Figured I should post some work for a game I've been working on in my spare time!

The levels are procedurally generated per-tile (no pre-built sections), which means that I can't do meta-tiles (with reasonable performance). As a result, the tilesets are very simple. My hope is that they don't look painfully procedural, and I'd like some feedback on that.

There are only a few different enemies at this point and even fewer item drops. I'm not very fond of doing enemy designs/animations, so that part is going extremely slowly. I'll need a lot more enemies before I can release this thing, though.

These screenshots are at 1x, and the game has an optional zoom feature (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x). I usually play at 2x.

Animated screenshot:


Screenshots of the different level types with all the current enemies:





The leaves in the last screenshot don't overlap the enemy sprites even though the floor grass/leaves do because of performance reasons. Ideally I'd like to have them overlap correctly, but it would mean getting rid of some performance optimizations I use. There's a related issue with enemies not overlapping as one might expect (an enemy on a platform behind another enemy might appear to float in front of them, for example).

Any kind of feedback is welcome! Some things aren't possible because of technical issues, but I'd like to make this look the best I can within those limitations.


Edited by eishiya - 31 August 2015 at 7:05pm

One thing you could try is to create a 2nd version of the ground tiles and randomly use one or the other, to help break up the repeating pattern.

That's really just nitpicking though, I think it's looking pretty good, as is!

I should do that! I considered it originally but it wasn't possible back then, but now I could do it. I already have this type of variation on the grass tops, so it should be no problem to add some to other types of tile. Thanks for reminding me!


Do you know what could help the attack look better? Is it a timing issue, or something with the motion? I'm not super-concerned with making her look very powerful she she isn't meant to be, but I don't want her to look bored.

I think more lead-in would help (have her lean back more, maybe lift a stubby leg, then come crashing down), but in trying to keep the game responsive I kept the animation as quick as I could. Another challenge is that the same attack animation is used for attacks of various lengths and types, everything from swords to chains uses the same body motion, overlaid with different sprites. Swords are reasonably well-suited to the body motion though, so if the sword attacks look bad, then the whole thing's bad.


Edited by eishiya - 01 September 2015 at 7:25am

I think part of it is that you need to put her whole body into the motion, not just moving her arms.

I didn't want to respond to the excellent feedback here without having a "fixed" version to show, and I haven't had time to work on pixel art, so that's why I'm posting after almost two months of silence. I'm taking a break from my comic today to push some pixels.

I didn't change the smears (is that what Redsuinit meant by "stretch"?) on this sword because it's a very dinky slow sword, but I will definitely experiment with different smears for different weapons. I hope I get to have one that leaves sparkles instead of smears 8] Before then, I should make a "nice", shiny sword with only 1-2 frames of smear though.

The original animation had the body come forward (the arms are too short to convey any kind of motion xP) but clearly it wasn't enough. The animation was also anchored on the wrong foot, cutting the "apparent" motion in half (the body stayed where it was, but the foot moved backwards, because I am an idiot). I re-anchored it on the back foot and made a few other tweaks.

(Screenshot is missing a frame, but frameskip is just a reality of life xP Also, I know that the ground overlaps the smear. That is a limitation of my layering. Ideally I want an extra layer just for weapons, but with Canvas, performance is an issue.)
It's still not great, but I think it's an improvement. As I mentioned earlier, I don't want the attacks to feel "powerful", but I do want them to feel like the character's at least trying. Maybe having a more distinct "stepping" motion would help, instead of just letting the foot slide over?

She still doesn't changer her expression. I'm undecided on whether she should. It could look good, but it would look weird if the changes don't correspond to key moments in the attack - and they definitely won't, because the frame on which the attack launches fully, connects, etc changes depending on the weapon, and I feel like at this sprite size, no expressions is better than mistimed expressions.

I haven't made the random alternate tiles yet. Mentioning this here as a reminder to myself mostly.


Edit: In addition to Endless, I have a more "dream project" sort of thing I'm working on. Should I post stuff for that here too? I guess I'd need to change the topic title.

http://i.imgur.com/x6u7XC8.png

ugh, I don't know how the hyperlink thing works.

