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THE SCREENSHOT TOPIC RETURNS
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Mr_Detective
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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
author=bulmabriefs144
"Is it worth it to go back and make all characters to conform to a spriteset?" I concluded it wasn't
"Is it worth it to make a game that can't even conform to nearly-nonexistant RPG Maker community cesspool standards, much less actual game standards?" I concluded it wasn't
author=bulmabriefs144Correct, doing a good job instead of a bad job is only a convention that you are not forced to follow. However, the result of not following that particular convention is that your game is a piece of shit.
But video games aren't bound to that, it's just a convention that is followed.
Mr_Detective
60
author=slashphoenix
Mr. D., it looks good, although mayhaps too symmetrical?
Thanks, that's why I was wondering what else I could do to make it looks better. :D
Ah, okay! So, obviously the water jets should stay where they are since those would built symmetrically. Mix up the lilypads, put some a tile or two off the wall, maybe swap the places of one or two of the flowered ones so they're not directly opposite each other, and I think you'll be good.
author=LockeZauthor=bulmabriefs144"Is it worth it to make a game that can't even conform to nearly-nonexistant RPG Maker community cesspool standards, much less actual game standards?" I concluded it wasn't
"Is it worth it to go back and make all characters to conform to a spriteset?" I concluded it wasn'tauthor=bulmabriefs144Correct, doing a good job instead of a bad job is only a convention that you are not forced to follow. However, the result of not following that particular convention is that your game is a piece of shit.
But video games aren't bound to that, it's just a convention that is followed.
Tell me this. Why is it a sign of bad design?
You can't say, can you? You can tell me why other people think it's a sign of bad design, but not why it is. Whereas I can tell you why it isn't.
We have this lovely picture. In case you didn't notice, we have custom heroes, and cliche RTP monsters. These are different spritesets and even significantly different charset heights. Am I gonna call it bad? No, because it's not.
The characters are supposed to look individual. They do. The monsters are all of the same race, and are supposed to look intimidating. They do. This is not bad. Or good. It's the artist's choice.
At some point in the Great Gatsby, he used the word "orgastic." Unlike Lewis Carrol in the Jabberwocky, or Doctor Seuss, the author wasn't prone to making up words on the spot. An inconsistency. But, you say, surely he meant "orgiastic", or maybe "orgasmic." Nope. The author gave an equally flimsy explanation of why he chose that (made up) word, and yet here to this day, the book remains one of the top reads for school classes.
Back to above. Why isn't it a sign of design flaw? Because it's just pictures. Like the other is just a word. What sets it apart as good or bad is not its form but its function.
I have 323 charsets, several of which are entirely different spritesets, and there's roughly 8 sprites per charset. Out of 2584 (give or take for objects) possible sprites why did I choose that one? I'm gonna put these off the screen to demonstrate a point.
...Where do your eyes go?
Probably to the center of the screen where there's the bar stand. Right?
Wrong. This is not where your eyes should be going. The engaging part about a bar is its patrons, the lively and yes very different customers that frequent the place.
With this customer a head taller than the others, Locke noticed immediately, that the girl was huge. Now. Why is this girl huge?
(1) She's abnormally tall due to a glandular problem (it happens). This makes an interesting story.
(2) She's getting hit on by midgets. Also an interesting story.
(3) This is perceptual. She's actually only a few inches taller, but women are stereotypically shorter than man so a woman a few inches taller? She's huge!
(4) This is a drag queen that these five guys are hitting on.
In any case, you have the attention away from the center, which is pretty much the same as any other bar, and are engaged for better or worse in this tall woman, this chubby woman, this guy in the corner with his vegetables, this guy hitting on a nun. All of them.
It was a stylistic choice. Now, I'm gonna remove all the characters from the room, and I want you to tell me about the scene itself.
Is there anything asymmetrical or really ugly about this pub?
LX_Theo
60
Its bad design because it looks bad.
Using different styles (rather than character design, like the KH example) is often jarring and forces your attention away from what it should be at. No? It takes away from your ability to provide quality presentation and storytelling by putting people in a scenario where they are not doing what they need to in order to properly enjoy the scene or such. That alone makes it bad design.
Its a simple concept in the end
Using different styles (rather than character design, like the KH example) is often jarring and forces your attention away from what it should be at. No? It takes away from your ability to provide quality presentation and storytelling by putting people in a scenario where they are not doing what they need to in order to properly enjoy the scene or such. That alone makes it bad design.
Its a simple concept in the end
"Where it should be at."
But that was exactly my point. The clunky bar center needed to be fixed. Which is what I finally managed when someone pointed it out.
Look here.
I made a conscious decision where I want the people's attention to go. The bar stand was distracting from that. Now it's gone, since the center of attention is different from what you'd normally draw your attention to (stop looking there dummy! :slaps theo: ) you immediately decide it's "bad."
