AuthorTopic: Ragnarok Online has seen better days...has nothing to do with the inane gameplay  (Read 4083 times)

Offline Doppleganger

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Occassionally I like to browse through ROempire's gallery of monster sprites for inspiration or reference. I did such a thing yesterday and came across some hideous sprite work. Of course it's not terrible but compared to the rest of Ragnarok's sprites it is.



Allow me to introduce you to the Archdamon. I think that's its name anyways. While the work in general isn't too shoddy, the animation really is. I'm pretty sure that somebody else made the base sprite and then the job was handed over to somebody else to finish it up. Everything is extraordinarily amateur and depreciates the quality of the sprite greatly. Simple pixel shifting, crappy rotation, scribbled in effects and hideous red overlays are the culprits here.



It's sprites like this one that originally inspired me to work hard as a pixel artist. There is so much character, technique, and skill involved that I've set quality like this as my benchmark goal some odd years ago. In some ways I've surpassed that goal and in others I have not but, a goal it will most likely remain.

So, the point of this here message; do you appreciate Ragnarok's sprites? Does it discourage you knowing that Gravity is letting crap like the Archdamon through? Ragnarok online has been around forever and a sequel is in the makes, I think. It will be 3D if it's made, so I don't really care but, I believe sprites like the Archdamon hint at the end of Gravity caring about this beautifully pixeled, otherwise crappy, game. Thoughts?

Offline ndchristie

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we.....that would imply that ragnarok was ever beautifully pixelled.  beautifully drawn and animated yeah, and they've gone far downhill since the early post-release days (original stuff is not so great either, they didn't come into their own for a bit of time), but ragnarok has never been an example of good pixelart.
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The same mistake three or more times is a motif.

Offline vierbit

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Wow that explosion looks ridiculous bad.
I played RO some weeks in the open beta phase (because it was free).
Agree with Adarias, while most enemys have there charm, pixeltechnic wise they are not that bad but also not great.
They have to much colors (that treeThing has 64!),and there animation consist often of simply moving parts.
Nothing wrong with the fact that they inspired you to work hard as a pixel artists.

Offline Dusty

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I don't get it. You criticize the first one for bad animation... rotated bits, bad effects and such, but praise the next monster.
The tree is just as bad in my opinion as the first. The animation is painfully jumpy, there's tons of effects(including rotated bits), and jumpy animation. The swinging tree top animation thing is just(from what I can tell) two different frames with a lot of effects thrown in. Same with the dying animation, just took bits of the tree and had them rotated/scatter around.

Oh man... that tree's running animation makes my head hurt.

Offline Sherman Gill

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The swinging tree top animation thing is just(from what I can tell) two different frames with a lot of effects thrown in.
Aw man, that's actually pretty clever, I didn't notice till you pointed it out. :ouch:
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But I like shrimps more haha ;)

Offline Dusty

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Actually after opening it and looking at it frame by frame, it seems there are 4 'unique' frames, but the differences are so subtle it's hard to see them through all the effects.