Skeletroids dump - Update: You've got friends!

[Antago]

First of all, the skull edit from Souly is truly superior as it looks far more realistic. Still, he only did an edit and I love your original to death. This whole game looks really amazing. I actually really enjoy your HUD, I think it's very futuristic and beautiful. It is a little large. I don't think it's unreadable as someone said, maybe for colored-blind people and that needs to be taken into consideration. For me it stands out perfect.

I'd like to see your original HUD fade (turn semi-transparent) when it is inactive, and when something changes have it fade opaque real quickly and then do some sort of buzz lighting effect to show what has changed (for instance, a number glows orange real quick then turns blue again to catch your attention on that number).
I'd like to see the center squares (for whatever they represent?) be a neon glowing orange (or green) of some sort. Give the HUD some contrast and breakup its monotony

This is an extreme mod and the colors are much different than your original. But to freshen some things up and give you ideas on alternative colors:

excellent! Great job on legs poses! any chance that "sword" could be equipped with a device that allows throwing and catching it like a deathly boomerang (e.g. in "fury" mode) ? Just out of curiousity, are you still using the same kind of animating technique you presented in last augustus ?

e.g. --> --> --> --> ?

That's great! You should create a character for his game this character is clearly quite large, so I'd like to see it as a giant mystical character in the game. Consider animating the cape with the wind

[Jigsaw]

I could look at this all day. Love the animation to death! Good call on the hair, too, it looks really great and just makes the character much more interesting to look at.


I agree with the crits on the HUD; it takes up a huge amount of space, doesn't read as well as it should, and IMO just isn't very pretty. The edits people have shown are quite the departure (if nice), but  I'm sure you could make a much more streamlined HUD that maintains a similar style (and reads better).

Looking stellar so far, can't wait to see further progress on this project.

[Ben2theEdge]

Thanks for the feedback guys!
If I have time today I think I'm going to work on a more streamlined HUD.
Antago that character is actually from an older game that I never finished as it turned out too ambitious for me at the time.

One and a half new things!
First off, here's the Chumchum from a while ago re-done. Free lesson in game design: Figure out what your enemies are going to do BEFORE you pixel them. Once I decided how I wanted this enemy to function in the game I realized that all the work I had done on him before was useless. I've taken to drawing enemy attack patterns on paper now so I don't waste time giving them animations they don't need.

*Disclamer for traditionalists: I used "dirty" tools for the animation, and I'm still cleaning it up.

And here is the original rough for the sword swinging animation, for anyone who wanted to see what my creation process looks like. The key frames are in RED - I drew these frames first and then filled in the the frames in-between until it was smooth enough for my liking.

[ElementZero]

Wow, what a nice and smooth animation. Just like everything else in this thread. 
May i ask one question? Which "dirty tools" did you use for it?

[QuickSilva]

Gorgeous work as usual. Thanks for posting the creation process again I would love to see a finished game from you one day, hopefully you`ll find the time.

Jason.

[Ben2theEdge]

Wow, what a nice and smooth animation. Just like everything else in this thread. 
May i ask one question? Which "dirty tools" did you use for it?

Just some rotation... personally I don't think it's a "dirty" tool although it looks ugly if you don't touch it up. But it got me in trouble on Pixeljoint once

[Ben2theEdge]

Excuse the double post... new in-game screen!


The HUD is more streamlined now and it's higher contrast so it shows up better against the background. And now the background perspective isn't quite as kooky.

[Jigsaw]

Looks better overall, but I'm still not sold on the HUD. The basic design idea isn't bad, but I'm not a big fan of the angles, and the fact that they make everything look jagged doesn't really help. :/ Maybe with more AA and more legible text it'd look better, but I dunno really. It is far better than the previous version though.

[tehwexxl0rz]

I think in MMF you actually can use semi-transparent pixels to AA the HUD with some simple trickery. Just make another object with ONLY those AA pixels, layer it on top of the HUD and lower that object's opacity. (This technique is completely impractical for moving sprites, but I think for something stationary like the HUD it could work quite nicely.)

NOTE: This is all from memory. I mainly use a MacBook now and I haven't dug up my PC with MMF on it in many months.

Regardless of the jaggies on the edges of he HUD, what's with the lack of AA on the inside? Like on the 3 and the energy bar and the text?

[Zero]

The Chumchum guy looks great, but why is there red ambient lighting (unless you plan on putting him only in levels with red lit floors or something)? I think it would make more sense to take that out completely; I mean, try putting him in the area where the screenshot was taken, it doesn't make any sense.

Everything else is really good.