Commercial Critique - Dodonpachi

[Gil]

That last one looks better than the original, though it also changed the style considerably by going multi-chromatic. The selout replacement is just plain better on Helm's edit.

[Froli]

Note: original piece is the upper one.

I noticed that helms piece on some areas needs a little adjustment. I don't know if I'm making sense here or my english is good enough to explain it, but would you helm, adjust the pallete on that area with the box and make it a little darker so that it has more emphasis that those areas are in a lower level?

[Helm]

wow that really really does not show on the original one, so I was working without keeping the shadow of the above part on the below part in mind. I don't think the edit, or even the original suffers much from this anyway, given the reflected lights and all. I look at it and it still looks halfway-illusionary. Good eye for you, but not sure what to do about it. Disregarding it is closer to the style than actually weightening that shadow. I might edit later.

[huZba]

Notice how helm's edit has jaggies against a black backround and the original doesn't. That's the reason the selout is there. The backrounds are considerably darker than the sprites, so the antialiasing-to-a-darker-bg aka selout works.

[Helm]

Considerably darker? I beg to differ, sir. I am noticing jaggies along the side of the red ship there. A few levels are pretty much same-value between ships and backgrounds. What you say is right in theory, but it doesn't hold up in reality. ALL selout looks wonderful against a pure-black background, but it turns out, unless you're doing a starfield game, there is really not many shmups where you work against a black background through the whole game.

Selout = evil

[Conzeit]

this is awesome, I would have never personally proposed this but it IS pretty damn interesting.

dodon pachi's shading basically seems to be surface angle coded to me.

meaning if it's vertical it's dark and the more horizontal it gets, the lighter it gets. that is the basic premise, a very simple premise.

Therefore to make it more eye catching, they use rimming and an astounding amount of bevels and extra detail on all surfaces, with some diferent colored lines and rims to top it off.

this is the reason height is so hard to tell within a single sprite, it is so marked in fact that they use projected shadows to show higher planes.

I must accept I say all this whitout having ever played the game 

I am far more interested in the way they did the organic surfaces, I think the dirt textures are very convincing, and the ruinscapes I see in these screenshots are very well pulled off. HELM, what did you mean when you said they are not "efficiently tiled"?

[ptoing]

Note: original piece is the upper one.

I noticed that helms piece on some areas needs a little adjustment. I don't know if I'm making sense here or my english is good enough to explain it, but would you helm, adjust the pallete on that area with the box and make it a little darker so that it has more emphasis that those areas are in a lower level?

I think you are reading the ship wrong, Froli. I am very sure that the 2 parts are on the same level, the one with the guns is in the back, so the frontal wings are sloped down not to be shot by the bullets. The middle part is mainly a horizontal rectangular affair.

[Helm]

Is it that he's reading it wrong or that it has a propensity to be read wrong. One is his fault, the other is of the art. I'm torn, it looks like an optical illusion.

Camus:



efficient tiling. Do you see any tiling here? This, as many 1996-era video-games uses absurdly large 'chunks' of graphics, repeated as needed on multilayers, to dress up the backgrounds. We're not looking at 32x32 tiles or anything. It's okay because they had the memory and the speed to show these graphics in the PCB at the time, but from a tiling standpoint there's not much interest.

[ptoing]

I have to say I on a whole like this approach more. Tiles are overrated

[Krut]

I have to say I on a whole like this approach more. Tiles are overrated

Well, tiles are a technical limitation.
Its fun to use them tough...