[C+C] Top down RPG: sprites and stuff

[Skaz]

Hi!

So, I'm starting to think of a new project and tried a few things. Currently looking for a strong direction in style. For those how remember my other project (a platformer, which collapsed on itself, due to my lack of experience with game maker, coding, and making game in general) it's quite close. Few colours, small sprites. I prefer small additions here and there over complex and heavy textures. Which leads me to question those trees, maybe to complex in shape. Anyway, I post it to get feedback, ideally constructive one Edits welcome.


It's mostly researches. No, Link won't be in my game. Neither will be Gordon Freeman. It was a test to see if I can make recognizable stuff at such a small scale. also, lots of beard styles :p


A runcycle, I made it to see how long it will take, to make realistic time estimations. FYI, it took me 20min/frame, it's 8 frames long. So 2h40. What's your average speed?

That's all for now!

[Fizzick]

Cool stuff! -snip- Also remember that you can use saturation contrast to pop certain things a bit. Keep it up.

EDIT:
disregard the shading comment.

[jordyadan]

I like your style! I'm a newbie in pixel arting and drawing in general, but I think the hair/bear color have to contrast with the skin tone, I changed the color to look more dwarvish and looked better



again, I'm a beginner in pixel art

[Skaz]

Thanks for the replies !

Yeah, I might need a little bit more contrast, specially when I restrict myself to only tow shades for most of the colours.
For the blond hair / beards, I just didn't bother making other colours, I restricted myself with this to compare the different characters shapes more efficiently. Not everybody is going to be blond :p
I'm also thinking of a way to adjust the hue of the sprites within the engine, to save time and space. No multiple sprites, just multiple colour code.
Note that the "engine" I speak of is actually zero line of code long, so far. I'm that deep in that project.

Tweaked the running animation, legs adjusted to depth and lateral shift. Also added shadow, because why not?



Working on some snowy landscape, makes me realize that character with good looking colours on a green background looks really really dark on a light background...

[Skaz]

Some more researches, this time a snowy place. The main problem is communicating volume with a low colour count, and a sort off top down view. It's really rough, but it's mainly a quick experiment.
I consider making every zone of the game this way: hand painted, then add collision on top of it. Might work! Or might not...

[Daimoth]

Did it take much tweakin to get those branches looking convincing? Single pixel details are, like, the hardest thing about this medium, in my opinion.

I'd like to see you play with more dramatic contrast. Might be interesting given the style, as I'm not sure how it would look.

[Skaz]

Much tweaking? Nooooo :p I made the trunk and the branches separately, then added the "leaves" (yeah its a pine tree, you get the idea) and then made a tree combining those elements. Then came the tweaking to make it look good. But if you really want to know, I'm going to show you how shamefully awful was the first iteration. Not that the second one was great either.



Yeah, I know. I really had no clue... Photos are your friend in this situation.

The third one isn't the final one, I then removed a LOT of lonely pixels, as it mismatches the style of the character, and simplified the colours as well. Those trees looks too noisy. So yeah, it's surely a really hard aspect of pixel art.

I might try to play with contrast, the scene could look more vivid this way. Problem is I'm always scared when it comes to snow, I mean you want to use white, right? But in the end you don't.

[Daimoth]

Oh dude, you're telling me. Guess how long the hands of the guy on the right took me. They still lack contrast.

With snow yeah, it will still be mostly white. The idea is to deepen cracks and crevasses.

[PixelPiledriver]

my other project (a platformer, which collapsed on itself, due to my lack of experience with game maker, coding, and making game in general)

GM seems to be quite prone to skull crushing piles of code.
Try making most of your stuff as Scripts that are external from the objects.
Then call the scripts like functions and pass objects and data into them to be processed. --> and returned if needed
Rather than having objects carry a lot of their own code around.
This way you can build code that can be re used for new and old objects in the game.

[Skaz]

Try making most of your stuff as Scripts that are external from the objects.
Then call the scripts like functions and pass objects and data into them to be processed. --> and returned if needed
Rather than having objects carry a lot of their own code around.
This way you can build code that can be re used for new and old objects in the game.

This advice is so good I wish I had it earlier... That's exactly what I've done for my current project, scripts and arguments. Not like I really had the choice, NOT doing it would make the whole thing impossible. Fire a bullet, 15 lines. Copy and past it in every enemy? NOPE NOPE NOPE.

I don't think GM is prone to make project collapse. Incompetent coders are