Platforman Game Mockup

[Gizmonicgamer]

Though I personally would'nt worry too much on that issue, Xerus, I personally have no problem telling the different layers apart. It may become a hassle later though, so just keep an eye on it.

[PypeBros]

Though I personally would'nt worry too much on that issue, Xerus, I personally have no problem telling the different layers apart. It may become a hassle later though, so just keep an eye on it.

It's not a problem for me either. I've seen many games with equally little contrasts such as e.g. Kirby's Amazing Mirror or Twinbee : Rainbow Bell Adventures. This may become an issue for handhelds devices where the screen has poor contrast, though.

The only item that i cannot tell for sure is the tree right near the player. Is it a tiny tree right nearby the player or a medium tree a bit further that happen to have contrast similar to the ground below the player ? Only parallax will tell for sure, but as it is a very recognizable shape, the player will easily discard it.

[HughSpectrum]

Even though you faded the background objects, I think the sheer messiness and saturation of that brightest shade of the tree top detail is causing the trees in the background to pop out just as much, if not more than the tree in the background.

It also looks like you're trying to follow the suggestion where you put objects on the inside of the ground, but I think PyroBros' post was more about making your ground edges have more interesting curves to it, which I would do first.

[xerus]

Here's another attempt!



I think I may be starting to head in the right direction, but still stumbling around in some areas.

[Kazuya Mochu]

ok I'm going to say something I believe some people that posted above me will agree with.
if an object is away from the viewer it will have more atmospherical density (most of the cases it will be more blue) wich you have cleverly added to your scene. looks nice!
but another thing that also happens is that most of the details get lost, because well, one: you are too far away to see and two: because the atmosphere density sort of reduces de contraste thus killing some of the detail information.

right now, the tree that you have in the first level of the background has detail that is pushing it forward to the playing level.
Im not going to say that is is not obvious that the tree is in the background, but it definetly would be better in my oppinion if it was less noisy.

oh and btw, the cast shadows on the columns arent really like that. they arch up in the midle, and down in the edges of the columns.

[alspal]

I think you have too much happening in the 'faded dirt' area. It seems you've faded it to that brown so you didn't need to put detail in the dirt, but then you suddenly filled that area with awkwardly placed bricks.

[xerus]

Ahh, not enough happening, too much happening.... argh!

I tried a mockup going in a different direction for the backdrop tiles, I seem to recieve just as much criticism with each though...



I was thinking at first that this improved the readability of the collision layer, but I've gotten feedback that is the contrary.  The main issue I was having is that because of the palette of the marble tiles it was difficult to fade them with the sky color because they wouldn't fade enough to drop into the backdrop, so I tried the darkening approach.  If this is better/worse let me know ;p

[Jad]

The thing with the square tile-sized bricks in the middle of the dirt is that it makes your game look like cave story and/or the underside. Seriously. Also, I don't think it fits your style! Go crazy with pillars and greek-y stuff in the upper levels of the piece instead, that was much more pleasant to the eye IMO. Don't bother with the under-earth, the player isn't going to interact with anything there so there's no acute need for visual information there.

[Mike]

I think for the character you should either bring up the mouth or bring down the scar so we can see more of the face because when I looked at your character I couldn't tell if that black line was a shadow/neckline, or a mouth.



Sorry I edited a bit of the hair too...

[xerus]

The thing with the square tile-sized bricks in the middle of the dirt is that it makes your game look like cave story and/or the underside. Seriously. Also, I don't think it fits your style! Go crazy with pillars and greek-y stuff in the upper levels of the piece instead, that was much more pleasant to the eye IMO. Don't bother with the under-earth, the player isn't going to interact with anything there so there's no acute need for visual information there.

Okay so having just the brown void is fine?  That was going to be my original route, but people seemed to be against that...

Mike: Thanks for the feedback and the edit!  The character is in a pretty early phase (only that one sprite exists of him so far) so I'll most likely be working on this issue.  I kinda wanted the scarf to be super huge/covering his chin though! ;p

I will now post an image.



Ugh the readability in that one blows.



Try that, perhaps?