My Summer Project

[NightrainSrt4]

Pretty much this entire last week has gone to waste.

I was spending time working with the artist for the game (my brother). Long story short, he kept avoiding me all week. Wasn't showing up (telecommuting). All I got was excuse after excuse, none of which were of any importance. Doing pixel art was "hurting his eyes" and not the 8 hours of video games he was playing while ditching me. Essentially being an artist on paper doesn't translate into pixel art. I get that, just don't string me along and waste my time.

So I dumped money and parts to get his computer up and running and he pretty much used me for that without any intention of fulfilling his end of the deal and making art for the game. Finally enough was enough. So I'm out a week of my time, money and computer parts, and am no further along with the art than I was.

I've spent some time making the art myself. It isn't going to be the quality I wanted, but maybe if the game makes it big I can hire an artist to help me along. If not, I don't mind doing it myself. Just means my time is divided into every aspect that makes up a game: design, programming, art, sound, etc.

Onward.

[Kayin]

Ouch.

BTW, DO NOT MAKE IT SCALED! Oblivion and FFVII both come to mind, and both were everloving PITAs, as well as the fact you never really feel powerful, cause even little jerks can still punt your face to where your tail is.

Have you looked into the myriads of free pixel art out there?

[NightrainSrt4]

Scaling
My thoughts for scaling were different than what Oblivion and the others. I was thinking that everything would be scaled on the higher difficulties compared to their original in the normal difficulty.

This way the basic creatures at the beginning of the game are challenging the next play through with the same character even with the high level items from the first game. The weapons are then scaled X amount to compensate slightly for the increased difficulty.

Example:

Playthrough 1:

Angry Mudpie - 10hp / 2 attack
Wooden Sword - 3 attack

Playthrough 2:

Angry Mudpie - 100hp / 20 attack
Wooden Sword - 21 attack

This way you get to go through the progression again the second/third time around and still feel challenged each time through, and will have to get new armor / weapons each time through without me having to come up with an entire new set of items / enemies. I've coded my item spawner to allow for additional items that can only be found in the higher difficulties as well.

Art
I have looked into the free pixel art around, but in the end I wanted it to be original for the game. If that means the game takes a bit longer to release, so be it.

I was too frustrated today to program so I worked a bit on the art to calm me down a bit. I don't like to code angry because then things end up broken, or buggered up somehow, and I'll spend the next day trying to figure out what happened or where things went wrong.

Started on the item icons. Still need work, but they are a start and far better than the placeholders I was using, especially with me having zero experience with pixel art.

This should show up as the actual size of the icons in-game.

The picks need work on the shading, as they feel flat and there isn't enough contrast in some of them, like the gold one. Still, I'm happy with my progress. I'm going to have a hard time once I need to animate things, but I'll deal with it when I get there.

[Kayin]

http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

I'm using it ingame to alter or create what I need. Works very well.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. That looks like it could be very helpful for animations and whatnot. I've been using Paint.NET which has worked well for the static pixel art, but felt weak for trying to deal with animation.

[NightrainSrt4]

Couldn't decide to have my potion vials angled or vertical, so I tried a set of both. I will probably tone down the color of the glass a little as the ones other than green look a little darker than I wanted.

Still can't decide which I will use. I'll have to make the other potions and see which work well together.

[Kayin]

I like the angled, anything that seems to be dynamic will have a better chance of catching the eye.

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I was thinking the same. The angled should also work better with the quantity text.

I just wasn't sure if the other potion bottle designs were going to work as well tilted, but I suppose there isn't any reason they shouldn't. I've yet to design those.

[NightrainSrt4]

Worked on some morningstar icons last night / this morning. I can't decide between which version, but probably because I'm not totally content with either. It's harder to get the little spikes in on this one because of how few pixels there are.

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And some axes from this morning. Because of the change in angles, there looks like there are a lot of spots that could use AA or something, but I'm happy so far.

I was going for a smaller TF2 Pyro / Fireman axe style.

I probably don't have to say this here but,

All works I have posted, linked, will post or will link, of my work are copyrighted by myself, Richard A. Maranhao III, and are not to be used, copied, or distributed without permission.

Again probably unnecessary but forgot to mention it.