I think it's the lack of actual beach, (i.e. sand) between the forest and the water. Right now it looks more like a river cutting through a forest. The color of the water near the bank is pretty dark, implying that the water there is deep. The crests on the water all seem to go to the left too, again more rivery than beachy...

I hope that was useful...

Get yo'self a purple ramp for more water definition and tree shadowing... keep it simple its a BG ;)

Looks nicer now :)
I would maybe soften the cloud outlines (and the farthest trees in the back) so that they blur out and help define depth. Now the sky, middle and water all have the same level of definition and it flattens things out.

Sure, here's one with the placeholder enemy and projectiles visible:

Most if not all of the enemies will be similar "shadows", and all enemy projectiles are going to be pink.



Personal project, complete game (one day..). :) I guestimated that this would be the hardest background of the five intended, so I started with it.

Cartoonish (edit: well, more accurately, . It's supposed to play a bit like a fairy tale, with narrator intermissions between levels.

I'll try these out, I was planning to get rid of that dithering on the sky anyway.

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edit:

On the rightmost third: new trees, changed grass, slight waviness in the water gradient, softened clouds and back forest layer (just to test, the trees in it are placeholders). I didn't try the simple sky/clouds yet, nor remove the sky dither. At least the sky dither will be going away soon.

What goes for the total length of the background, I'm planning to build a library of trees (10-15 for the front layer, 5-10 for the back layer), and just use those to build the rest of the background. Similarly, sky/clouds/grass/edge/water will end up being tiled and reused throughout.

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edit:

I guess that the earlier style clash was the high contrast shaded clouds + enemy vs more detailed forest layer? I tried to resolve that with the sky. Does that water gradient waving match your idea, or did you have something else in mind?

Here's the current version, plus one with assorted doodads (player sprite is eventually going to be that butterfly, still working on it). The sky has been redone completely, the rest was copypasted to see how it works. The background forest layer is still placeholder. 

The 100+ colours in the second image come from alpha channel, the gems and the HUD text have alpha AA.

Answer revision time! :) Well, I kind of want to keep it light and cartoonish, but still detailed (not high contrast shading like the clouds and the enemy in the earlier posts). "SNES RPGish" might be a better description.

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edit:

Water level up! Water is now at level 2... or is it?




Edited by inphy - 12 January 2010 at 1:43pm

It's definitely got an appeal, and it's an interesting take on the water.

Unfortunately, it's also giving me a headache just looking at it. That might be solely my problem, though XD

looks cool!

Thanks for the comments and suggestions! :D Yeah, it's too fast. Plus, the relative speed difference between the slowest and 2nd slowest is also too big (1px per frame vs. 2px per frame), that makes it look a bit funky when the other bands go at 3px per frame and 4px per frame (smaller relative speed difference).

I tried to keep the animation frame count down to maintain a reasonable size, to get a loop through the whole pattern on every level is 80 frames (at those px per frame speeds) and already half a megabyte. :) It'll be easier to adjust them in code later on.

@CaKsTeR: The Collector's Edition will include a pack of painkillers. ;)

@Ryath: I'm planning to reduce the facet count, that should make them more readable and less bright. The frames with the white stripes are played very quickly and not very often, those are just for glint/highlighting.

@Manupix: I think I see what you mean (bad contrast in the wave pattern and between the two bands, wave pattern too big for the band), tried to fix it. It should also blend it better when the relative speed difference is adjusted to something more reasonable.

Mangrove would be brilliant, but I think it might be too tropical/swampy in the context of the game. The trees are going to be modified further though, added a couple of unshaded New Trees(tm). I think was doing it wrong, first trying to shape the canopy and then the trunk + branches. Now I do the trunk + branches first, and then think about how the canopy rests on that. Another thing I feel I did wrong was that I shaded the trees so early, it's harder to maintain a consistent style.



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edit:

Trees (still going to apply more shading)! Gems!




Edited by inphy - 17 January 2010 at 10:06am

This happens to be some of the BEST pixel art I have ever seen. :)

I think this is coming out great! I wonder if the flat grass is too over-pixelled tho. Maybe instead is the 6 colors used, just use 3 or 4???

Thanks for the advice, the majority of the grass now uses 3 colours, the rest being pushed to the back for smoother transition/canopy shadow. Also tried to break down the ball canopy and connect it to the trunks better.



I was concerned that the grass is too noisy at first, but I think it ended up pretty smooth. What do you think?

edit: Aside from perhaps adding a shadow for the foreground trees and more flora (flowers, bushes, etc) for the grass, I can't spot anything obvious to refine. Is there something you guys would still refine?


Edited by inphy - 24 January 2010 at 12:27pm

Ahh, I see, I thought he meant that the dark line between the canopy and the trunks in the background was off.. 

Thanks a lot for the edit, I tried following your example:



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edit: Huh, I had an extra green in the grass, used that for smoothing the canopies a bit, and rounded some of the canopy the canopy/clouds line (feels like it blends better):



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edit: Spent some time away from this, and nothing sticks out like a sore thumb in my eyes. The tree shadows don't exactly follow the canopy, I tried doing a more accurate shadow but I feel it didn't look as good as this.

I'm quite pleased with the way it looks now. Using that dark in the foreground tree trunks was a good suggestion, I think the trees pop up nicely from the rest of the background but without looking separate/out of place. Plus, I think the trunks connect better both in the foreground and background.

So yeah.. maybe it's time to call this done? Started work on the engine anyway. :)

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edit: Yup, this is now done. Thanks a lot to everyone, this wouldn't be half of what it is now without you. :)


Edited by inphy - 01 February 2010 at 12:41pm