WIP: Motel Scene (Looking for criticism)

[Vinik]

Crude edit to give you some ideas. In my defense I did it from my phone

[heyguy]

Good critique by others! The first thing that stood out to me was the lack of shadows. The balcony would cast shadows down onto the sidewalk. Good edit too with regard to the sidewalk. Pushing out the roof shingles to stick out a little would also help with the straight edge. The roof shingles might cast a bit of a shadow too.

Your trees don't match the "realism" of your scene I think. I'd say you need a tree that is as tall or taller than your hotel. Your people are bigger than your trees! If you were trying to capture a Pokemon style, I think you went too big. I like this though!



Street sidewalk being so small compared to the motel seems odd to me. I'd also say that the transition from motel to nature seems quite sudden. The context would matter though, is this in a small town (other establishments, neighbors nearby?), off the highway by itself or something else. I do agree that a motel would have a side or back for dumpsters.

[Zizka]

Alright so:
-I changed the width of the sidewalk next to the hotel (made it narrower).
-I added some shadow on the lower floor.
-I added some curbs to delimit the parking area better.
-I added sidewalk on the sides of the motel as well.
-I added a dumpster.
-I added shadows on the sidewalk. This is really new to me in the sense that I am winging it so it might off.
-I redid the fire hydrant.
-I kept some of the cone trees as I imagine they are younger varieties of the tree (and I also like the way they look).
-I tried adding a patch of dirt in the grass to add some variety in the flat grass.
-Added some flowers (they're hard to see at this point in time).
-Added some rocks.
-Added some bushes (which I'm quite happy with, although they might be on the big side).

I think those are all the edits of Vinik taken care of.

Here's the new version then:


Before I forget, the game is based on this grid:

So the character tokens need to be able to move consistently from one tile to another. This might explain why the size of certain things look off (like the side walks for example). Not to say that I won't fix those, it's just to explain the context. Passable tiles need to look clearly passable for the player and vice-versa.

Street sidewalk being so small compared to the motel seems odd to me.

Yeah, that's something I've noticed too. I want to fix this as well, it's on my list.

Your trees don't match the "realism" of your scene I think. I'd say you need a tree that is as tall or taller than your hotel.

True! The leaf texturing will be quite an undertaking at such a size but that's also on my list.

The context would matter though, is this in a small town (other establishments, neighbors nearby?),

I'm going for a rural motel. The kind that's an hour away from any cities where people can rest when tired of driving so they don't need to reach the next settlement.

Something like this:

[Vinik]

Man that is a huge improvement, the new elements really made the building a volume which is part of the scene. I take back some of my nitpicking on the geometry, as I realized your game is more of a charming illustrated interactive book than a game-space world with geometrically exact collisions and stuff. Your stair is still "incorrect", but it gets the idea across, looks nice and is also consistent with the way many classic rpgs deal with ramps between levels. My game is about  2.d jumping and platforming elements over a tradional rpg perspective, which led me to be too demanding regarding geometry when giving you critique, for which I apologise.

The shadows are enough for a bright day scene, but they could go a little darker.

[eishiya]

I, for one, am still bothered by the stairs because they read like a ladder, and Escher-esque illusions like that tend to distract and annoy me when I see them in games.

[MysteryMeat]

I, for one, am still bothered by the stairs because they read like a ladder, and Escher-esque illusions like that tend to distract and annoy me when I see them in games.

Yeah, this. Try thinning the base of the stairs a bit to give some perspective, or make a gap between the hand-rails and the steps to imply cheap concrete-wrought iron construction.

[Zizka]

Alright, so I redid the upper balcony side. I also redid the stairs. I suddenly knew why I pushed this back for a few days. It was such a headache to do with all the layers and the rails that could only be inclined a certain way because of the rigidity of pixels and so on.

It looks ok to me now. What do you think?

Started adding an (empty) swimming pool and more variety in the vegetation.



Thanks for commenting!

[Vinik]

Lol man, I hate to be the one tell you this but the stair (which I like how it looks) is still landing at the wrong place .

Look at balcony above, it is just as wide as the sidewalk. If the stair starts at the edge of the balcony and then gets down, it already starts beyond the sidewalk, so it would land on the street.

There are only two geometrically correct options:
1- you stretch the sidewalk (to the south) to be  wide enough to accommodate the sidewalk and the stair.
2- the stair lands on the street/parking lot, which I suppose would break some safety rules

Interestingly, you did it right on the pool ladder. Cool pool by the way.

[Zizka]

1- you stretch the sidewalk (to the south) to be  wide enough to accommodate the sidewalk and the stair.
2- the stair lands on the street/parking lot, which I suppose would break some safety rules

I think it could land in the parking lot judging from this picture:
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DA8DTE/st-saint-petersburg-florida-largo-belleair-village-motel-budget-guest-DA8DTE.jpg

So I shifted things around a bit and I added a fountain and improved the swimming pool as well. Looks a bit on the big side. Maybe I could just fill in that spot with grass like in your mockup, Vinik.

It looks wonky with the slabs being pretty big compared to the sidewalk which is smaller and of a different palette though. I'm wondering if the parking space isn't really too mall now though as well. Probably should add some slabs on the right side as well now.

[Xorceles]

Imo a fountain near a Motel looks weird,fountains are more for big houses plazas and big hotels and the balcony still looks like train tracks maybe is the blue that make it look like that
i recommend to add some garbage to that container and were is the hotel manager with with the keys