Hapless Happenstance

[Storyteller]

Hapless Happenstance

this is a small project I am doing in unity.

it feature pixel (and maybe a little low spec) art. the palettes are heavily reduced and uses scaled graphics from a small image size, which often looks bad but I think can be made to work with the right program settings.

Hapless Happenstance is about a janitor or maintenance guy on a space reactor station of some sort. (oooh sci-fi) which is marked for scuttling (scrapping) and no one tells him until the alarms go off. He has to make his way out of the bottom of the station to the escape pods up top.

I may do this as preconfigured levels or possibly in a random-endless-runner-esque type thing. One thing is certain, lots of platforms to jump on and maybe some ladders. I like the idea of randomness to make it very replayable.

I know basically what it will look like and play like (you remember the end of metroid, where you had to escape after you kill mother brain? its like that, but it takes forever and you can get lost easier and stuff is trying to kill you)

this is really just a chance for me to hone my limited pixel art skills and work with low res, low palette techniques.

I will have artwork here over the next week as time permits. This project should be completed in about 4-6 weeks.


things Im making:

3-5 backdrops
5-9 platforms
1 player character
-standing
-walking
-jumping

optional
ladders
fans moving
doors opening
gears rotating
1-3 enemies (robots)
player
-ducking
-running

I dont want too much feature creep, this is just a simple exercise and 'mini game'

I am using this post as a 'project charter', I will be posting my sketches and block drawings over the next few days.

I am primarily using

sketckbook and mischief for concepting and blocking
graphics gale and grafx2 for pixel work (grafx2 looks awesome)
unity for coding
sfxr and musagi for music
shield android tv for deployment

see you over the next week

here is a link to some old images I made for this some time ago

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8kNS4Jz5Bx9fkQwNnJmMGJoS18yQ2ZseXBxZ1pyUjd0Tk9ra3B3ZTlWNi05MUVKQWVQa0U&usp=sharing

[Storyteller]

Thoughts on palettes?







Im noticing they are mostly the same and so I know I want the greys, the tans, the oranges, which leaves me with some blue, green and purple. i also noticed I was really close to the C=64 palette, which was my first computer. so obviously I have been exploring palettes and Im defining what Im going for.

The project will be deployed to android TV, and mine is a 1080p, which if I divide by 4,  I get 480x270... which remotely resembles some older game console type format... I guess. It also divides into 16x16 evenly and scales to 64x64 at true HD display. This means I can evenly scale to full display res by a simple 4x and not break my aesthetics.

Speaking of aesthetics, which is vaguely the point of this exercise (Im terrible at pixel art) Im aiming for speed of completion. Im not going to pretend to be an expert at pixel techniques. and, as unpoplular as I know it will be to say, I dont think I should focus on higher level pixel techniques, such as selout and dithering or manual AA. Im not good at them and I dont want to spend a lot of time on this. so, taking those things away, Im left with low res and a limited palette, so a focus on form, readability and shading.

Im not really sure 16 or 32 colors is needed, but I want to stay close to it. Moreso, my limitation is color ramps of 4 or 5 colors, and only 4 or 5 of those, which actually puts me somewhere near 20-24 colors, or something like 24 colors or maybe a modifications of like a color gameboy or something.

My limitations then are, defined planes of background, foreground, player/enemies and 'UI'. Each plane will have a specific set of color ramps. The player is orange and 'blue'. I will allocate a good 4-5, maybe 5 colors for him.
Backgrounds will be made from tilesets of desaturated colors using the tan, green and greys.
Foregrounds will be red, grey and blue, depending on the background plane.

So basically, small ramps and muted tones.

here are some links to other color palettes as I experiment





http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/003/9/7/video_game_consoles_palettes_by_roman_ss_squall-d5qbidg.png


anyway, working through color selection, this helps me understand my limitations, which in turn helps me move more quickly.

Here is a sketch of my main character, which started as a quick silhouette and then got painted over in sketch book. Im taking him into graphics gale and shrinking down to 128x128, then working from there to clean up and get the colors right, then I will drop to about 64x128 or so for the final base sprite