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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay

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Blizzard

Banned
I'm planning to implement a scripting language in my own game engine, both for my own benefit and potentially for modding.

Does anyone have any overall suggestions, pitfalls, etc. about this topic before I start designing and implementing it?
 

Pehesse

Member
Looks like we are aiming to announce our game this weekend. Will be nice to answer questions we get when posting teaser screens finally. A few things I'm unsure about what we should list on the game's site. When I get most of it ready I'll ask for some feedback if you guys wouldn't mind. Super excited.

Hype!

This is painful for me to hear. :(

I hope what I'm about to say doesn't sound too harsh - if it does, then I apologize, as it's not what's intended. I mostly react because of this quote.

The criticism and feedback given in this thread is very friendly and mild compared to just about anywhere else. You *need* to steel yourself against much, much harsher criticism and comments when you start exposing your work.

The "one man team" reason isn't and shouldn't be an excuse or a crutch - many here are in that same position, starting with Jobbs. Different backgrounds mean different skillsets, meaning ultimately different strenghts of weaknesses, art is just one of the most "visible" one can have. People won't judge the quality of what you make based on the effort and time you spent, or the conditions of creation, as shown just a few posts above with the Kickstarter video. Whether they have "good" reasons for liking your work or not is irrelevant.

Because of that and if you're aware art might not be your strong point, you might wonder if it's a good idea to start off by making a game in a genre that's known for using elaborate visual representations. Of course a tactical game *can* work using simpler graphics, but you'll still be compared by the state of the current production.

If you still decide to work on that specific game genre (which I can understand and respect), maybe find a style more suited to your own strengths and sensibilities, if you feel your current one is limited by our own skill? Maybe, as an alternative, you could work on something smaller to experiment on different artstyles in a more manageable scope, or find mechanical strengths that would allow to disregard art considerations in the first place?

As said above, games *can* manage to work with wildly different kind of artstyles, it's a matter of timing and having something different - and communicating that efficiently.

In regards to your specific art assets, I'm afraid I don't have strong feelings one way or another - I don't find them "bad", but I don't find them appealing either, both aesthetically and technically.
The use of disjointed limbs is interesting, as mentioned above, but that alone doesn't make it singular enough in my eyes, as it looks like a concession rather than a decision. Maybe use that visual distinction more? Rayman has disjointed limbs, and he *uses* them: throwing fists, having a grappling hook with extendable length, etc. Imagine how it'd be if in your case, those disjointed hands could be used as actual mechanics - suddenly, the style would make more sense, and could probably be pushed even further!

The one aesthetic part I'd comment upon is your use of colors, as I find it a bit rough.You don't use contrasting tints, and most are very saturated, making for an overall monotone look on every character. For both black characters, the skin tint is very saturated, making the adjacent lighter colors look recessed: the armor for the knight, the hair for the woman. In both cases, those lighter parts look like they're on a different plane to me, in the background, compared to the "meat" of the character.
The outlines aren't consistent either, with strong black outlines for the bodies, but colored (and very little constrast) for the hair. I'd think something more homogeneous would work better: either fully black to detach from the background (and maybe go for a quasi cel shading if you can afford a two tone shading on that limited sprite size), or colored with stronger contrast.

All in all: it reads like you have strong feelings about your art, while being aware that it might not be your strong point, which may be a difficult combination. I'd say art doesn't *have* to be your strong point, if you have other strong points to show off, and those stylistic choices you already made can be turned to your advantage yet! To please *me*, maybe rework the colors a bit, but otherwise, just keep at it and relativize all criticism, this one included! :-D
 

Dascu

Member
Any experience with Unity3D and shaders? I'm trying to figure out how I can adjust the colour or darkness of shadows (received by the shader). More in particular, I'd like to darken them and make all shadows pure black, regardless of how many light sources are affecting them or what the colour of the underlying material is.
 

