[wip] Forest bg

[philipptr]

While thinking about possible 2d bgs for a mobile phone sh'm'up I came up with the idea of stealing one of the flink bgs. Well mainly stealing the idea and the layout. (Before I earn a strike: it's neither drawn over the respective blink bg nor did I even look at the original while pixeling this, it's just a test on how well I would do pixelling a scene from flink that I had in mind.)



Problems I have which I don't really know how to fix:
- contrast/colours. I'm not sure but game+high contrast bg doesn't work very well, right? I had less contrast in older versions of this but it looked much worse so this was the best I was able to do. secondary light-source isn't working very well with these colours too.
- tiling. I'm going to make some more tiles, but this looks far too repetative to be statisfied with.

So if someone has any ideas how to fix these points or if there are any other flaws but being a bit sketchy here and there, I would really like to know

Edit: please ignore the broken HUD at the bottom.

[JJ Naas]

The scene has a resemblance to some old Psygnosis games... which is great, because I like the mood created by those graphics alone. Ork, for example.

http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/screenshots/full/ork_01.gif (Copypaste the link, it doesn't seem to work otherwise)

Here's a secondary light source as well.. of course, this isn't a shmup so the situation may not be applicaple here, but the secondary lighting works fairly well, I think.

I have an issue with the thickest branch of the tree. It's too thick, the weight seems too much for the trunk to support. Besides, the thickest branch shouldn't be located in the upper part of the tree.

In general, I like the atmosphere and the whole thing a lot. 

[Ben2theEdge]

Generally speaking you don't wanna have three of the same object on the screen with a perfectly uniform amount of distance between them. What you have right now would give the "Tom and Jerry" effect to the extreme in motion. If you have to repeat the same object at least change up the space between them.

[Rargh!]

"Tom and Jerry" effect?

[Ben2theEdge]

The Tom and Jerry effect is when they run across a living room that's apparently several miles long and they pass the same chair and table 50 times.

[Helm]

You mean to say that your living room isn't several miles long and designed like a factory line? I thought everyone's house was like that.

[Rargh!]

Gotcha. Have there been many games that have resorted to that technique? Most (from memory) seem not to, but I missed the whole GBA handheld cycle. I was primarily PC through the early days of consoles and handhelds...

[philipptr]

@jj naas: yes you are right, I need to fix the balance of the tree.
@Ben2theEdge:yes, the repetative effect is too extreme. I think I really need to make more tiles and/or make them bigger if I want to keep that tree.
I'm going to fix both points in the next edit, thanks for the critique both of you

[Dusty]

I think you should go through this thread and look at the replies, there is a lot of good advice on tiling just like this.
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=4463.0

By the way, the most important thing is to avoid unique objects, because they will really show when it's tiled.