While it's not the name yet it's the general idea of a game I have floating around in my head. The game is in greyscale with only a few splashes of color showing in between.
I would tell you the over all arching idea though but you would call me culturally insane. But, since people love being evil characters now I thought, meh, why not? It's unfinished, mainly because I want an opposing tank force on the right side of the hills and I want to put in tiny soldiers up there. Your viewing the battle in the background as you go along the stage. Platforms and dirt roads aren't really my strong points here. I'll post up more later on. If I don't get psychological help first.
Anyone up for some CnC?
All platforming problems can be mostly solved here:
The tanks look too organic. Turret looks like a cigarette. What is behind those tanks? Trees? If so, they really need some improvement. The planes look nice, though, it's not really realistic for them to fly rotated on their side like that is it? But that's not too much of a bother to me, they are simple and look nice. The main character is fairly flat looking, one arm seems half the length of the one thats beside him.
But overall, I like it. The ground tile could use a little more definition, granted it is supposed to go backward and allow the characters to visually move forward but its only two colours, one of which is the hill colour.
The shading on the robot guy doesn't look very realistic - not exactly pillow-shaded, but not good. The black outlines on everything look bad too, and it's generally lacking detail.
On the otherhand, the tanks etc seem too detailed, considering that they are off in the distance. If the player can interact with them (ie. shoot them) then they need to be bigger, and brought into the foreground more. Otherwise, I think they'd be better as silhouettes, which are obviously easier to draw too.
Since you seem to be going for a kind of "cinematic" effect, here's what I'd do...
I'd make the tanks etc silhouettes, and the sky very dark aswell, and then occassionally make it brighter as a result of lightning strikes/explosions/etc (with accompanying sound effects of course). Maybe have several different levels of lighting for different size explosions.
Often times, I'm begging to start hating edits because when I see them, I think that that is what the person is trying to put down what they have imagined. Not that I don't like them, it's just that I think that the editor takes away something from the original poster and sometimes make them not want to finish. Not in this case though, those are excellent lighting examples. I love that silhouette idea. It looks better anyways. Though the problem would be with the aircraft when they're facing sideways. Plus, I hate working on something and then not seeing new posts like this one. This is what I came up with after reading jthongbai's post. Granted, not everything's fixed here, I mainly worked on some smaller issues.
I also added some extra detail like the soldiers and the attacking force. I tried to make the cyborg more readable first. What's wrong with tanks being organic? But I did change them and tried to do a sideview on the planes. Which is why I'm worried about those being completely black. Also the officers legs are messed up a bit because it was a hurried flip job. Hopefully I'll get to work on it more later today. Thanks though guys.
Btw, how should I improve the cyborgs shading? That seems to be one of my many weak points.
All platforming problems can be mostly solved here:
Shade more accordingly to his form. He's a cyborg after all, he is only partly robot and still has some human inside him. Therefore you can probably assume that the cyborg will share the conventional human anatomy/form underneath his suit. Look at ways of defining his legs, arms, chest, head even that make him seem more believable.
I would edit but I'm hurrying before a dentist appointment. I might later on if necessary
Originally Posted by GamesterXIII metal is never truly grey!
False. If the concept is that the world is monochrome, then the result is that the metal will have nothing to reflect other than grey. Therefore, the metal would only be shades of grey. That's sort of how monochrome works, you see.
Only thing I have to add: People only love having evil characters when they are expected to be good characters. The act of being evil is more about going against what the design is supposed to be in favor of your own. If you design it so that the player is supposed to be evil, then they won't find that fun. It'll be boring. What's the alternative? Being a good guy, which is also boring.
Hmm, best tell the makers of GTA4, Bioshock, SW:KOTOR, Overlord, any MMO (WoW especially), any game where players are the bad guy or any game where players are given the "moral" choice of being evil. (Nameless One, Planescape:Torment anyone?) I also remember a popular contest on here that spawned a slightly well recieved game where you play the role as a modern necromaner. Whenever players are given an alternate role in which they can destroy a world instead of save it, some players are going to destroy the world. I also don't suppose that when players play the soviet side in RA2 that they expect Stalin to become this good natured huggable teddy bear in the end. Or that your not really going to fire off that bio missle at the end of the Terrorist side in Command and Conquer Generals.
To be fair to the guy about grey though. I intend to have areas of color as little as possible. Grey scale is, for me hard to work with. It'd be like doing a GB remake. So, I suppose the metal would reflect the color off those objects. Like the sky, a lightning bolt, a charging laser, etc. (I hope I just didn't hijack my own thread.)
All platforming problems can be mostly solved here:
Erm, even in a greyscale world, light reflects off of metal in the same way... O_o Are you thinking that metal in a colorful world sparkles with rainbowiness?
Originally Posted by Xhunterko To be fair to the guy about grey though. I intend to have areas of color as little as possible. Grey scale is, for me hard to work with. It'd be like doing a GB remake. So, I suppose the metal would reflect the color off those objects. Like the sky, a lightning bolt, a charging laser, etc. (I hope I just didn't hijack my own thread.)
Limiting your colors will seriously improve anyone's basic sprite design principles. I'm a firm believer in that.
I think it's a good starting point for understanding tone, however once you move to using a broad selection of colours, you should really still be thinking about the difference in tone because it's important to be able to distinguish the tone of a colour you've selected from another. Once you create a mockup, look at it in black and white, and you'll start to see what I mean. You might be using a lot of colour but it looks boring because there's no major tonal differences between characters, foreground and background. It creates depth.
Advertisement
Post Reply
