AuthorTopic: Critique wanted on a project  (Read 1977 times)

Offline Shavv

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Critique wanted on a project

on: September 20, 2016, 09:50:49 pm
Hi my name is Shavv and i would like some critique on our current project Asantia. We were going for a simple but good looking theme. Not to much detail, but detail enough to see the difference in factors that are applied in the game and put under a loop. Now currently we are looking in re-vamping all the graphics to make it more appealing.

Note that I want to imply that i still want this to be simplified pixel art, but not sloppy pixelart (Like it maybe currently looks)

Things i would like to note before criticizing, where I would like a focus on:

- Player appearance
- Atmosphere
- Effects detail
- Pixel Lightning
- Super simplified Inventory icons

And if you have something to tell, what would you change, how would you improve it?

Quote from: Images









Offline Shavv

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Re: Critique wanted on a project

Reply #1 on: September 20, 2016, 09:53:18 pm
Some Player re-vamp tests:




Offline eishiya

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Re: Critique wanted on a project

Reply #2 on: September 20, 2016, 11:24:36 pm
This is a matter of taste, but auto-rotated and imperfectly* scaled pixel art will always look sloppy to me, even if the underlying art is great. Rotation and uneven scaling destroy the clarity that pixel art can provide and just make the result look wonky. For a game with dynamic rotation and scaling, vector or high-res art looks much better than pixel art, because those distortions are not an issue there, since high-res art doesn't need each pixel to be perfect to communicate clearly.
*By "imperfect" scaling I mean scaling that's not an exact multiple, scaling where you end up with pixels of different sizes instead of them all being the same size and shape.

I'm personally not a fan of lighting like that, but I like the glimmer/animation you've got there. However, that feels more appropriate for something like fire than... floaty magic lights? The lights' animations don't suggest that they're varying in brightness, so the glimmering dynamic lights feel out of place. And since the floaty magic lights move up and down, I feel like the dynamic lights should too.

The white and red frames in the inventory screen are rather distracting and hinder the readability of the icons. The icons without frames read quite well though! I think you should simplify the frames so that the icons don't overlap them.

Offline Shavv

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Re: Critique wanted on a project

Reply #3 on: September 21, 2016, 08:42:28 am
This is a matter of taste, but auto-rotated and imperfectly* scaled pixel art will always look sloppy to me, even if the underlying art is great. Rotation and uneven scaling destroy the clarity that pixel art can provide and just make the result look wonky. For a game with dynamic rotation and scaling, vector or high-res art looks much better than pixel art, because those distortions are not an issue there, since high-res art doesn't need each pixel to be perfect to communicate clearly.
*By "imperfect" scaling I mean scaling that's not an exact multiple, scaling where you end up with pixels of different sizes instead of them all being the same size and shape.

Hmm, I think on this point you are absolutely right. The "imperfect" scaling is done by the engine becouse of the animation system we have. This animation system lets a weapon or gear on the player drawn himself follow it and also dynamically change in certain events. Shamefully this is not able to change since the core of the engine, the game, will fail. Maybe High-res art is better on this point. I will take note of this and see how we could resolve this problem without beating up the core.

I'm personally not a fan of lighting like that, but I like the glimmer/animation you've got there. However, that feels more appropriate for something like fire than... floaty magic lights? The lights' animations don't suggest that they're varying in brightness, so the glimmering dynamic lights feel out of place. And since the floaty magic lights move up and down, I feel like the dynamic lights should too.

The floaty magic lights indeed feel like a sort of fire source, becouse we thought that would be best to describe a tiny little creature and give it focus on where he is and also make you notice the creature a lot when walking around the world.

The animation does indeed not suggest there varying in brightness, tho they even do ingame. Thats a certain point indeed we need to take care of, and make sure thats handled.


The white and red frames in the inventory screen are rather distracting and hinder the readability of the icons. The icons without frames read quite well though! I think you should simplify the frames so that the icons don't overlap them.

Normally you are not having a lot of those frames in your inventory because they are rarity grades,lets say the fancier the frame, the higher the rating. Altough it is kind of messy indeed. I get your point and i completely agree, with no overlaping icons on the frames.



Thank you so much Eishiya, for your time to have a look. And of course thank you for your critique.