AuthorTopic: Dead Beat  (Read 9916 times)

Offline fortunato

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Re: Dead Beat

Reply #20 on: August 25, 2009, 06:09:52 am
I think the top screenshot does a very good job of distinguishing what tiles are walkable and which ones you go through, so good work with that!

I feel it's fun that cave story-looking things are 'in' now! In a good way. A while ago street fighter and king of fighter sprites were in the 'IN' (and seikendensetsugrass) and now it's all about the grotto tales and flat shading plus huge | ___ | -faces. I love it.
jad i just would like to say that almost every one of your posts brings a smile to my face, for some reason, haha..
i wanted to comment on the GB palette, even though im a little late haha. i think its cute and i also love the 2x zoom... are you going to have the game be viewed in 2x like that? i would suggest it, looks great :)
anyway, the gb palette.. i dont really have any particular lengthy explanation why i like the gb palette...  i tend to gravitate towards lots of restrictions for some reason, but maybe you could do a level where he goes inside a game boy, just for me? hahaha but in all seriousness i think using the gameboy palette at some point in the game would be pretty clever/cool.
actual crit time: the boxes under boxes are a little too bright/contrasty for my tastes... they distract a bit too much IMO. ill make an edit:

again this is a bit of personal opinion here... but look at the wood boxes mostly and youll see my edit. i thought your boxes seemed a little too saturated and could use a tad bit less contrast... especially the ones that were under other ones (haha that makes no sense but i think you get what i mean). also i incorporated a bit of hue shifting there to add a bit of interest and also lowered your color count a bit for (as? lol) you had a few colors that were too similar to others and could be eliminated without any problems. im still learning a lot but one thing i do know is that when it comes to game design, you want your character to stand out the MOST in relation to other things (unless of course you have some things you want your players to gravitate towards.. like an important item or something). having a background competing for attention against the players character is completely ridiculous.. basically have what youre making in mind while youre making it... not just the object, but its place in the mix of everything. is it something you want to stand out? is it important? is it part of the background? you seem to have a pretty good idea of this but i think you can improve upon it more by taking more advantage of things like contrast and palette shifting.. i find that, with my limited experience with pixel art, things that have more yellows and reds (i.e. warm colors) tend to stick out more than blues and purples (cold colors) bigtime.
also though this is directed as a crit towards you its mostly that mixing things is something i feel passionate about haha as weird as that sounds.. and game design happens to be something that mixing dynamics have been slowly being lost... lots of game designers (i mean bigtime ones too) are forgetting to make things clear to their players (by way of visual cues), and in my opinion this makes games just tougher and frustrating to play, as things are competing for attention too much... basically the gist of what im saying is dont lose sight of everythings place. if something is meant to be in the background, its important that it stays in the background. if something is meant to be in the foreground and grabbing a players attention, make sure it is. again dont take this as directly insulting or anything though it may seem like that at times haha... you have a great idea of what to do when it comes to that subject already but (though this may be my personal styles butting in here) i feel as though they can definitely be improved. also anyone else reading this take this to heart!!!! dont lose sight of your game's (or art in general for that matter) mix! keep the background objects in their place and let the foreground objects shine!!!
besides that, i love your style and i am looking forward to an incredibly cute/fun game to come from this work. good job!!!

Offline Halloween_Cloud

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Re: Dead Beat

Reply #21 on: August 26, 2009, 12:27:49 am
I realized how much the sprite style looks like another version of cave story. not that i dont like it, it's just think that people should find their own style and try to stick to it. I think this project is progressing very well. Good job.