To enjoy the scene I don't want people flocking straight to the center "because that's where all the action is" I want them actually talking to all the customers. In a town, "you go to the most important house and skip all the others." This is bad design, and it's been bad design for years. Skip straight to the plot and ignore all the supporting characters. Why bother with them, then? Why not just make one house open in a town, since that's obviously where you're going. Oh, sure, I could offer all kinds of incentives to turn away from the main quest, and mellow out already, and talk to people unrelated to the main plot. But if people still won't take them... there's only the option that maybe you can catch their attention.
But that was exactly my point. The clunky bar center needed to be fixed. Which is what I finally managed when someone pointed it out.
Look here.
I made a conscious decision where I want the people's attention to go. The bar stand was distracting from that. Now it's gone, since the center of attention is different from what you'd normally draw your attention to (stop looking there dummy! :slaps theo: ) you immediately decide it's "bad."
To enjoy the scene I don't want people flocking straight to the center "because that's where all the action is" I want them actually talking to all the customers. In a town, "you go to the most important house and skip all the others." This is bad design, and it's been bad design for years. Skip straight to the plot and ignore all the supporting characters. Why bother with them, then? Why not just make one house open in a town, since that's obviously where you're going. Oh, sure, I could offer all kinds of incentives to turn away from the main quest, and mellow out already, and talk to people unrelated to the main plot. But if people still won't take them... there's only the option that maybe you can catch their attention.
You still seem to be completely misunderstanding the different between design and style...
And as for "Can you tell me why it's bad?" is an easy question.
Because it looks bad. There's no two ways about it. My previous Gears/DBZ example applies as well; the guys behind those series' COULD have done that if they'd wanted to, and it'd have been entirely their decision. But it'd have looked fucking stupid; it'd have been "bad" game design.
That IS a reason why it's bad.
I've already said that you can opt to do that all you want; the only person that needs to be happy with your project is you. Fuck all of us, our opinions don't count for shit in the end if you're happy with your work; this is a hobbyist site after all, not professional work that will be mass-manufactured and twisted to conform to public opinion.
But don't complain if you don't like our opinions, especially not when you're getting given valid reasons behind them. The fact is that mixing graphical styles together looks stupid as hell, and very few people actually like it.
Using it in movies and such is done deliberately as a contrast gimmick, and even then it's only one one style with an "odd one out" to draw the attention that it's not of this reality (or w/e) whereas you just have a jumble of like five different styles all in the same room, with no particular focal point.
And as for "Can you tell me why it's bad?" is an easy question.
Because it looks bad. There's no two ways about it. My previous Gears/DBZ example applies as well; the guys behind those series' COULD have done that if they'd wanted to, and it'd have been entirely their decision. But it'd have looked fucking stupid; it'd have been "bad" game design.
That IS a reason why it's bad.
I've already said that you can opt to do that all you want; the only person that needs to be happy with your project is you. Fuck all of us, our opinions don't count for shit in the end if you're happy with your work; this is a hobbyist site after all, not professional work that will be mass-manufactured and twisted to conform to public opinion.
But don't complain if you don't like our opinions, especially not when you're getting given valid reasons behind them. The fact is that mixing graphical styles together looks stupid as hell, and very few people actually like it.
Using it in movies and such is done deliberately as a contrast gimmick, and even then it's only one one style with an "odd one out" to draw the attention that it's not of this reality (or w/e) whereas you just have a jumble of like five different styles all in the same room, with no particular focal point.
LX_Theo
60
author=bulmabriefs144
"Where it should be at."
But that was exactly my point. The clunky bar center needed to be fixed. Which is what I finally managed when someone pointed it out.
Look here.
I made a conscious decision where I want the people's attention to go. The bar stand was distracting from that. Now it's gone, since the center of attention is different from what you'd normally draw your attention to (stop looking there dummy! :slaps theo: ) you immediately decide it's "bad."
To enjoy the scene I don't want people flocking straight to the center "because that's where all the action is" I want them actually talking to all the customers.
Honestly, the one you posted without the jarringly distracting amazon still brought my attention to the group of people. Why? Because there is a big group of people surrounding a table with no other large group of people in the room. Want to enhance that effect? Then take out some of the other people so that the big group of people is even more distinct.
The one with the amazon brought your eyes there, but distracted it from the group. Its looks so out of place because of the different styles you don't focus on the group, but her. It nulled and voided the idea that your attention should be on the patrons.
You're simply going way out of the way to bring attention to a situation. Its like if you animated a human character into a cartoony design in a romantic comedy movie just to bring attention to that person is exiting the room quietly. Is your attention on that character? Yeah, but it sure isn't on the point that he's trying to exit the room quietly.
