New Pirate game mockup

[coffee]

Hi again!

If you dont remember, I uploaded a mockup maby a week ago. I have done a few updates since then.
This is what i have changed and done:

mockup:



1. A closer background
2. new palmtrees
3. The "heros" brother (by the tree)
4. portrait of brother
5. Boarders for the icons and for the conversation text
6. new crewmember (the girl)
7. small pictures to choose player

What do you think about it?

[Fool]

Ptoing had pointed out on arms length difference on old dude and a boy on the left. Are palms silhouettes on a back look paper cut on purpose? Also not clear enough what waterfall coming over - can't tell if it are stones or plants...other than that pretty stylish. Colors are bit washed out for me, but it could be also monitor adjustments as well.=)

[Ben2theEdge]

The biggest problem I see at this point is the use of space. You've got a screen here that is mostly empty sky and what there is to fill it is very timidly hiding in the corners. It's a shame that such nicely drawn characters are so tiny in this resolution, and with the scale you're working in the player is constantly going to see nothing but empty sky in the top half of the screen. This is kind of subjective so it's up to you but if it was me I would either work with larger sprites or a lower resolution.

The BIGGER problem however is the HUD. Scale and importance are linked in our minds, this is a rule of graphic design. Rules can be broken, but only if you know why you're breaking them. If we were to rank the importance of the elements of the HUD based on how easy they are to see, the health and dialogue text is slightly LESS important than the borders! When people play the game they're going to have to frantically scan the screen looking for their health during combat, and they will have to squint to read the dialogue, so they'll probably just skip it. Look how far away those elements are from what's going on, on the screen.

Please consider this very hastily done edit (I didn't redraw anything for this, I just quickly rearranged/resized stuff to illustrate my point)



Compared to your original screenshot, which one is more "comfortable"?

[coffee]

Hi Ben2theEdge

This can appear to be a problem. However, the thing is this is not a DS game. It's a computer game and it really has to be 640x480 this time.
Warning singnals will be heard when your life is low though.

about the empy sky. Well, right now im working on a sun some birds and stuff.. hope it will make it look better

I placed the conversationbox in the middle, you can see the edit right away.

[ndchristie]

This can appear to be a problem. However, the thing is this is not a DS game. It's a computer game and it really has to be 640x480 this time.

then you should strongly consider changing the size of the characters and elements, or simply stretching 320x240 to fit, because my only gripe with ben's point is that he beat me to voicing it.  what you've got now is an empty screen :/

[madPXL]

+1 for ben2theEdge, he said what I would do for this mockup.

@coffee : if you want a game in 640x480, you can use the pixel doubling method

Also, you can add crows on the sky (or parrots...)

[Ben2theEdge]

FYI, my edit was not DS resolution, that's even smaller  320x240 is the more or less the "standard" resolution for most pixel art.

Even if it has to be in a high resolution, the same design rules still apply. With all of that screen area to play with there's no conceivable reason to keep important things like your health meter so small and hard to read (and in a strange location), or to use such a tiny font for the dialogue. (And I would say if it has to be high res, make your characters twice as big. That would be a lot of work which is why most pixel artists prefer to stay in low resolution, even with modern precessing speeds)

I'm making a big deal about this because I like the art a lot, and it seems strange for such nice work to have these issues.

[TrevoriuS]

What you could do is scale your current sprites to 200% and ONLY add anti alias after doin so, it will give an interesting feel to it that I'd like to see in an entire game/mockup 

[Joseph]

ew.  the 2x scaling is great, but there's no need to do any aaing in it.  2x pixels are gorgeous, and honestly, it's simple no matter what programming language you're using.

[coffee]

Hi there!

hmm, i dont know actually... I think that x2 ruins the details when do low-resolution sprites.
However, if i wanted bigger sprites I should have done it in the first place and the game have come to
that stage that it will destroy all the code if I make bigger sprites.

I think too that some of the charm will dissapear if  it is larger. This is of course not a finished mockup yet and
many other things will appear.

Finally
A game is not all about the graphics, my job is doing the sprites. BUT, a great idea and story is
the MOST important thing. I have played many games with great graphics BUT with a terrible story and it sucks playing
such games.

I hope you understand what i mean.

Thank you for the critics!

I hope you will enjoy the game anyway
I will post it here when its done!

thank you!
I hope you will enjoy the game when its done, even with these small problems