Are they clones? Are they all the same woman, using cheap disguises? Are they homunnculi, created by a wizard for use as cheap labour to corner the local commerce market? Will you ever find out? Possibly.
EDIT - Okay, here's a test of a background for the Cordania store, with the prices on the board, at the size it'd be in the game (if you click to see it full size). Does it look okay having the writing in the wrong "pixel scale" like that? I know most of the text in the game - the descriptions and all in the bottom half - are not pixelled, but that seems different. I dunno, I'm kind of torn on this. What do you all think?
I also doodled a background for being to sea, for when you take a boat from Gillsport too, but am not really happy with it. It feels more like a dock, to me. Does it read as "on a ship" to you? Any idea on making it shippier?
While avoiding the combat, I've also added clothing and some more potion stuff. At least this is productive procrastination. Okay, back to BATTLE!
I like the shopkeepers... kinda like Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny in Pokemon. :)
ReplyDeleteFor the ship, maybe show just a little sail in the upper right corner? A bit of beam and sail would make it obvious you are on a ship, not a dock.
Yeah, although the art is still great, it does look a lot like a dock. As Jononamous said, some shiply features would do the trick.
ReplyDeleteThe shop looks fine, but you're right about the ship looking like a dock.
ReplyDeleteI totally read that as cock.
DeleteA cock shaped ship might be a bit too much.
DeleteHey, it worked in "Lexx"...
DeleteThe convenience of having the shop signs seems to out way the stylistic diversion, it looks fine.
ReplyDeleteYou could always switch to a view from the front or even back of the boat.
If you want it to look more like a ship, draw it from the perspective that you are looking along the bow.
ReplyDeleteThat'd look cool for travelling views, but I want a side one so I can add another ship in the background for battles - like the enemy ship has pulled alongside, and they've jumped over.
Deleteadd part of the ships mast, sail, and ropes to the left(might have to cover the sun or move the sun to the right). add a barrel or two, belaying pins on the rail and if you can add them on the bottom of the mast also(this is where the ropes that secure the sails are tied to), and probably sprinkle some seagulls and jumping fishes/shark fin/ascending or descending whale/leaping dolphin in there to give it some life.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a ship to me... But yeah, a mast or sail intruding on the image would help. Don't have masts on piers, generally.
ReplyDeleteDid you use layers for the shopkeepers? You could randomly generate shopkeepers that way...
I kind of want the shopkeepers to be unique to each town, but that's a good idea for randomly generating other npcs, thanks!
DeleteI like the shopkeepers too. Now they're pictured, their similarity is a cute quirk of the game.
ReplyDeleteI have no particular opinion on the prices. Honestly the game as a whole doesn't look that retro to me. I predate the low-rez LCD screens of the Gameboy etc. My old-school is 8-bit, and this game has far too much color and pixels which are vastly sharper than anything from my past. It's still cute & fun though, enough of the same image construction techniques apply that the sexy pixel art makes me giggle. :) It's more the border which isn't retro to me. I think the border's high-contrast edges really show up the pixel sharpness, whereas the images don't really show it so much. Besides that, none of my games ever had borders all the way around. Not that that matters.
There is something which bothers me. That's the fuzziness of the i and ? buttons. To my eyes it clashes with the sharpness of the border. It gets quite annoying after a while. There were a few games on the Atari ST which had borders; also a little after my time but I mention it to say that on such a game the i and ? buttons would have been integrated into the artwork of the border. But again the pixels would have been smaller. *shruuuug* lol
The boat image I thought was a dock too. It took me a bit to figure out what's wrong with it. To get that particular view you'd have to be standing on one of the hatches leading below. You'd have half the deck in front of you, most of which we can't see because the image is so widescreen, and there is nothing going on on that deck! It might be a quiet time, but even allowing for that, wouldn't the mast be intruding heavily into the image on the right?
The viewpoint is also odd. Why can I see the roof of the aftcastle from the middle of the boat? Am I standing on the boom? If so, why isn't the left half of the image all sail? If it's not the aft-castle but the low.. whatever of a smaller boat, then why don't the steps start outside it? And in that case why does it extend to the edge? I haven't seen that layout before. You could put the perspective lower and closer to the rail, with the 'castle' being a big vertical on the right, or perhaps put stairs leading up and off the picture to the right, if that works. Or, you could adopt an in-cabin view with a porthole and maybe curtains, or one of the other views people have suggested.
A few seagulls as some have said might be nice, but they're not that common away from land. Most of the game's scenes are quite desolate so dolphins and shark fins would be startling, I think. If you put them in you'd have to populate the whispering heath with bison, antelope, baboons....
Whee, I love these long response, because reading and responding gives me an excuse to stop messing with the battle system. :P
DeleteGood point on the border and info buttons - the issue comes up because the buttons are part of the GUI (high res) and the border is par tof the background (lowres). I will at somepoint replace the buttons with pixel jobs.
Hadn't considered the oclours of the border clashing, but you're right. When I started the game I intended to use the VGA palette for added oldschoolness, but found it too restrictive. I never updated the border from that. And, foolishly, I made the border part of the bgs, so I'd have to go through all the backgrounds to fix it. Hm, unless, I guess, I just make a new border as a screen element that sits over it. I'll have a play.
Side note - my first computer was a zx spectrum. I briefly considered using THAT palette XP
As for the ship background, I think that without quite saying it, you've pointed out why I didn't get it right - I didn't look at any reference pictures at all, and just dove in thinking "yeah! gonna draw a ship! I know what ships look like!" and apparently I don't :P. I totally bluffed my way through all the town styles too, but I guess I need to start using reference more.
Thanks for the feedback, it's always really helpful!
*grin* You're welcome! It looks like i did better than i knew i was capable of in a couple of areas of my post. XD
DeleteThe towns look fine to me, nice even. It's only the boat.
After I wrote that post I thought about the palette and realised how much better the game is for not using a VGA or lesser palette after all. ^.^; The game may be a little different to what i remember, but it's good in its own way.
I like the shop prices being as readable as they are.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you intend for the economy be changed later on a lot. Imagine if you add new items, adjusting prices, etc, it might be prudent,
if you don't already,
to let that text be written by script rather than image editing.
man, good point. That'll save me a load of hassle later, thanks.
DeleteI'm glad to see you've got the fans to point these things out. I'm not the only one anymore.
DeleteNew potions!? Ah! I can't wait! (here's hoping one of the new effects will let us alter our char's height!)
ReplyDeleteHmm, if you draw the boat at an angle with the sea, it will also help the feel. Docks aren't generally built with a slope, so that leaves boats.
ReplyDelete