Commercial Critique - Dodonpachi

[Helm]

(don't mind the awkward ratio resizing)

great things can be done by wrapping one's brain around a technical limitation. Isn't that what pixel art is all about?

[Feron]

helm: lovely screenshot, i vote lionheart for the next CC...
I am torn between your edit and the original, i think i'm tending towards the original though.  Yours have nicer colors, but the straight ramps just seem to look better stylistically.

I am now very perplexed by that ship.  Personally i agree with ptoing, and i think it isn't above it.

I think i am addicted tothis game now, thanks to a certain german  ....

[huZba]

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

You see the tanks in that very same screenshot use selout to a great advantage once more. The red ship is only the worst case scenario and doesn't happen that often and still doesn't look that bad. I don't mean that all selout should be against a black backround, as you see the tanks that are very likely to be on a mid-level road also have selout appropriate for that particular place.



In this screenshot the outline has antialiasing and it works great. Makes it all smooth against that particular backround. Of course it's going to look weird if you take it off context, since it's not supposed to be a standalone sprite with no bg at all. They use values that are between the sprites and the bg for selout, so saying considerably darker was bad wording on my part so there you go. In fact, those rotating turrets on the tanks would look very harsh if they didn't have antialiasing.

I don't think that many artists would use selout in games if it was bad. It works for me in ddp and it works good in a lot of other games. I don't think you should go on a crusade to tell the world it's evil, since it has it's uses. If exhibit a is always on bg color X you can freely use antialiasing on that. Like if you have tanks in a shmup that are always on roads.

Onto the lionheart picture. It's kinda cool how they have things in reverse compared to ddp. Bright colors on backround and darker/less saturated on the foreground. I think that for a long time tiles have been for effective production rather than technical limitations. It's a lot of work to make a whole shmup level without tiles and without recycling too much.

[Helm]

You see the tanks in that very same screenshot use selout to a great advantage once more

I don't see any selout there.

Also the original ship, of course it looks great, as it appears only once in the whole game, on a scripted sequence. It was obviously tested very much. However the problem with selout is that after they made the tanks and ships for the level they belonged on and the selout didn't hurt, they took them and later on in development put them over brighter levels, therefore, problems.

If exhibit a is always on bg color X you can freely use antialiasing on that. Like if you have tanks in a shmup that are always on roads.

Then that's just plain-ol' AA. Selout is darker jaggies to imply separation. We've had this discussion so many times. GOOD SELOUT is just plain ol' AA.

I don't think that many artists would use selout in games if it was bad.

That's bankrupt. Either you defend selout on its practical applications in specific examples, or you don't and renounce it. You can't play the "theoretical third-party artist that uses it well" card. There's lots of bad habits in my opinion in Capcom art for example. They make games for 20 years, but still they have these bad habits. This is commercial critique, and we are critical of everything that goes on, we shouldn't say 'well... they probably know what they're doing'.

[huZba]

I can shell out examples from other games if it's "illegal" just to say other games(or companies), but i'd rather not cause it's a DDP thread. So basically you're saying that DDP does not have selout after all, cause it's good most of the time and therefore not selout. I think the term needs rethinking cause it's stupid.

The tanks have AA on their backs when the turret is turned. Just a few pixels, but it's there.

Anyway, seems like we agree on it so that's it then...

Trying to figure out something other to say about DDP not to make such a useless post, but that's kinda hard cause everything in the game seems to be working to it's full potential (not like 100%, since everything can always be made better and yada yada yada). First thought that maybe the flashing hit counter was a bit too flashing, but that's actually a pretty good way to show a really big font (and to cheat in a transparency effect) without being in the way too much. It's hard to catch with a screenshot since it's flashing with different colors all the time, but here's the brightest frame:


The craters, explosions, halfway destroyed enemies and such are great for giving them substance and making them more fun to destroy. The blocky appearance tingles the destruction nerve as well.

One thing i haven't seen in a shmup game is a directional explosion blast. Like if you hit some turret with a heavy weapon it would explode "forward" and the pieces would fly in one direction instead of just blowing up in place. Kinda hard to explain.....   anyway, great game, gotta try and make some ship for the other thread.

[Feron]

lol this is all you get at the end...



the last boss is a biatch to destroy.

[huZba]

Hehe, i think that was pretty much the most you could expect from games back then. Actually i would've been really happy with that kind of an ending screen. I think it was super r-type that states "you are a super player" in the end and starts over from the beginning. R-type 3 was a bit better having an ending animation of the ship returning to earth. I guess sometimes you didn't even notice the ending due to running around the room going "YEAAAAH I BEAT IT WHOOOO TAKE THAT MUFUKKAAAAA".... well at least i did when i beat Super Contra on the hardest difficulty.

But yeah, that's a good ending. Praise from the lips of a very manly man. Awesome.

[ptoing]

lol this is all you get at the end...



the last boss is a biatch to destroy.

That is not the real ending tho. You have to know that there is a second loop which has requirements to enter.
You have to play it on one credit for one and there are others, not fully sure. Something about that you have to get all the bees in 3 levels or not die at all, something like that. ANYWAY, when you get there you have to play all levels again with more bullets and in the end you get a true last boss (which is the case in most games by CAVE)
which is really really hard and not meant to be beating without dieing a couple of times, so you should get there with as many lives and bombs as possible.

I personally never got to the 2nd loop, still way too cack for that. I think you get a slightly different ending if you beat it.

[fil_razorback]

The exact way to reach the true last boss (giant wasp) is :

-Finish the game without losing a single life
-Finish the second run (you can lose lives now)
-There it is !


(sorry, there's no pixel perfect screenshot of it)

[ptoing]

Still not TLB, Feron cheated his way to it yesterday and made shots, will upload them later.