HelloMeow

Member
Any experience with Unity3D and shaders? I'm trying to figure out how I can adjust the colour or darkness of shadows (received by the shader). More in particular, I'd like to darken them and make all shadows pure black, regardless of how many light sources are affecting them or what the colour of the underlying material is.

I think it's the ambient lighting you're struggling with. It's set to a non-black color by default.

In Unity 4 it's located in Edit>Render Settings and in Unity 5 it's at Window>Lighting
 

Dascu

Member
I think it's the ambient lighting you're struggling with. It's set to a non-black color by default.

In Unity 4 it's located in Edit>Render Settings and in Unity 5 it's at Window>Lighting

I know, but that's not the issue. Already set it to black and/or given a noambient modifier to the shader to modify it. The problem really seems to lie with the intensity of the lights.
 
Fixed some of the issues. But I'm not done yet with the interface. I might add some simple buttons to the top right menu as you said.



I think the two left boxes looks pretty plain.

ugh, there are some grammar mistakes in the picture.

The white text works perfectly, it really makes it pop without being too intrusive.
 

Bloodember

Member
This is painful for me to hear. :( As I'm a solo man team. I'm trying my best but yeah... The Art isn't going to be the strong suite. In some ways I do have to put the gameplay/story in the fore front.



Hmmm...

I tried to add arms... What do you think?

jV5b.png


Also Male Slimmer body test:

nV5b.png

I liked the old versions, not sure if I'm alone in that.

Now with the new versions you can clearly see they have arms, and they do look good.
 

gundalf

Member
Guys do you have experience with Google Cardboard? I would like to tinker with it but only under premise that it is nearly identical to the Oculus Rift.
As Smartphone I would use my Oneplus One.

This is painful for me to hear. :( As I'm a solo man team. I'm trying my best but yeah... The Art isn't going to be the strong suite. In some ways I do have to put the gameplay/story in the fore front.



Hmmm...

I tried to add arms... What do you think?

jV5b.png


Also Male Slimmer body test:

nV5b.png

No reason to get it personal, it's programmer art and for that its already better then what most other have to offer.
But keep in mind, if this is an commercial project, you need to hire someone to do the proper artwork for you.
 

The Taxman

Neo Member
I'm planning to implement a scripting language in my own game engine, both for my own benefit and potentially for modding.

Does anyone have any overall suggestions, pitfalls, etc. about this topic before I start designing and implementing it?

I'm not sure if you mean creating your own scripting language, or implementing an existing one, but to begin with I'd suggest giving giving lua or AngelScript a try, since they're simple to integrate and get started. lua has been used extensively in the games industry, so it's pretty robust as far as platform support goes (there's even a JIT compiler too). If the syntax of lua doesn't appeal to you, AngelScript is very C/C++ esque, which makes it very easy to transfer scripts to native code if they aren't performing well enough.

You might want to create your own (something I've done personally) if you have some particular design principles you want to follow, but be prepared to make many revisions as you inevitably get new and better ideas for compilation and syntax! LLVM is an awesome library to look into too if you want to compile your scripting language into native code.
 

anteevy

Member
Crisis averted. The other studio agrees the name is too close and will change it.

The galaxy is at peace.
Awesome!


---


I'm currently thinking about getting a new logo, because I'm not 100% happy with the current one:
header.png

I mean, it's really simple by choice (the red squares are the main hazard in the game), but maybe too simple and even cheap? Looks a bit better on the website though: http://roll-playing-game.com/
Other thing is that it, well, maybe should include some actual "rolling", a ball or something. What do you think?

Creating 2D graphics is really not my thing, so either I'd need some really good tutorials/ideas for logo design or pay somebody to create it for me. Any tips? :)
 
Any experience with Unity3D and shaders? I'm trying to figure out how I can adjust the colour or darkness of shadows (received by the shader). More in particular, I'd like to darken them and make all shadows pure black, regardless of how many light sources are affecting them or what the colour of the underlying material is.

What type of geometry and light sources does your game have? Making a custom solution for your situation would be much simpler than figuring out a universal solution.
 

