AuthorTopic: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion  (Read 12413 times)

Offline KidsMob

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #10 on: November 16, 2015, 09:20:41 am
 ;D
« Last Edit: November 16, 2015, 09:22:14 am by KidsMob »

Offline KidsMob

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #11 on: November 16, 2015, 09:28:41 am
This game it's very funny

Offline aamatniekss

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #12 on: November 17, 2015, 11:41:03 am
Ok, I took some of your suggestions and tried improving the tiles. I basically started using more of the grass blades and the mud spots. I won't use them too often like in this screenshot probably, but in a bigger bunch here and there and some single ones spread out everywhere. And the biggest problem I had with the tileset is the transition from grass to dirt, it was just too clean and not grassy at all. So I made it have little grass blades everywhere, I think it's a huge improvement, makes it looks more natural. 

And yes, there will definitely be more decorations for the world than just trees, though they all will be destructible. I want it to be like this cool place in the start with all kinds of trees,tractors,toilets and what not, and when you're done there's basically only blood and pig parts left on the ground. :D  I just haven't gotten around to making all of those yet, as I wanted to solidify the base tiles first.
@Theoden, nope it's not inspired by cyangmou's art. ;) I just tried going for some more interesting shaped trees. :)



Oh and I tried designing some new main heroes for the game, but can't decide which one I like the most. Help?

« Last Edit: November 17, 2015, 01:37:47 pm by aamatniekss »

Offline TheReaper9456

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #13 on: November 17, 2015, 04:43:54 pm
Well, there's clearly some improvement in your tiles, and yeah I don't think you should over saturate the ground too much with them, but you seem to have a good idea about how many to put. On a side note...rocks and sticks and leaves, etc. would be good around as well. (not specifically ones that you can interact with, but as tiles - just a thought *shrug*

The outhouse it pretty cool, though I did just realize some stuff about your shadows...Do you currently have it so your character's and enemies' colors darken in the shadows? Just a small nitpick, but it would make your game just that more realistic. Also, you may want to change the angle that the shadows are cast as well. It's not completely necessary and as long as the shadows are all facing the same direction as they are already it's fine, but I just personally feel like it would be more interesting to have the light source in the top-left corner of the map.

As for your characters - what's wrong with having them all? Or a simple "choose your head, torso, and legs" option? Either way - hope this helped.

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #14 on: November 17, 2015, 05:09:35 pm
Seconding including them all or allowing mix-and-match parts, if you have the energy to animate them!
I like the chap in red and green, and the butcher. Ear-hat guy's cool too. Rat-tail Elvis though... I can't decide!

I also agree about the shadows. They look boring, and the outhouse shadow almost reads like a gameplay element because of how straight it is. Even a slight skew would work wonders.

The new trees are interesting, but between how few leaves there are compared to the volume of the trunk and their size relative to the characters, they look stunted. Since they're so small compared to the characters, perhaps they should be bushes instead of trees?

I don't like the white in the new sprites, it looks too bright and clean. I think a more off-white colour would be more suitable, maybe a warm grey (with appropriately warm shadows), which would work both for clothes and hair.

Offline aamatniekss

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #15 on: November 18, 2015, 04:22:44 pm
While I totally agree about the shadows, that they would look better if they had a bit of an angle to them, however I won't change them. There are various reasons for that, like me scaling the game up 2x or 3x and because of that the shadows look bad when skewed. Because they're made with code not drawn by hand. The shadows are mostly there to stay how they are, nothing much will change about them.
I tried fixing the toilet shape a bit to make the shadow less straight, and more irregular, I think it looks a bit better now.

And about the characters I've decided that I will actually add a character select, thanks! ^^ I added 2 female characters too, and I think I fixed that white colour you mentioned, eishiya. :)
Talking about the trees, I actually looked at pictures of stunted and weird looking trees as reference, so it was kind of what I was going for, haha. :D But still I felt that you were right that they looked a bit weird, especially the smallest tree, so I made it a bit taller and added more leaves.
I also added some more decorations to the ground as suggested, a few rocks and a flower here and there. I think Im pretty happy with how it looks now, and I should finally start doing other things for the game. :D Though I will add some more stuff eventually.



Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #16 on: November 18, 2015, 04:47:24 pm
Everything looks better! I still feel that cool greys feel a bit too clean for farmer/redneck types though xP

Would it not be possible to skew the shadows by offsetting each pixel row slightly (by 1px for 45 degree shadows, offset every other row by 1px for 26 degree shadows, etc)? If you keep the angle low (e.g. add 1 pixel of offset for every 3 rows, instead of every row), the shadows would still look pretty good, I think. It wouldn't look any worse zoomed in than anything else does, as long as the angle is kept low enough that features aren't distorted into unrecognizability.

In my opinion, if you can't do skewed shadows to your satisfaction, it might be better to not have shadows at all, and instead have some simple small shadows as part of each object.

Offline aamatniekss

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #17 on: November 18, 2015, 05:31:04 pm
Well, they just had washing day, haha. :D But don't know im kind of liking it, makes them stand out a little more, and that's pretty important because of how much action will be going on. :)

Hmm, that would work nicely probably, however I feel it might be too performance intensive, especially since im planning to animate the trees, and together with animation it might take a lot of processing power. Oh well, yeah and the all the characters would require the shadows to be that way too and all of them are animated, so with 300 enemies on screen at once it could be quite a fps dip. I'd prefer saving on the performance so I can have even more enemies on the screen at once, because I want it to be a really frantic shooter, with hundreds of enemies on screen at once.

Well, before these shadows I had the simple circle ones for each sprite, but I asked quite a lot of people which ones they preferred and everyone pretty much unanimously agreed that these shadows look cooler and more original. Though I had an idea to just add an option to switch between both types of shadows. I'll probably do that. :)

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #18 on: November 18, 2015, 05:51:16 pm
Giving an option seems good! And yeah, I can imagine that slicing up the shadow with so many objects on screen would be a nightmare. There might be ways to optimize it (for example, pre-calculate every shadow frame at startup, store them in RAM along with the sprites and just blit them as needed without calculating them every time), but you probably have more important things to focus on.
Third alternative: bad weather. Add some dramatic rain and dimmed colours, and there, a perfect excuse to not have any shadows ;D

Further on the subject of shadows: your shadows stack, which looks weird. By that, I mean if something casts a shadow while standing in a shadow, the part where the shadows overlap is darker. Shadows don't stack unless they're shadows from different light sources, which is why it looks weird.
This should be fairly easy to fix: when calculating and drawing your shadows, render them as a solid colour onto a separate layer instead of rendering them right onto the game screen. That way, when they overlap, it won't make them darker. Then, once you've drawn them all on that layer, draw that whole shadow layer at the appropriate opacity and blending mode. Depending on how rendering is done in your game, it might even help boost performance since the shadows only get blitted onto the screen once, all the other drawing happens off-screen, as pure math.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2015, 05:59:47 pm by eishiya »

Offline aamatniekss

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Re: [WIP][C+C] Need help on improving graphics - Bacon Rebellion

Reply #19 on: November 18, 2015, 06:25:46 pm
Yep, im definitely not doing that.. :P

Haha, and yeah I already did that shadow stacking thingy a couple days ago. :D