Chibi is still humanshape. The bone structure is, or should, all be there. It's just the sizes of those bones that change, but you should be able to position everything according to your poses, I think.

I also forgot to mention that with the perspective shift, there was another possibility, which is to change all the straight left/right sprites to all be in that 3/4 perspective as well. (You may have to cheat the perspective a bit). My issue is just with the perspective shift being there at all, I don't mind which version you choose so long as it remains consistent.

Man that sucks about the base animation, I feel you. I hope that you can find a magic set of frames that happens to work for all the attacks but if not, I'm thinking you might as well do whatever you want with the base animation and exaggerate it to be as clear as possible.

Speaking of the exaggeration thing, cartoons exaggerate motions and "break" the structure all the time, but it's for clarity/effect. In your case I'm guessing you don't want cartoonish exaggeration. I think it's possible to draw some key frames that are exaggerated, but only a little bit, if that makes sense. What I mean is more subtle movement. Like on the sword swing key frame, you can move the head forward and down diagonally, but say, only by one pixel, and I think that would be enough to show the movement needed.

The arms are raised to around shoulder-height, which is normal, but it doesn't read well, you're right. The arms snap to their highest position when the attack starts, then move down, so there isn't really any opportunity for them to register as "up". I'm sick of that animation, but I'll take another look at it later and see if I can make the arm motion clearer without having too many lead-in frames.

I love the big mud golem and the general charm to this game :D

I think the UI needs work, but I'm sure that'll come as you develop the game further :)

I think your very thick font clashes with the rest of the game and that a thinner outline would be more fitting.

The icons do a great job of giving information though.

Conker534: Ah, I see. The outlines are there to make sure the text remains legible on all backgrounds, since the game has both dark and light backgrounds and it's quite possible for there to be enemies behind the HUD. 1px makes the text harder to read because it makes the area around the text even busier (contrasting black lines with whatever is in the background). The 2px outlines produce something of a solid area, making the text easy to read. Ideally the text should be bold (and back when the game had a larger screen, it was), but that takes up too much space. Perhaps I might be able to use a different outline colour, something that contrasts a little less.

Since the major purpose of the numbers is to highlight changes in your equips, and aside from the flight time, most of that information is only relevant when you're changing equips, perhaps I can make the stat changes (e.g. (icon) -10, (icon) +4) pop up over your head the same way as damage does, but stay a little longer since it's more likely to be more text to read. It'll take some extra coding to be able to draw the icons as part of those notifications, but it's doable.
Do you think that would be good? If I do this, I'll probably move the flight time to the top row of icons. I could also get rid of the flight time text and just make it blink when you have under 5 seconds left, since the main purpose of having that indicator always visible is so you know when you're about to stop flying and land somewhere safe ahead of time. And of course, if I make these changes, I'll definitely have my playtesters try them out. I don't make decisions based purely on purties :]

I just found out this thread... I just want to say "wow", I like what I am seeing here.

If you're talking about killing the enemies in Endless: to not be killed in turn, and to get better gear. The goal of the game is to get  as far as possible before you get killed, and killing enemies for better gear is one way to do that. Avoiding them is another, more difficult way.

RE: The blobby mess -
That's how I've been trying to work lately as well. (My background is more that of a draughtsman, so lines have always been my safe haven, but it can really kill the flow - especially in a medium like pixel art.) I've found that I just have to narrow my focus and force myself to forget about everything other than an arbitrary part (maybe choosing to work from background to foreground, or top to bottom). You can always deal with everything else later, or come back to a part you've "finished" if some issue crops up. It's hard mental work (maybe goes against my nature a bit, or just my training), but it's almost cathartic when it works.

What engine are you using?

Yeah, I was gonna suggest simply popping in whole assets one at a time, but figured that wouldn't necessarily be practical with every pre-made engine.

That is a beautiful tree. I've been struggling with conifers so much, but that is really quite lovely.

Nice banana tree you got there ;)