Dascu

Member
What type of geometry and light sources does your game have? Making a custom solution for your situation would be much simpler than figuring out a universal solution.

Texture-less building environments. Using point-lights, but could work towards a direction light and/or lightmaps for the environment. Would preferably find a solution that works on characters and point lights with shadows though.

Idea is to get a Killer7-look.
 

Kalentan

Member
No reason to get it personal, it's programmer art and for that its already better then what most other have to offer.
But keep in mind, if this is an commercial project, you need to hire someone to do the proper artwork for you.

I wasn't getting personal..?

Since I'm also working on an SRPG I just wanted to quickly chime in and say that Chrono Trigger and FF on the one hand (very similar games) and Disgaea and FFT on the other hands are completely different games regarding gameplay. The huge mainstream RPGs of the kind of FF don't play anything like SRPGs. There are basically two still-running series of (his kind of) SRPGs, Fire Emblem and Disgaea, with Disgaea just entering its fifth main iteration and Fire Emblem being on a quite stable 2-3 per generation rhythm. Overall we probably end up with ~4 big traditional SRPGs per generation, so we are at least not talking about an oversturated genre. Of course, him and me will both have one problem: This year there's Disgaea 5 (and typically those games are excessively long), next year it's Fire Emblem Fates, so there's serious likelihood of being completely overlooked.

Though I must say the big three of SRPGs have very different focus, showing already that there is a lot of room for differentiation even through details.
FE is very much focussed on in-battle strategy
FFT is quite focussed on character development
Disgaea is a game of labor because you really need to grind like crazy if you want to play all maps.

EDIT: Based on what he has written in the introduction of the game, there are already unusual things that differentiate the game from all other SRPGs I know:
1. There is a fixed party of eight members, not recruiting, no losing characters
2. Crafting plays a very very small role in FFT and FE and is basically grindwork in Disgaea, so this will probably differ a lot, too.

Yeah. I thought it would be interesting to have a set party for the entire game, yet you have choices throughout to 'meld' characters skills so that they can perform differently. You also get perks ala X-Com per level to further enhance a character.

Crafting would also play into another system. See, between missions you have 'days' to do anything. Doing side missions makes the day counter go down. You can also send other teams onto missions to complete objectives and get gear/crafting materials. However missions won't be there forever, and so you have to choose wisely what missions you send teams on as you only have a limited number of them. (Which increases as time goes on.)

Also levels in the game will range from being simple battlefields to actual dungeons with various floors.

In regards to your specific art assets, I'm afraid I don't have strong feelings one way or another - I don't find them "bad", but I don't find them appealing either, both aesthetically and technically.
The use of disjointed limbs is interesting, as mentioned above, but that alone doesn't make it singular enough in my eyes, as it looks like a concession rather than a decision. Maybe use that visual distinction more? Rayman has disjointed limbs, and he *uses* them: throwing fists, having a grappling hook with extendable length, etc. Imagine how it'd be if in your case, those disjointed hands could be used as actual mechanics - suddenly, the style would make more sense, and could probably be pushed even further!

The one aesthetic part I'd comment upon is your use of colors, as I find it a bit rough.You don't use contrasting tints, and most are very saturated, making for an overall monotone look on every character. For both black characters, the skin tint is very saturated, making the adjacent lighter colors look recessed: the armor for the knight, the hair for the woman. In both cases, those lighter parts look like they're on a different plane to me, in the background, compared to the "meat" of the character.
The outlines aren't consistent either, with strong black outlines for the bodies, but colored (and very little constrast) for the hair. I'd think something more homogeneous would work better: either fully black to detach from the background (and maybe go for a quasi cel shading if you can afford a two tone shading on that limited sprite size), or colored with stronger contrast.

Just to get an idea on the colors...

