On a whim today I tried doing something that -- for some reason -- I've never considered doing. My game, from the start, for whatever reason has a blue overlay blended in over all the art. It sets a blue hue to everything (it doesn't constrain
every color, but it did make many things more blueish and generally suppress certain colors, such as medium/dark reds became muddled and warmer greens became cooler greens -- stuff like that) and sort of contributed to a higher contrast look to everything due to how everything interacted. For some reason I had myself brainwashed that this was sacred, I could never remove it, that it was REQUIRED to make the game art look presentable.
Well, for some reason today I tried removing it just to see what things look like nowadays. After all, it was put in very early in the process.
After just a little tweaking I'm actually pretty excited to say farewell to that overlay. I've found I can get a much dimmer, more organic look to everything, and since so many colors were being suppressed, especially subtle colors, in many areas I'm getting more complexity in the compositions now.
Here we see warmer, dimmer, more organic appearance that lends itself well to the atmosphere.
The bigger clips show off the differences more.
The outdoor areas (there are more outdoor areas, just not shown yet or in the beta
) are quite a bit different now, with a more organic, natural look.
Beware even the webm example on the outdoor graphic came to a large file size. Not sure why.
New: http://www.gfycat.com/NiceDimIndianringneckparakeet
Old: http://www.gfycat.com/MammothDeliriousGuineafowl
It really stands out when you see them back to back. I guess I always thought the blue tint gave it a unique look, but I think it was taking away more than it was giving.
More examples of the new look...
http://www.gfycat.com/CoordinatedRelievedAustralianfurseal -- here you can see a lot more color subtly in the indoor portion, particularly note you can see purple things now and distinguish them
http://www.gfycat.com/GracefulFearlessBlackandtancoonhound -- Green areas look greener now, and warmer. Also note the new death animation in this one.
http://www.gfycat.com/MerrySilentFiddlercrab#
http://www.gfycat.com/AgreeableAffectionateGentoopenguin -- charge blast.
It's also nice to note that yellow is back on the menu. Yellow was a very, very hard color to get to look right with the old overlay. Especially subtle greenish yellow.
