Hellgate to Baator

[Adam]

Hi!

After some 300 FRUA (Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures) combat icons I did this year, I decided to put together an own module.

These are the first wallset templates for the 3D view (daub and wattle houses with thatch roof), and I'm not very satisfied.


Es you see its 16 color EGA (#67F79B is transparent). The first row is a simple representation, the second row is a bit more detailed.

Though I really like the simple look of the first version, I feel it lacks a bit of spice. My try of detailed version looks a bit noisy though.

Any thoughts, critiques, advice?

[heyguy]

I know nothing about FRUA or 16 color EGA but I think you should try and tone down the bright yellow of the thatched roof. Something about it looks blinding to me but I'm unfamiliar with FRUA and 16 color EGA palette. I personally like the detailed versions. I don't think it looks noisy at all. I do think that the nearly pure white and pure yellow are looking too intense on the image, if that makes any sense.

Daub and wattle. I just learned two new words.

[Gil]

you should try and tone down the bright yellow of the thatched roof

The only thing you need to know is that he can't edit those colors you see, so toning down the yellow would involve adding extra darker detail, or some sort of pattern, like dithering.

[Adam]

As Gil already mentioned the 16 color palette is given.

Pool of Radiance had some images of thatched roof houses using the red colors, so I had a try at it:


And here are the icons I made. The style shoud be consistent in the game.

[surt]

Always love your EGA stuff.
The red thatch doesn't look right to me. I'd reserve that for a tiled roof.

[Adam]

Always love your EGA stuff.
The red thatch doesn't look right to me. I'd reserve that for a tiled roof.

As I became an EGA-only pixeler lately, this means you love all my stuff! I hope at some point in the far future I'll be as confident with those 16 colors as you are.

I settled with something like this right now:


Been working on the title screens, all of them are finished but this one:

This is like the tenth iteration, but I'm not a bit satisfied. It should be dramatic. I'm really unexperienced with composition, as you can see. Any suggestions what could be done there?

[Decroded]

Love the sprites I'm just trying to understand how this stuff fits together into a game scene.
can u tell us more about the game and the perspectives etc?

[Adam]

Love the sprites I'm just trying to understand how this stuff fits together into a game scene.
can u tell us more about the game and the perspectives etc?

Certainly. FRUA is a RPG game maker with which you could create AD&D adventures like the good old SSI Goldbox games.

It has two main views. One of those is the "3D exploration" view: a grid based pseudo-3D first person view of the village/dungeon your party is exploring. It draws predrawn wall tiles over each other to simulate the first person view effect.
Pool of Radiance (the first Goldbox game) example:

/this particular version has even harder restrictions, all the wallsets are built by using a set of 200 or so 8x8 pixel tiles!/
The village sets ar drawn as bases for the wallsets.

The other is the tactical combat screen. An orthographic (cabinet projection) view of the battlefield where the turn based combat happens.
Pool of Radiance example:

The combat icon sprites are used there.

Though FRUA already supports VGA; for aesthetical reasons and for the sake of simplicity I stick to the standard EGA colors.

Images taken from the CRPG Addict blog.

[dpixel]

Here's a roof idea:

[Adam]

Here's a roof idea:

Thanks! I like the idea of the highlights, and the red base color of the wood is also working suprisingly good. I'll consider taking over some elements, though I already started to clean up the 3D projections.

Meanwhile I returned to the last title image, and started to clean it up too. Despite the fact that the composition still bothers me...