Do you mean something like this?

bW5b.png
 
Unite Boston 2015 keynote just ended, includes a bunch of stuff such as integrated cross-platform IAP, free cloud builds, free analytics, 2D features, and madewith.unity.com as a promotional platform. The last two are definately the most exciting, though. That being said, it seems Made With Unity requires a studio name, logo, website link, etc. Guess it makes sense, though, since it's clearly a curated site, they don't want a repeat of what happened to Greenlight.
 

Pehesse

Member
Just to get an idea on the colors...

Do you mean something like this?

bW5b.png

Not exactly, but nice try!

You've desaturated everything at once, which keeps the color contrasts you already had, albeit less pronounced. The grey you use, for instance, could use a tad more red hue to link it better with the red line, or instead green to make the line pop out, depending on the effect you're going for. Here, the colors simply don't really mesh together.

The outlines don't have good contrast either in both cases. For the black outline, it's too strong. I think it'd work better with grey-ish pixels at angles, to "round" the shapes instead of having every outline pixel the exact same value. I'm not sure the exact term used to describe that pixel art technique. Place's I'd have lighter pixels: corners of the head+top of most vertical lines. If you're intent on keeping the arms, that'd be a great place to have greyer pixels too - though as I said earlier, I think you're losing a design element with potential by adding arms.

In your other example, the contrast is however not enough, the outline is barely visible, and some of the outlining colors don't mesh together (the hair outline leading to the face outline, mainly).

Maybe it all comes down to color palettes. I'll link again to the beginning of the post I had made earlier about my own use of color/palettes: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=175905005&postcount=7763, in the hopes it might be clearer.

There isn't a single one answer to define what is "good use" of color, so some might argue against everything I say here with good reason, as it's probably pretty subjective. However, I believe it might be of use for discussions' sake to look at some color palettes of characters you like, and trying to understand why you like their palettes, then try and apply these principles to your own art. Do you have an example of a character using a similar palette, gray base with brown+red motifs and yellow highlights?
 

Kalentan

Member
Not exactly, but nice try!

You've desaturated everything at once, which keeps the color contrasts you already had, albeit less pronounced. The grey you use, for instance, could use a tad more red hue to link it better with the red line, or instead green to make the line pop out, depending on the effect you're going for. Here, the colors simply don't really mesh together.

The outlines don't have good contrast either in both cases. For the black outline, it's too strong. I think it'd work better with grey-ish pixels at angles, to "round" the shapes instead of having every outline pixel the exact same value. I'm not sure the exact term used to describe that pixel art technique. Place's I'd have lighter pixels: corners of the head+top of most vertical lines. If you're intent on keeping the arms, that'd be a great place to have greyer pixels too - though as I said earlier, I think you're losing a design element with potential by adding arms.

In your other example, the contrast is however not enough, the outline is barely visible, and some of the outlining colors don't mesh together (the hair outline leading to the face outline, mainly).

Maybe it all comes down to color palettes. I'll link again to the beginning of the post I had made earlier about my own use of color/palettes: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=175905005&postcount=7763, in the hopes it might be clearer.

There isn't a single one answer to define what is "good use" of color, so some might argue against everything I say here with good reason, as it's probably pretty subjective. However, I believe it might be of use for discussions' sake to look at some color palettes of characters you like, and trying to understand why you like their palettes, then try and apply these principles to your own art. Do you have an example of a character using a similar palette, gray base with brown+red motifs and yellow highlights?

Sorry for posting so soon again.

I made this version larger and removed the arms, made the feet smaller, but I kept actually that sort of part where the arm would begin.

lW5b.png
 

Rafa_Z

Neo Member
Hello Indie GAF!

This is my first post here (so yay for me and hello to everybody!) I've been following NeoGAF for a couple of years now but never really participated. Time to change that.

First of all, there's so many promising games here I'm going bananas! It's awesome how the game industry is changing thanks to all the indies everywhere.

I'm half of a 2 person studio from Warsaw called Lichthund - we're working on our first game called Lichtspeer. (Lichtspeer means lightspear in German - it's like a lightsaber except it's a speer).

We've been showcasing our game on a couple of occasions (even won some awards! crazy right?) and people in general dig it, still I'm looking for some more feedback, general thoughts etc.

Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!

Thanks GAF!
since I'm just a junior let me know if I screwed something up
 

gundalf

Member
I wasn't getting personal..?

Oops! Bad wording from me. With "personal" I wanted to say that you should not be afraid to show your art :)

Hello Indie GAF!

This is my first post here (so yay for me and hello to everybody!) I've been following NeoGAF for a couple of years now but never really participated. Time to change that.

First of all, there's so many promising games here I'm going bananas! It's awesome how the game industry is changing thanks to all the indies everywhere.

I'm half of a 2 person studio from Warsaw called Lichthund - we're working on our first game called Lichtspeer. (Lichtspeer means lightspear in German - it's like a lightsaber except it's a speer).

We've been showcasing our game on a couple of occasions (even won some awards! crazy right?) and people in general dig it, still I'm looking for some more feedback, general thoughts etc.

Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!

Thanks GAF!
since I'm just a junior let me know if I screwed something up


The splatter already looks like a fun game, though the animation is kinda stiff.
 

_machine

Member
I'm half of a 2 person studio from Warsaw called Lichthund - we're working on our first game called Lichtspeer. (Lichtspeer means lightspear in German - it's like a lightsaber except it's a speer).

We've been showcasing our game on a couple of occasions (even won some awards! crazy right?) and people in general dig it, still I'm looking for some more feedback, general thoughts etc.

Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!
Hi and welcome!

I really like the style and the wackiness of it, and given my taste for shorter gaming sessions lately it definitely piques my interest. You should probably add a link to the Greenlight in the video description as most people probably won't be bothered to search it manually. Good luck and you have my vote :)
 

Rafa_Z

Neo Member
The splatter already looks like a fun game, though the animation is kinda stiff.

Thanks! Still working on the animations, learning as we go.

Hi and welcome!

I really like the style and the wackiness of it, and given my taste for shorter gaming sessions lately it definitely piques my interest. You should probably add a link to the Greenlight in the video description as most people probably won't be bothered to search it manually. Good luck and you have my vote :)

Uber thanks for the vote, I didn't want o start my first post with saying - "Hi vote for my game!" but yeah we are in Greenlight right now. Already fixed the description - thanks for the tip!

We have a very talented guy doing all the music. We have a sample here if you guys want to check it out - https://soundcloud.com/lichtspeer/lichtspeer-uber-mountain-theme
 

Kalentan

Member
Oops! Bad wording from me. With "personal" I wanted to say that you should not be afraid to show your art :)
.

You know I will admit my biggest hurdle is animation. It's why the characters had no legs nor arms, as I then didn't have to draw said arms or legs moving. Sort of a cop-out since without the legs and arms, I don't need to animate them.

3W5b.png
4W5b.png
5W5b.png


Though I will admit, legs don't look that bad and the arms do look a tad bit better when moved closer to the body.

AW5b.gif
and
PW5b.gif
 

Jobbs

Banned
Looks ace, man. Hot damn at those colors.

When this comes out, I'm making a weekend of my first (or multiple) playthrough. Don't bother me, I'll be busy.

Can't wait to play this again

Thanks guys, and you'll probably never find the Skab Device, much less figure out what its purpose is.

This is painful for me to hear. :(

It ain't fun, but you specifically asked about the art so I felt obliged to give my opinion. Better to hear it from a friendly crowd now than a not so friendly crowd later.

That said, again, I want to point out that I haven't seen the entire presentation of the game, my feedback is based on what I can tell from the character art you presented. And, like I said, the absence of a strong presentation might not keep you from success, but it will make it much harder.
 
Texture-less building environments. Using point-lights, but could work towards a direction light and/or lightmaps for the environment. Would preferably find a solution that works on characters and point lights with shadows though.

Idea is to get a Killer7-look.

This is the tutorial I used to learn how to write shaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJxxXjoZE30&list=PLV4HCa5XqFT02gZOZ_Jb_A66wqDhZMCkN

If you want to get a good understanding of how shaders work, I'd recommend watching all of it. However videos 13-15 cover lighting.

