THE SCREENSHOT TOPIC RETURNS

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Ember <3 I like the mapple, but i think its too empty.

@Gadesx: That looks good but i think the 256 colours limititation kinda ruin the lights effects.

SOme pics of the finished thing (Well, "Finished", the antidecompiled exe was buggy so we have to make a bugfix patch)

Main menu



Online Menu



Online Lobby



I personally think those menus are too busy, Felipe, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure they look better in-game though.

Here's a few screenshots from Colhaven, a town in my game:





And here's a shot of the map in the editor. Not the whole thing, though:

benos
My mind is full of fuck.
624


Some characters in reserves, awesome idea there.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Dethmetal, I really like that chipset a lot, I can't remember if I've seen it before. Is it one you made or found?





Ridiculously over the top lava shark game, now with suburban house life! So awesome! Stay tuned for next time, when we add office politics at his day job in sales, and arguments with his mother about how she wants more grandchildren!

No but seriously this house only lasts about sixty seconds before enemy soldiers show up with helicopters and chains and airlift it away. Which is the next thing I need to sprite, and which will be awesome but way too hard to make and I'll probably change my mind and do something easier.

Anything glaring I missed that a modern house should obviously have? HOLY CRAP THERE IS A TOILET
LockeZ: The chipset Dethmetal's using, if I'm very much mistaken, is Theodore. He's well-known for his modernistic chipsets which are all kinds of awesome.

That said, I like the house a lot. Maybe moving the table up against the wall and having the chairs closer/overlapped by it would make a little more room and look a bit more realistic. Otherwise it's a great job.
Yeah that's Theodore :)
author=Archeia_Nessiah
~Page Snip while replying :X

Craze I really like that layout btw! Won't you change the windows to black transparent with opaque too for consistency? :o

EDIT: I HAVE NOTHING TO SHOWWWW but I guess this will be ok? :X


You find some old beggers clothes too. :P
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
Hmm, about the comments on my maps being too empty. I guess I'm not quite used to VX size graphics, or I dunno, I prefer there to be room for the player to move around, instead of being blocked by random objects.

I wonder if the maps would still seem too empty if I used taller sprites? Considering the VX default sprites aren't really scaled for the default chipsets...
It's not that Happy. The thing is that if you're going to have larger areas they need to at least be a bit fuller of things. Your rooms are very bare, lacking personality, as well as being quite large. I'd recommend either finding a way to make the space seem smaller/more detailed (adding wall petitions and decorations can help) or reducing their size a bit - even if it's only by a tile or two. Unless it's a game with an ABS - in which case larger maps are a great idea, though I'd still recommend making them look more alive and, in the case of insides, lived in. Both of your maps are barely distinguishable from each other.

That said, those portraits are lovely. Kudos to the person who drew them.

Also, your avatar is strangely hypnotising.


A barracks house where guards spend their off time, especially during the colder months.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Happy, sometimes you can make it seem fuller without blocking movement. Not every object has to block movement. Some can be things you can walk over. Clothes, weapons, tools, dishes, wires, small boxes, towels, small bits of trash, unidentified stains, books, papers, anything you might have on your floor at home. In a non-messy room it's admittedly harder and you have to add actual furniture and stuff, but realistically, non-messy rooms should be pretty rare!

But yeah the problem isn't your sprites' size, although the stumpy sprites do mess with the sense of proportion. If a single room in a house covers more than the entire screen and there's not a reason why you really need it to, it's probably too big. Unless it's a mansion or palace or something.

Liberty's map is just as big with just as much walk space but looks a lot more complete. You can walk over the stools, right? So there's plenty of room. I think the lighting effects help too.
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
I guess I could add some more detail, but really, I did aim for simplicity. Plus it is a fortress / mansion type location - the first dungeon of the game. I think it works pretty well for what it's aimed to be. Bare, big halls and hallways.

I just wanted to emulate PSX rpg maps, such as BoF3's or Suikoden's (which are pretty bare, actually.) I have made my share of overly detailed maps and wanted to try something else. Though if it looks bad, I guess I should still improve it.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
If it's supposed to be a mansion it probably shouldn't have crates and empty shelves as decor! At least not in places other than the storage rooms, or maybe places like the kitchen and laundry room. Try thinking up a real purpose for each room about what it would be for if it were a real house. Since it's a mansion you have some leeway, you can have a few rooms that are just there to look pretty like a grand hall and an art gallery or two. You'd also want a number of bedrooms, a dining room, and everything a house has. Maybe a garage full of sports cars!? Or a stable full of prized horses, in a medieval setting.

If it's a fortress that's pretty much completely different and I have to admit I don't know how fortresses are laid out in real life. For maximum defense, I guess? Towers with easy access, accessible rooftops for archers, lots of walls, probably a source of water for long seiges? Probably a prison area, an infirmary, a hangar for catapults or other siege weapons, obviously a shitton of weapons being stored everywhere?

Basically if you give each room a purpose the area will come alive. I find indoor areas vastly easier to create for this reason; outdoor areas (and caves) by their nature tend to have no purpose. (Though usually it's being used by people or monsters for something; any place that truly has no purpose is probably too boring to include in the game)


A screenshot of Classic Mode.
You keep posting these screenshots and I'm going to have to start playing my wii again.
Something tells me Toad is going to die.
Okay, so this 'sample' map got a bit out of hand, but I think you can see that even a manor or large house need not be all empty space, Happy. Also, in BoF3 and Suikoden, while there were large maps, none of them were lifeless or 'empty'. Each had their own feel.

Large Image AHOY~
Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
Well, I feel strongly that this comes down to matter of preference. If I had wanted to map a manor of the sorts you and Lockez are describing, I would have done so. However, I made it look like it does intentionally, and I'm probably going to keep it the way it is.

As I said, it is a dungeon. It's supposed to have a tense, empty feel to it. You're sneaking around the hallways, looking for a treasure, avoiding guards, etc.

Your advises for indoor maps are good, though, and those maps are pretty, but not something I was personally going for, however. I'm not trying to make a traditional manor (cousy NPC house.) I guess a very thorough caption on my part would have saved you guys a lot of trouble. I just wanted to make a mansion/fortress where you wander around the hallways. Now isn't there more than one way to approach that.

Good effort though, I just don't think there is a single way about doing it.

ps. in my maps it's a quiet night, the hallways are empty and you're kinda wondering where everybody is, until it starts haunting. Uh, I probably shouldn't have posted those screens. They were mostly to demonstrate the the walls style to prexus.
I don't think your map looks bad, Happy, but probably not the flashiest or screenshot-worthy map you could've chosen.
chana
(Socrates would certainly not contadict me!)
1584
author=Gourd_Clae
Something tells me Toad is going to die.

Aren't you confusing threads there...?XD

@Happy : personally, I really like your maps, feel and all but also I'm not a fan of crowded maps as long as they're well balanced.
Whoops. I was still in "Battle dome mode". I feel silly for typing that.