Hello Pixeljoint community,

Here's a very, very, very, very early version of my game: BNB 0.0.1 [Rev. 61] on Zippyshare
If you don't want to invest your time in testing my application, just watch this: Small YouTube Video

I know that this isn't much but I want to get feedback as early as possible, so please tell me what you think or if you encountered any bugs.

Controls:
Movement: WASD
Use: E

current mockup status:




For a thread that deals with the people graphics separately: Tiny People
For a thread that deals with the car graphics separately: Tiny Cars
For a thread that deals with the faces: Faces.
For a thread that deals with menu graphics: Character Creation Menu.
For a thread that deals with the headline/logo: Game Logo.


Edited by BrightBit - 07 June 2012 at 6:05pm

What CELS said is true, however you also need to pay attention to the little garden at the top-left corner, the garden should end at the walls border.

I pushed the garden abit forward to end at the walls border, which i estimated to be the thickness of the wall away from the border we see, good luck :)

EDIT: The windows bottom seem to be inside the wall with about 3 pixels, Yet the windows top alligns with the wall. You can solve this by pushing the window top in by about 3 pixles


Edited by MacNcheese - 13 July 2011 at 1:34pm

This reminds me of the True Lies game for SNES. Could provide a good reference. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOungZqtQWE

I changed the walls and windows and made the dirt a bit brighter. Did it help?

[image]


Edited by BrightBit - 22 July 2011 at 10:45am

I think the change made it all even more confusing. What bothers me the most about the orininal pictures are the 3D walls coupled with the 2D doors, especially the openings between rooms.
And also the sharp border between sidewalk and the patch of dirt.

The game itself looks really interesting though! I love roguelikes, and this seems very appealing and different.

It's really difficult to tell that the vertical walls are actually walls. Especially with the doors looking like they do, since they make the walls look like paths leading into them.

I worked on the menu bar on the bottom of the image and therefor created a font. Please criticise the font as well if you like. Here we go:

[image]

...and here with lines of sight:

[image]

The letters Q, z, Z, x and X are the worst. The small bit on the Q looks odd and the antialiasing of x, X, z and Z don't look right to me. Any hints on where to set the grey pixels?


Edited by BrightBit - 22 July 2011 at 10:47am

@onek: My first approach makes opened doors that lie under a wall look as if you can walk into this wall. That's why I changed it because this way opened doors didn't read well. :-(

I finally changed the walls again to use a brick pattern. Does it read now?

[image]


Edited by BrightBit - 22 July 2011 at 10:48am

The perspective is really confusing me. I can't tell what's from the top, or the side, or anything, the doors, walls and windows are all sending off different perspectives. It's not an issue of the texture.



If you're going for a 3/4 view then you need to use either 1. or 2. (2 is more realistic but a bitch for tiling) and if you're going for top down, then you need to dispense with the doorways and windows, like 3.

You're really good at pixel art (probably better than me :/) but just work on your perspectives some more before you waste time creating great art that doesn't fit.

Edited by bannanawalrus - 19 July 2011 at 3:08pm

What you mean rougelikes? I love rougelikes, and there are 3/4 view rougelikes out there, just as there are many top down ones, and the way in which the doors and windows have been done make it seem 3/4 view, whilst the walls make it seem top down, Hence confusion.

aha ok .. so its a specific kind of game ur working on.. hadnt heard anything about so called roguelikes before...

the examples in ur last post are UGLY AS HELL though... please make something nicer...

about the walls, .. what ab out something like this ?
... i dont like the brickwalls though,compared to the rest, theyre far too busy to me and i dont like the color...

i think u nailed it with ur last approach :D

the walls shout be brighter tho i think

Thank you guys... I am glad to hear that it finally looks okay. :-)

I made some small changes to fix some issues with the windows, added a new window type and a tank.

[image]

Edited by BrightBit - 25 July 2011 at 6:07pm

Thank you Blueberry_pie,

I will keep you posted about the game as well. :-)

About the saturation thing: I need to think about it. My first impression is that it takes too much colour out of the image.

I made some minor changes. The tank is now less futuristic and there are three different colour schemes for them. There are women now, too. Not sure if they read that well, though. They might have more details than the men... What do you think about them?




Edited by BrightBit - 24 July 2011 at 3:58pm

Looking good... Minor crit would be that the blinds on the windows (the red ones) look kinda odd. The shape of them is fine, I think it's just the color that's throwing me...

I like both, it was just the red that was bothering me...:)

I tried a different approach regarding the perspective of the vehicles. To reduce the effort needed to create visual content I've decided to use a top down view for the cars:



@Smilecythe
I don't want to create two versions for each door because of the same reason why I am using a top down view for the cars. Roguelike games were originally invented to remove the requirement to create artworks. Some roguelikes even use only ASCII art to visualise their game environment. But I agree: roguelikes can be a bit confusing in terms of perspective correctness.


Edited by BrightBit - 30 July 2011 at 12:40pm

Hello Pixeljoint Community,

I've got an update again. Sorry, if I'm a bit too slow. The interface was too blocky and too old school in my opinion. The speech bubbles also did look way too boring, so here is a different approach:



As you can see: I also added some kind of fog of war as an indication for the field of view of the player in the middle of the screen.

What do you think?


Greetings
BrightBit

I've changed the interface (the menu on the bottom of my screenshots). If you want to see the changes please look for the very first post in this topic. I didn't want to link them here to reduce the image count.


Greetings
BrightBit

Can you describe what exactly is making the face ugly? The colours, the proportions or something else? Did you see my complete face collection here: Faces
Do they all look ugly or just this one? ...and last but not least: Does it really look ugly or just not as good as the old version?

Sorry for my questions but to be honest your words took me by suprise. I didn't expect that. :) Nevertheless, thank you. It just can help me create better graphics.

I don't think it has to do with the speech bubble.
Ugly is not the good word, sorry for the mistake. I would rather say that the new guys looks a bit stupid.
I'll try to make it constructive :
The thing I notice the most is a kind of strabism on the new face that gives him that stupid look.
Also, the different parts on the face are completely separated, I guess it is meant to be changed/replaced to create multiples combinations and faces.
The fact you added shading only on these parts makes the rest of the face look flat.
Plus, I feel these faces are a little bit too large but maybe that's just me.
Important point i forgot to mention, I don't like how the outlines are brighter than the background

I really prefere the first one in all points, including color palette, shadings and expression

Hope this is helpful
I made an edit wich rendered really nicely but I closed it without saving by mistake. (I know, this is stupid and does not need to be mentionned).

PS: I like the way you accept critics, I hardly do such. And I love the way you make constructive critics and edits about other works, especially on pixelation.
You are an exemple I should follow
And your animation skills are awesome (omnomnom particles)

Well, this is what I call useful critiques. Thank you. :)

You have some really good arguments there. I didn't even notice the strabism for example. The flatness and the bright outlines are good points, too.

Sadly you're right about the flatness being a result of the interchangability of the facial features but maybe I can add some shadows without sacrificing it. I also had some thoughts about the overall size of the faces but making them smaller might worsen the usability of the custom character creation for players.

Nevertheless I will rework those faces and your edit will really help me. Thanks again. I really appreciate your critiques.

PS: By pixelation you mean www.wayofthepixel.net? I've got no account there. Maybe you are mistaking me for someone else because I also did just one pixel animation in my life and you wouldn't praise my skills for this one. ;) But now I'm curious. Where can I see those omnomnom particles?

I've uploaded a first (very early) version of my game. See first post for more details.