I don't have lights in my game so I'm pretty rusty with how they work in Unity, but hopefully that gets you thinking about some options.
 

Pehesse

Member
Hello Indie GAF!

This is my first post here (so yay for me and hello to everybody!) I've been following NeoGAF for a couple of years now but never really participated. Time to change that.

First of all, there's so many promising games here I'm going bananas! It's awesome how the game industry is changing thanks to all the indies everywhere.

I'm half of a 2 person studio from Warsaw called Lichthund - we're working on our first game called Lichtspeer. (Lichtspeer means lightspear in German - it's like a lightsaber except it's a speer).

We've been showcasing our game on a couple of occasions (even won some awards! crazy right?) and people in general dig it, still I'm looking for some more feedback, general thoughts etc.

Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!

Thanks GAF!
since I'm just a junior let me know if I screwed something up

Welcome! That's one nice looking trailer :-D
 

Rafa_Z

Neo Member
I believe I've seen this before somewhere. Maybe on Twitter? Anyways, you've got a vote. :)

Possible, we've been doing some slow Twitter marketing. Thanks for the vote!

Welcome! That's one nice looking trailer :-D

Thanks! We went for the music video vibe I think it worked out ok.

BTW we'll be at EGX this weekend so if anybody wants to meet up or check out Lichtspeer you can find us in the Rezzed area. Anybody coming?
 

Aki-at

Member
Thanks, really appreciate your comment, since it's my goal to give the feel of an old school shmup. :)

It's great to see it! As someone who's trying to emulate the style of platformers found on the Mega Drive/Genesis, I'm loving to see some of these older feeling games. Which shmup's exactly inspired you?

I put Matilda into the game.

matildaingame720.png

The atmosphere in this game is going to be so foreboding!

Hello Indie GAF!

This is my first post here (so yay for me and hello to everybody!) I've been following NeoGAF for a couple of years now but never really participated. Time to change that.

First of all, there's so many promising games here I'm going bananas! It's awesome how the game industry is changing thanks to all the indies everywhere.

I'm half of a 2 person studio from Warsaw called Lichthund - we're working on our first game called Lichtspeer. (Lichtspeer means lightspear in German - it's like a lightsaber except it's a speer).

We've been showcasing our game on a couple of occasions (even won some awards! crazy right?) and people in general dig it, still I'm looking for some more feedback, general thoughts etc.

Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!

Thanks GAF!
since I'm just a junior let me know if I screwed something up

The walrus flying to his doom made me chuckle haha, looks like this is going to be both a hectic and funny game, liking what it looks like so far!
 

Blizzard

Banned
This is the tutorial I used to learn how to write shaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJxxXjoZE30&list=PLV4HCa5XqFT02gZOZ_Jb_A66wqDhZMCkN

If you want to get a good understanding of how shaders work, I'd recommend watching all of it. However videos 13-15 cover lighting.

I don't have lights in my game so I'm pretty rusty with how they work in Unity, but hopefully that gets you thinking about some options.
I don't know if you've used Unreal Engine 4 yourself, but in your opinion is that video series general enough to apply to Unreal as well? I'll bookmark it if so, thanks for the post.

I'm not sure if you mean creating your own scripting language, or implementing an existing one, but to begin with I'd suggest giving giving lua or AngelScript a try, since they're simple to integrate and get started. lua has been used extensively in the games industry, so it's pretty robust as far as platform support goes (there's even a JIT compiler too). If the syntax of lua doesn't appeal to you, AngelScript is very C/C++ esque, which makes it very easy to transfer scripts to native code if they aren't performing well enough.

You might want to create your own (something I've done personally) if you have some particular design principles you want to follow, but be prepared to make many revisions as you inevitably get new and better ideas for compilation and syntax! LLVM is an awesome library to look into too if you want to compile your scripting language into native code.
Thanks! I've probably heard of Lua for games that support modding, and I'll take a look at both of those options.
 

b0b

Neo Member
I'm planning to implement a scripting language in my own game engine, both for my own benefit and potentially for modding.

