AuthorTopic: GR#004 Valkyrie no Bouken - NES Sprites & Tiles  (Read 39204 times)

Offline Arne

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Re: Valkyrie no Bouken - NES sprites

Reply #30 on: April 07, 2009, 02:11:41 pm
I'm really not sure which kind of angles and poses will work ingame.
This is Quox and Zouna. I've been experimenting a lot with their design, but I'm not happy yet.



Quox ref: http://www.devimension.com/dvp_doc_database/dev_docu006.html

Oh, the Roper is based on the anime version where they only have 2 arms. 6 is too crowded.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2009, 02:19:31 pm by Arne »

Offline Lee N

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Re: Valkyrie no Bouken - NES sprites

Reply #31 on: April 07, 2009, 02:12:45 pm
First of all, I love what you have done with Valkyrie no Bouken. Really fantasic work here. :y:

But, the tree has been bugging me for a while - and I think i finally figured out why. It reads as if the trunk is overlayed in front of the crown rather than being a part of it, and this might be because the trunk has such a light brown colour. Maybe you could use a darker colour for the trunk and have the crown of the tree cover up more of the extended branches to pull it back in and incorporate it more into a single body.

Offline Helm

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Re: Valkyrie no Bouken - NES sprites

Reply #32 on: April 07, 2009, 04:02:15 pm
Your pixel placements are quite artful. I was going to talk about issues with selout but it seems you're not suffering greatly anywhere.
I wanted to suggest that if you're not going to use the actual NES palettes, then just go ahead and use a 32bit palette and just keep the colors 3+1 for tile elements (with the approrpiate extras where needed). The reason I say this is because I recently played through Retro Game Challenge for the nintendo DS and it really struck me how the only real NES limitation that encourages the retro look is the 3 colors per tile/sprite. # of tiles, or restricted tilemap palettes really don't matter much to get the effect, and there really is so much beauty you can achieve with a full palette evenwith 3 colors per tile. So while what you're doing here is very accomplished, I would suggest even more daring colors. Since you only have 3 per item you won't suffer from 'muddy' close colors or other follies of early 16bit  games where they just went 'I HAVE ALL THESE COLORS!" BANDING AND GRADIENT HELL.

Also I suggest smooth animation if you actually do animations for this project. As if you didn't have capacity concerns. Retro gaming is not dependent on the 2-frame usual NES animations, as long as the few colors, small res and vibrant palette are kept, might as well deliver some eye-candy on the animation end. You can pretend you're using a fancy Konami mapper if it makes you feel more authentic, but I would just suggest tossing these considerations out of the brain-window and just having fun without so many limits.

I agree that pure black is very useful for NES style things especially for character sprites and such. I do not think you should banish it completely from the world tilemaps. Perhaps only the overworld should be mostly black-less to preserve the Zeldaesque iconic symbolism of the map and not convey a real world too much. But if you have a dark dungeon or something I'd throw in black liberally.

The original NES game is pretty tortuous, so it would be nice to see this get made actually but even if not, always a pleasure to look at your stuff.

Offline Arne

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Re: Valkyrie no Bouken - NES sprites

Reply #33 on: April 07, 2009, 06:09:45 pm
Thanks for the feedback.

Lee> I'm probably keeping the trees, because they're the most commonly occurring graphical object in the game, and thus a part of the identity of the game. I've already toned down the flatness a bit, or tried, but I may need to give that root some perspective. There's also pine trees in the game and they look the same. To be honest I'm not that bothered by the trees, I kind of like their whimsical graphical quality.

Helm> Thanks. Yeah, I figured someone would notice the 'selout' at some places. Often I'm just trying to dither the outlines because a full black line would be too much, and none would cause a silhouette leak.

I color-picked most colors from a NES palette. (There's a bunch of them with different temperatures.) Palettes are good for giving the stuff a consistent look, but yeah, some enemy designs should separate and not be forced into using the same palette. I think I will take your advice and just use the colors which looks the best. There needs to be consistency, but it should be for important stuff like in-universe materials, and not hardware restrictions which breaks the fourth wall (e.g. "hey, they had to use the same palette for those things.").

I've been struggling to not use the colors for shadows. In many cases it is completely unnecessary and actually lowers readability. When using just black and a color or two you have to make sure that the design is striking, and you can't go in and try to salvage a bad design with gradients and stuff.

IIRC, Dragon Warrior 3 for the Gameboy Color has excellent animations and some of the best gfx I've seen on that platform. Looking at it now, I see that it only uses black for the characters, pretty much. The NES version was the other way around!
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dragon-warrior-iii/screenshots

Anyways, the reason for my 2 frame animations is that... I have a lot of enemies and angles. Well done animations can really bring a character to life though. I have a Kirby game (mirror something) for GBA which has excellent animations.

I think I need a lot of new darks for the dungeons, since they have... lack of light as a theme in VnB. I need more resolution there. It would be cool to do something like a lantern effect (like in Zelda 3, or the light radius in Diablo).


8bitty> ty. Some of the details is nonsense, but I'm trying hard to make sure that I actually use the space I have for something sensible. Every pixel should contribute. The same goes for drawing/painting, the viewer will always try to make something out of the details you've drawn, and every unreadable confusing nonsense detail will make the design weaker. It's a constant struggle for me to remember to find these problem areas. Sometimes I like my nonsense details even though they are detrimental to the piece! Killing them all off can be difficult, but it is for the greater good.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2009, 06:12:55 pm by Arne »

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Valkyrie no Bouken - NES sprites

Reply #34 on: April 11, 2009, 11:26:20 pm
it might be a little repetitive, but on the dillema of animations here...I suggest looking at Star Ocean Blue...up in the banner. check these youtube vids http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D594C2C30BBE54FA They have just the right blend of animeish ease-in timing and 8bit restrictions, the whole game in general just feels like the perfect blend to me.

Offline HughSpectrum

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Re: Valkyrie no Bouken - NES sprites

Reply #35 on: April 12, 2009, 09:39:17 am
Quote
IIRC, Dragon Warrior 3 for the Gameboy Color has excellent animations and some of the best gfx I've seen on that platform. Looking at it now, I see that it only uses black for the characters, pretty much. The NES version was the other way around!
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dragon-warrior-iii/screenshots
It's basically taking where you would normally use black and using a dark color instead.  I think this is because the NES only allows 16 colors on screen at once, making black an extremely useful color, while the GBC allows many more colors at once (somewhere between 50-64, I believe).

The only real danger of not using black is that it's possible to make your characters look like they're "floating" due to the contrast, but looking at the SO: Blue Sphere videos, this seems to actually be a blessing in disguise because it allows a lot of detail to be added to tiles while still having characters separated from the background.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2009, 09:43:51 am by KittenMaster »