Skeletroids dump - Update: You've got friends!

[vierbit]

I like it. But yeah, as already mentioned by adam, the hud doesnt fit very well.
Maybe a little less style and more simple.
I also dont like the tiles very much, they lack volume. And I am also not much fan of same approach in the later megaman games.

Its not perfect, but you get the idea.

[wah_wah_69]

It's coming along quite nicely, but there's a thing I really don't like: the hud is huge it waste a lot of space with information which can be displayed in a more subtle and effective way.

Suppose you want enemies to start falling from above, the hud covers most of the upper side of the screen and the player has less space to figure out where to scape, or a huge boss who appears and disappears constantly,as you already know space is a valuable resource when it comes to playability as well as graphic/artistic expression.

The idea is to show only the most valuable information to the player in an intuitive way while keeping clutter at a minimun.

You should take in account that the HUD will be visible in pretty much every part of the game, choose the palette of the hud carefully so it blends nicely with any background

I made a little edit,the font sucks and  it does not addresses intuitiveness as I don't know which icons will be used for energy and ammnunition but to the player's eye is less distracting and easier to the eye.

[Ben2theEdge]

Thanks for the feedback guys! Harsh or not I'll take it like a man 

Vierbit I like your edit... this is something I was considering... it makes things inconvenient for laying out the tiles because they have to be able to appear both in front of and behind the characters... however it definitely helps define the depth a lot more so maybe I'll reconsider. The reason I'm building the background in such large chunks is that the game is focused on combat more than platforming, and tight areas really restrict the player's ability to juggle/knock enemies around and perform aerial attacks. The tiles are actually more flexible than what you see here, but in general this is pretty much what I need for the purpose of the levels.

Regarding the HUD, I wanted to try something that would be unexpected but still very functional... looking at it now I agree it probably needs to be streamlined a lot and I agree it's not very visible. Wah Wah you have a good point about being able to see above you (and good advice about the colors too), however I can't go in the direction of your edit for a couple reasons. One is that there is actually quite a lot of information that needs to be displayed: Lives, Energy, Score, Ammo, and selected Sub Weapon, so there's no way I can consolidate the HUD down quite as much as you have. The other issue is that the game is pretty fast-paced and players need to be able to find and decipher the HUD very very quickly so they don't have to take their eyes off the character for very long. It's much easier to say "Oh, I have one bar left before I die" than, "Okay I have 50 out of 100 HP and I'm pretty sure this enemy's attack does 7hp damage so 50 divided by 7 is how many more hits I can take" I suppose in an RPG this would be okay but my struggle right now is really with how to make things spatially efficient but still very easy to read in the heat of battle. I'm not disregarding your advice (most of it is good) but I have a bit of a pet peeve with action games where you have to squint and calculate in order to figure out how close to death you are.

[wah_wah_69]

Yes, bars are much more intuitive than numbers, avoid numbers as much as you can.

I've been toying around with the hud:

I started with this sword:



Looks so so,because its too thin.

So I came up with this "capsule" thing.



The power up thingy should be bigger it's difficult to read, but I was just toying around...



You should have decided wich kind of power-up, weapons,etc is your game going to use before doing the HUD, since you said it was going to be rpg like points and lives do not make much sense, experience points should go in the status screen which usually is displayed in a separate menu.

[Ben2theEdge]

You should have decided wich kind of power-up, weapons,etc is your game going to use before doing the HUD, since you said it was going to be rpg like points and lives do not make much sense, experience points should go in the status screen which usually is displayed in a separate menu.

Oh, no I think you misunderstood me. This is purely an action game with zero RPG elements. The points you get are for your score. You only have one main weapon but there are a few different sub-weapons you can cycle through.

[Helm]

I strongly advise you towards 32x32 z-depth for your tiles. I suggest either fake-parallel like Flashback, or if you have to have some sort of z-depth, go with a 16 pixels depth, and if possible at a 45degree angle. Right now you've got Escher issues. They can be fixed with tricks, but still, why do you need th depth? Is this double-dragon like brawling, or is it gunstar-heroes style platforming? If the former, gosh dude, lose the too much depth!

edit:

example

[Elrinth]

Ben2Edge, can you code n stuff? looking forward to see how this runs in real time

[QuickSilva]

I completely agree with Helm in that you should lose some of the depth if you need to keep it at all. I pretty much hated the way that the later Megaman games developed graphical for the same reason and it is doing your great sprite work no favours as far as I can see. Helms edit looks much better despite being a relatively simple alteration.

Good luck with it. It is developing nicely otherwise. Is it going to be in MMF2? How about a YouTube video so that we can see those gorgeous sprites in action?

Jason.

[megane]

Just noticed this, but there's one frame of the attack animation where his face suddenly gets a whole lot brighter; you may have been trying to make it look like he's yelling, but right now his face just seems to be lighting up randomly for a split second.

[Ben2theEdge]

Point taken about the depth issues, guys. I do want to keep some depth because parallel pespective to me only works on games that are already going for a kind of "flat" look, like Cave Story or Knytt or something. I think Helm and Vierbit both had good compromises, maybe I'll do something in-between.

As far as code goes, I'm using Multimedia Fusion 2 - I can't actually code anything the "real" way 

And yeah... once there's a little bit more to show I'll definitely put up some videos - it's not quite ready yet though!