was doing some digging in those FE forums and it seems there's plenty of hacking tools that can easily insert/replace almost everything there is in the games.

I want to make at least one playable map, with all the required components: Four more of these portraits (Kain and Abel and some enemies), a few sprites (Jagen, Marth, Cavalier), the 16x16 tileset for a castle area, and some menus to embellish things nicely. Right, and maybe the backgrounds. (2 of them, 240x160)

It's tempting, and short... I think I'll give it a go.

[Bloodocean7]

I love fire emblem and though I am not an artist I've seen alot of work and I love this!


Great job man,
Bloodocean7

[Vagrant]

Beginning on some workable base tiles here. Aiming for a muted gloom feeling.





And honestly feeling a bit lost. Pallete wise, and well, everything-wise?
Advice welcome on how to bring some life to this... Maybe It's because I haven't slept.

I'm using the Shadow Dragon tiles as reference.

[Helm]

Please look at the beautiful Alundra as it's in a similar vein to what you're trying to do

http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Alundra-World.png

edit: perhaps inside the mine in particular?

http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Alundra-InsideCoalMine.png

[Cyangmou]

Beginning on some workable base tiles here. Aiming for a muted gloom feeling.

What currently feels odd to me is:

-the walls have the same color/contrast as the ground, if they would have a different color you could improve the readability significantly
-floor is the most detailled part of the piece, the water and the walls are currently much easier to look at - the lower contrasted floor you used less feels much better and should be used for the majority of the floor mapping.

Aside from that it seems that it could get really cool, once it's finished.

[Vagrant]

I appreciate the critique. Here's a revised version... Although I'm not yet still 'there', at the 'takes my breath away' level I'd prefer this to be.





I felt lost at first, interestingly enough. Found myself having that unconscious lag, or, the slowness one gets when trying something for the first time. Staring at the image a lot and over thinking pixel placements, and not knowing where to take the piece. (As opposed to having your brain effortlessly doing everything almost automatically, which is the sign of experience and practice.) Overcoming that is making this exercise more than worth it.

It's odd because I've been working on this other game for over a year now, which has a very similar approach and style to this, except it's tiles are 32x32 instead of 16... I didn't think it would be -that- different.