Pixel sprites and Movement (Help a newbie out?)

[Killindarlings]

Hi there,

I'll start by saying I'm completely new to the pixel art scene (only been doing this for a little less than a month) so please forgive any misused lingo or dumb questions. Digital art is also something new to me and already I've had to do a lot of research in order to even get started. Fortunately, I've found a TON of great information on sites like this and Pixel Prospector- tutorials and old forum posts are incredibly helpful.

But no matter how much I search, I can't find any discussions on what I thought might be an important subject in top-down RPG's. And that's the choice between sprites that can move diagonally on the plane, and those who can only move up, down, left and right.

Here are some examples of what I mean-



In Pokemon you can only move up and down, left and right. So the Sprite has front, back and side views.



In Mother 3 you can move diagonally too, and so the sprites have left up/down and right up/down facing views (there's gotta be a better term for it) along with the rest.



And then there's games like Undertale, which have sprites with only four views but can still move diagonally.


The whole reason I bring this up, is because right now I'm currently in the process of creating my own character sprites, and I wanted to know which of these three forms of movement is more popular and why? I really like the sprites in the Mother series, and the idea of adding those extra frames for diagonal movement seem worth it, despite how much longer it may take to make all the sprites needed for a game. But is it practical or have any advantages? The aesthetic is nice, but how many pixel art games out there bother to use this form?

This is probably a lot of questions and maybe this is more of a game development question? I apologize again for any confusion. Any answers or thoughts on the subject would be appreciated. Thanks.

[yaomon17]

Whether or not you allow diagonal movement is really a situational decision. You need to ask yourself whether or not diagonal movement adds anything significant to the game and weigh that vs. the additional time it would take to implement it. Depending on what the movement in the game is like, diagonal movement can range entirely from completely necessary to adding nothing of value. e.g. Adding diagonal movement to the original pokemon games would be adding little in terms of how much a player gets out of the game, but removing diagonal movement from a game like Megaman Battle Network would literally make a lot of the game and movement puzzled unplayable. Since you have the choice already of whether or not to implement the additional 4 directions, I assume that it isn't anything you absolutely require for the game. In this case, it is oftentimes more of a luxury to have 8 direction movement.

[Killindarlings]

Thanks for the input! It really does center around what kind of a game you want to make, huh? To be honest I'll probably make the extra four directions anyways, if for no other reason that practicing the form. But yeah, it just needs to fit the situation I guess.

[Gil]

Consider this: you enjoy looking at 8-directional sprites and you are excited about getting to draw them. Unless you quit your day job and time becomes hugely important, just do what you think is fun. And lastly, your question about which is more popular is a bad way of thinking about things. You shouldn't try to emulate popular games, you should make the game you would like to play. If it's too far from what the market wants, you rein it in a bit. If it's too similar to other titles, you push it away a bit (add some quirks that make it stand out). There's a good talk about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_0Tawc_1A4

[Killindarlings]

That's a really good point. I should just go with my gut on these things and try not to think about what's popular so much as what is the game I want to make. Typing this out right now, I think I already knew all this- there have been other projects in my life that I did just because it was what I wanted to do.  I just needed to hear it again. Thanks for that. And thanks for the video too!