Does anyone have any overall suggestions, pitfalls, etc. about this topic before I start designing and implementing it?



yeah, don't implement (as in "invent") your own.


angelscript, lua or python.

i've never really used angelscript - so no comment on that one

python is imo a big dependency so i went with lua.
the bind process is not as intuitive as it could be. i'm using "pure"-lua, without any c++ binding wrapper libraries. my code is in C anyway, not C++. And even in my previous C++-code I never used LuaCPP-wrapper. It's fine when it works, has some pitfalls though.

some older (not mine) articles:
https://julien.danjou.info/blog/2008/rants-about-lua
https://julien.danjou.info/blog/2011/why-not-lua
 

Kalentan

Member
ZW5b.png


Granted the last 4 have been from today, but I do think that's some decent progress. Progress I might add, was made possible by fellow Gaffers. :)

It's not over yet, but progress is being made. :)
 

mStudios

Member
Granted the last 4 have been from today, but I do think that's some decent progress. Progress I might add, was made possible by fellow Gaffers. :)

It's not over yet, but progress is being made. :)

I don't know if you're still looking for suggestion, but I made a few.
I don't know what kinf od sprite you're looking for or the background of each character.
So I took what it looks like a warrior.

What I think was wrong:
-The face was too "rectangled."
-Same for the body, it's a warrior so i thoguht he would have a more toned/stronger body.
-Fix of the color issues.

I think there some stuff to fix on the legs and hair. But I'm out of time. Feel free to use a palette similar to the warrior bellow if that the color scheme you're looking for.

Oh he might be a Magician, dunno.
 

Kalentan

Member
I don't know if you're still looking for suggestion, but I made a few.
I don't know what kinf od sprite you're looking for or the background of each character.
So I took what it looks like a warrior.


What I think was wrong:
-The face was too "rectangled."
-Same for the body, it's a warrior so i thoguht he would have a more toned/stronger body.
-Fix of the color issues.

I think there some stuff to fix on the legs and hair. But I'm out of time. Feel free to use a palette similar to the warrior bellow if that the color scheme you're looking for.

Oh he might be a Magician, dunno.

Nah, you got it right.

hX5b.png


I had to re-draw them to 1 x 1 pixel size and then I resized them by 200% to get their actual ingame sprite size. If you're looking at them on a 1920 x 1080 screen, that is how they will look in game.

I do like it. The body looks far more natural. Though I wonder if I can even use it since it's been modded :O
 

mStudios

Member
Nah, you got it right.

hX5b.png


I had to re-draw them to 1 x 1 pixel size and then I resized them by 200% to get their actual ingame sprite size. If you're looking at them on a 1920 x 1080 screen, that is how they will look in game.

I do like it. The body looks far more natural. Though I wonder if I can even use it since it's been modded :O

It's all yours.
Tonight I might see if I can do something to the hair and legs.

By the way, you don't have to redraw. Just grab paint and resize the bigger size:

69c97f930a.png
 

Rafa_Z

Neo Member
The walrus flying to his doom made me chuckle haha, looks like this is going to be both a hectic and funny game, liking what it looks like so far!

Thanks for the kind words.
That walrus is one giant asshole. Trust me, he had it coming.
 

Kalentan

Member
It's all yours.
Tonight I might see if I can do something to the hair and legs.

By the way, you don't have to redraw. Just grab paint and resize the bigger size:

69c97f930a.png

That's what I do. However sometimes after enlarging, I found when trying to shrink it... It comes out weird.

pX5b.png


I tried to make more hair detail and made the legs a tid bit longer on the far right one. Though I'm not a fan of that one. xD
 

Razlo

Member
Hello Indie GAF!

This is my first post here (so yay for me and hello to everybody!) I've been following NeoGAF for a couple of years now but never really participated. Time to change that.

