Mumbling Mummy challenge (Lazycow vs Sharprm)

[Lazycow]

Recently inside of an ancient pyramid...

C&C are welcome

[sharprm]

I think you should give more info (eg. is it 1x or 2x?)

Those vertical blue bricks seem odd, is it the floor (if its a wall, maybe make them horizontal).

The bricks don't seem yellow enough, I did an edit:

[Lazycow]

Thanks for your edit, sharprm. I like the skull and the shadowplay on your mummy!  Maybe it is so intense because your mummy is darker than mine. I tried to catch up a bit, but it didn't come out so good. Maybe I try again later.

Yes, my background is very poor and it was a bit too ambitious to call this a mockup. The floor should indeed look like sandstone, but your yellow is too bright. Maybe I should try a "yellow in the dark"...

Here are more mumbling mummy characters, which are based on an old Amiga game concept that never made it into a real game.  The game is about treasure hunting while malicious creatures and evil traps are waiting for our brave hero. A resolution of 256x384 or 400x300 should be reasonable, but I don't know what it turns out to be.

At the right is a raw edit of the first boss enemy who starts up as some plain rocks lying on the floor. Then the unknown mystery figure revives him and the rocks form a rock golem.

[sharprm]

Yeah, the yellow rocks create problems which i couldn't solve - ie characters cant stand out against both yellow and black. Maybe you could look at the gfx from metal slug which has a mummy level for a suitable color scheme (i don't like brown, maybe blue?). You could have torches in the background which made the rocks yellow close to them.

Those earlier gfx look quite good (exceot the last guys mouth). With your new ones, maybe you are adding too many highlights and colors for such small sprites? Other members are more qualified to comment on this, but note i did remove colors for the mummy as well as boost contrast.

Edit: had another crack at it



Edit2: I've done some more and I think restricting yourself to 16 colors is doable and the result looks good so I'd suggest trying it youself.

[Lazycow]

I tried to shade the rocks of the golem...

@sharprm: Hey, didn't realize that you made another edit... This time, I really like your floor blocks! Very ancient! The lightning reminds me at a sundown, so maybe they could still be a bit too bright for the dark rooms of a pyramid. Well ok, depends on the torches and stuff. I will try. Actually, I have big problems with palette adjustments, so color reduction might be a bit beyond my experience level. But I really want to try that later, although 16 colors seem to be too few for the style i am looking for.

PS: I have found backgrounds of metal slug, even with a sphinx. But no mummies. Anyway, really great style! And beyond my abilities 

[sharprm]

Metal slug is beyond my abilities too, I was referring to maybe they had a good color scheme.

Color reduction seems easy using a program called 'Graphics Gale'. What are you using?

Your Golem looks very accomplished. Good work! 
Here's the finished edit I did. Go with whatever style you had in mind, but bright colors should make a fun game, right?



edit: Had another go, I think I'll stop now, anyways using blues (cool colors) for the bricks might be a good idea to make characters (warm colors?) stand out. Not to sure about that. Some 16 color stuff i don't like, such as this one - where there are 'blue trees' - so maybe 32 colors would be a good restriction for you. I think restrictions are good because they somehow force you to come up with interesting colors.

[Lazycow]

@sharprm: I am no lazy cow (), but well eh... I am just not skilled enough to push out graphics so fast... Your mockups really motivated me to continue with this. I used Arne's palette for the objects in the 2nd row, as I have big problems with colors. Restricting colors was a really good hint, maybe I should expand Arne's palette to 32 colors and recolor the existing stuff.

row1: Flint, Mummy, Incarnation, Princess Narkatete, giant bat, snake
row2: healing potions, whip, gun, ammo, dynamite, keys, treasure

[sharprm]

I pmd Arne once about a 32 color pallete and he said the closest he did is this:

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/m05/NES_Metroid_8pix_32palette_v4.gif

Thought i'd post it since you are looking for a 32 color one - you'll probably have to change some of the colors to suit a pyramid environment.

Also check out 'Ben e factor' for the amiga - it has a pyramid level and will be 32 colors.

[Lazycow]

Ok, I tried to create a bigger mockup. This time, I was twiddling with the color composition of the game area. Objects have Arne's palette, bright brown blocks are for the foreground and dark brown are to be meant for the background.

On the bottom left, I tried to fade blocks to the dark   

I failed to add another background layer behind that dark brown blocks to replace the black area. I would appreciate any hints on that!

[tocky]

I think you need another set of tiles if you're going to do three layers of depth - and I'd try it with the brown in front of the blue, because things tint blue in the distance (because of the longer wavelength of blue light, or something?) and people tend to see bluer things as further away. I'd try blue, purple, brown. There's a couple other things - I'll see if I can post an edit, shortly.