AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 318628 times)

Offline .TakaM

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #800 on: October 01, 2008, 01:01:03 am
Love the sprites and animation. But I find huge flashing light when stepping on those snails annoying.
yah, there'll be an opacity slider for it in the options, we just haven't got around to implementing it yet.
And thanks :)
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Offline chriskot

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #801 on: October 01, 2008, 02:09:46 am
He was very against the idea though, as he has the idea that people don't wont relate if it isn't like Earth. It's something I tend to hate in video games. No matter how far away the planet is from Earth, whether it's lightyears or dimensions, it still looks like Earth. The plants may be fictitious, but they tend to still be green, or as though you could pluck them out of the game and put them on Earth and they'd fit in fine. It's also a mindset I see in scientists a lot, where they think whatever life that may be out there in the universe follows the same rules as life on Earth. I dunno, I tend to really disagree that people won't see beauty in a setting if it doesn't have the same colors people associate with Earth. Am I wrong in this?

Also, I agree on the point about scientists usually sticking too closely to life in familiar forms, although if you get too unfamiliar, everything just becomes too abstract to hold any meaning. Don't forget that by talking about "plants", you are sticking pretty close to Earth life yourself.

Science does have a few points though. As far as the plant colours go, different chemicals are tinted different colours to better accept the more plentiful wavelengths of light. I don't remember all of the rules too well, but if the sun is yellow and like ours, then the plants will mostly be green to accept the most energy from it. Also, water is more abundant then most chemicals because it is formed from almost any reaction between an acid and a base.

That said, I'm all for changing the colours. It makes things new and exciting and you should be allowed to take some creative liberties to achieve a desired effect. Personally, I'd probably go with Blackish-blue plants with bio-luminescent stripes and rivers of a honey-like fluid. That would be awesome.

Offline Darien

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #802 on: October 01, 2008, 03:42:37 am
   Like a traditional art thread, or just anything drawn from life? I'd like to see something like that, but activity for it may fade away in the long run, as we already have an anatomy thread, as well as an ot creativity thread...so many categories, my mind is blowndeded'!

I meant a stickied thread that acts sort of a tutorial/guide for those who aren't familiar with traditional art practices and concepts

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #803 on: October 01, 2008, 04:38:53 am
Darien the problem is that we don't really have anyone here that is as strongly versed in traditional practises as they should be to write the tutorial.

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #804 on: October 01, 2008, 05:12:31 am
I agree with you. As for water, it's transparent, clear, no colour, it looks blue because of our blue atmosphere. So on a planet with say a red sky water would look red.
I actually researched this, because I believed the same thing, but it's a common misconception. Apparently, while cleaned water like in a pool or from the tap reflects the sky, and thus is blue, water from the ocean is blue because it's chemically blue.

What I still said applies though, as while that may be the physical properties of water on Earth, who's to say another planet couldn't have a similar counter-part, but with a different color? Every matter has a liquid state, so it's not far fetched to say a planet has adapted to another liquid substance.

Water is blue when seen from space because water absorbs red wave lengths before it absorbs blue wave lengths, which get reflected back. The sky on Earth hasn't always been blue. When life was just beginning, the sky was more greenish because there wasn't much oxygen in the atmosphere yet.

Have you been checking what sorts of surfaces the moons of different planets in our own solar system have got to offer? Titan, Europa, Ganymede, Io... all very alien places if you study them closely enough.

We have some plants even on Earth that have red leaves, at least some that live in water (like these) so it's a very valid idea.





« Last Edit: October 01, 2008, 05:20:40 am by JJ Naas »

Offline Akira

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #805 on: October 01, 2008, 05:34:14 am
What I still said applies though, as while that may be the physical properties of water on Earth, who's to say another planet couldn't have a similar counter-part, but with a different color? Every matter has a liquid state, so it's not far fetched to say a planet has adapted to another liquid substance.
It's kind of far fetched. I mean the current scientific view (at least the view i've been taught) is that life utilizes water so much because of its specific properties. It's not as easy as "life needs a liquid, who says it has to be water". However there have been interesting ideas about silicon based life forms rather than carbon based. I guess it depends on how accurate you want the science in your game to be. You could go for "hard" science and find other molecules that could potentially be analogous to water and base your colours for oceans etc. around these molecules. Or you could go for softer science and basically do what you like in terms of colour and then use science to fake it... if that makes sense. Recently in my plant biology labs we've been studying pigments such as chlorophyll (the pigment that gives plants their green colour as well as enabling them to photosynthesize). There are a few other pigments present in earth plants that absorb colours other than green in the light spectrum for example Carotenoids which gives some plants red leaves as mentioned by JJ Naas. If you wanna use science as your background i suggest you read up on biological pigments and alternative biochemistry (I found this second article while writing this post - it looks like exactly what you want!).
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Offline The B.O.B.

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #806 on: October 02, 2008, 03:03:34 am
   I'm curious, when you guys get asked for pixel jobs, or moreso freelance stuff, how much do you charge, generally? And more out of charge by piece's submitted, rather than hourly rates. Just wondering, as I'm no professional pixel artist, but when it comes to rates, I'm not too sure if I'm being modest, or outlandish with rates. Usually, if it's animations, it's all dependent on size, for me. With 100x100 pixel animations from about 2-10 frames, I'll usually charge like $8-10.00 an animation. Obviously, the higher the size, and number of frames go up, the more I like to get a little more technical with the charges, after they pass that given line.
   Now I know there's been countless threads, which I've reviewed, like Goblins of game industry, and the other countless separate threads asking same question, but not many people seem to answer with their own opinion on what they themselves generally do, without hourly wages in the same answer. Any one want to chime in on some simple anecdotes of past requests or commissions, so I can get a better idea?
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Offline Xion

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #807 on: October 02, 2008, 05:36:19 am
I'm still struggling with that same thing, B.O.B.
I started out real cheap, then people told me I was real cheap, so I upped my prices a bit, and I've just been gradually raising my prices on each job, to see how high I can go before someone says it's a bit much, then I'll go back down to where we're both happy.  :P Haven't gone that high yet though.

Offline Helm

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #808 on: October 02, 2008, 07:17:41 am
I'd say if you work hard and focused for an hour and you don't get paid at least 30 euro for that hour, you're ripping yourself off. Add to this according to your skill and experience, but I would be careful about subtracting for it. How much you'd get paid per-piece is just your honest approximation of how many hours it'll take to make.

Offline Ben2theEdge

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #809 on: October 02, 2008, 01:22:04 pm
Yeah... you can't really charge by the hour, but it's a good way to do the math to arrive at a fair quote. With pretty much any kind of freelance work it's a good idea to break it down and see how much money per hour you're actually making. If it ends up being the same as bagging groceries at Quik-E-Mart you're getting ripped off.
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