First of all, there's so many promising games here I'm going bananas! It's awesome how the game industry is changing thanks to all the indies everywhere.

I'm half of a 2 person studio from Warsaw called Lichthund - we're working on our first game called Lichtspeer. (Lichtspeer means lightspear in German - it's like a lightsaber except it's a speer).

We've been showcasing our game on a couple of occasions (even won some awards! crazy right?) and people in general dig it, still I'm looking for some more feedback, general thoughts etc.

Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!

Thanks GAF!
since I'm just a junior let me know if I screwed something up

Welcome! Great style to that game of yours, I hope it's a success for you and your team.
 
This is painful for me to hear. :( As I'm a solo man team. I'm trying my best but yeah... The Art isn't going to be the strong suite. In some ways I do have to put the gameplay/story in the fore front.



Hmmm...

I tried to add arms... What do you think?

jV5b.png


Also Male Slimmer body test:

nV5b.png

Get a scanner or a tablet and learn some basic anatomy... I'm not a good artist at all but I somewhat know what the human body is supposed to look like...so I could better translate an idea into a sprite
 

Five

Banned
Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BWP3l-Tbjo

Let me know what you think!

Thanks GAF!
since I'm just a junior let me know if I screwed something up

Wow, that's gorgeous! Reminds me of Guacamelee in a way, sans the Mexican influence of course. I'm very taken by good vector art, so this registers high for me. The music is also very fun.

From the trailer, it seems like most of the game's action is aiming and throwing the spear in various circumstances. Does that sound about right?


That's what I do. However sometimes after enlarging, I found when trying to shrink it... It comes out weird.

pX5b.png


I tried to make more hair detail and made the legs a tid bit longer on the far right one. Though I'm not a fan of that one. xD

This is coming along pretty well. Don't worry about it not being a masterpiece yet. You have to draw thousands and thousands of pieces before you can obtain mastery, and you look like you're on the right track. The same is true for many things as well. For instance, I was a terrible programmer and designer when I first started ten years ago, but that's okay. If you stick with it because you love doing it, you will get better. Just accept things for how they are and always look for ways to get better!


Currently testing out a higher-tier Solus enemy. This bastard can summon the fireflies, launch goop at you, slowing you down, and also do a burrow strike. Their Carapace also occasionally reflects projectiles!

I think I comment on your game every time (or at least I mean to) but this is still so gorgeous, and I love big area-of-effect attacks like that goop. Keep up the good work!
 

Jumplion

Member
I've been pretty inconsistent with the personal projects I try to do, so I've decided to try and do something dirt simple, something that I could iterate on a little bit at a time. I need to plan out what I'm going for with this particular project so I don't fizzle out, so here's hoping I'll tackle this.


It's a simple mobile game that uses accelerometer to position the player within a circle, dodging obstacles and whatnot.

It's around this point when I don't know what to add/what to do next where I end up abandoning projects. Any suggestions as to where I should go from here? I'm thinking of adding different types of obstacles, maybe toying with a more intuitive UI.
 

Peltz

Member
This is painful for me to hear. :( As I'm a solo man team. I'm trying my best but yeah... The Art isn't going to be the strong suite. In some ways I do have to put the gameplay/story in the fore front.

The art style is not bad. But I agree with others who say that it lacks a distinctive quality to make your character design stand out on its own.

If it makes you feel any better, character art is a deep rabbit hole and the thing I've struggled with most. It's why I really have nothing to show for all my work thus far.

I've been drawing for months without coming up with anything remotely good.
 

Kalentan

Member
This is coming along pretty well. Don't worry about it not being a masterpiece yet. You have to draw thousands and thousands of pieces before you can obtain mastery, and you look like you're on the right track. The same is true for many things as well. For instance, I was a terrible programmer and designer when I first started ten years ago, but that's okay. If you stick with it because you love doing it, you will get better. Just accept things for how they are and always look for ways to get better!

I do see the progress... I attempted the new style on other characters.

IY5b.png
 
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