@Bulmabriefs: All that is being asked from you is that you reconcile the characteristics that stand out the most from some of the sprites to match those of the rest, so they all can have the most similar graphic style possible. This is not asking for much. It's just a series of very simple edits. It may be time consuming, but it's something you SHOULD do.
Please understand than this is not about skin colors, hair styles, clothes, height, complexion. etc. If you want those things to change from chara to chara, that's fine, but do it all in the same STYLE; That's what this is about. LockeZ and others said it better, but I'm going to give you a super short version of it in hopes than you get it this time. Different outlines: NOT OK. Chibi and tall sprites mixed with RTP: NOT OK. Those things DO NOT make sense, no matter how hard you try to justify them. Period.
And stop pretending that you're standing by your "artistic integrity" or whatever, because you have NONE. You're admitting to use whatever sprites you have at hand for lack of time and interest, so why don't you just say that from the beginning next time? Say: "I'm lazy" instead of pretending to know what you're doing and we save ourselves an argument...
@Brady: Dammit, man! I'll never understand you. Why make arguments if then you're going to backpedal and say "Fuck everyone, do what you want!" That only encourages the very behavior this thread aims to stop. -_-
Please understand than this is not about skin colors, hair styles, clothes, height, complexion. etc. If you want those things to change from chara to chara, that's fine, but do it all in the same STYLE; That's what this is about. LockeZ and others said it better, but I'm going to give you a super short version of it in hopes than you get it this time. Different outlines: NOT OK. Chibi and tall sprites mixed with RTP: NOT OK. Those things DO NOT make sense, no matter how hard you try to justify them. Period.
And stop pretending that you're standing by your "artistic integrity" or whatever, because you have NONE. You're admitting to use whatever sprites you have at hand for lack of time and interest, so why don't you just say that from the beginning next time? Say: "I'm lazy" instead of pretending to know what you're doing and we save ourselves an argument...
@Brady: Dammit, man! I'll never understand you. Why make arguments if then you're going to backpedal and say "Fuck everyone, do what you want!" That only encourages the very behavior this thread aims to stop. -_-
Hmmm... maybe I'll take that into consideration.
I still wanted to disperse the attention though, not solely on that crowd. But if it's effective without her there's something to that. The point is, the very place I don't want people going is straight to the center of the room. But I wanted something distinctive about each of those corners, not just the one.
Brady, I do actually like it, but yea, I know many people don't. And I'm not regularly going out of my way to make characters different, but if they happen to be different, I'm damned if I'm gonna let someone tell me to make them all the same either. I actually understand where you're coming from though.
---------------
It's this sort of analogy that alterego remind me of. I go into a restaurant and don't know what to order. So I ask her. She says "get the tuna." I happen to loathe/be allergic/etc tuna, so this is a non-option. Or maybe she suggests something that I notice happens to be something either they are trying to sell, or something that is the most expensive item on the menu. So, I ask her advice and don't take it. From her perspective, I'm a jerk, who asks advice only to not take it. But really, it was just that, me asking for advice on what to order. From her advice I found that her advice was biased, or that our tastes didn't match up. This is helpful too, it helped me order what I wanted by basing my advice on her advice.
Doing things because "this is the rule" is a pretty stupid reason. Doing things "to be different" is even stupider, this is not why I do it (in fact, it's insulting that someone suggested it). There's several reasons, wanting to make the most of the several charsets I've got (I like to have many options, then end up with feature creep for characters and just use a bunch), running out of individual charsets of that type and having to choose one, having characters with qualities that nobody of that charset has (if a character has a height complex and talks about it, the purpose is defeated if I don't make them kid-sized or smaller), having no ability to draw sprites from scratch (and thus relying either on CharasEX or on found charsets which yes, are somewhat varied). You can call it "lazy" if you want.
But neither do I insist every character is like a snowflake either, there are entire towns that most every character is the same spriteset (Shoten, Ghobli, Goji/Hinata to a large extent, and Hell to a large extent). Before making a character, I consider what I want them to say, I consider other possible contexts like age or height or weight, I consider whether they're from the town or an outsider (if they aren't from the town they can look like someone from another town), and then I make a generalized idea of how they look. Yes, this doesn't involve a massive character sheet, it involves maybe 5-15 minutes, if that makes me lazy, yes.
But I came asking mainly for help on the scene itself. One person gave me that, and I fixed it. Many people said, your text is unreadable (and yes, I tried to fix that too, and no I like the gradient). And then alot of people gave me unasked for and frankly unwanted "advice" (more like an imperative) that I must fix my sprites or there is something deeply wrong with me and my mother is demonspawn.
It's time. You must watch this movie, alterego.
I still wanted to disperse the attention though, not solely on that crowd. But if it's effective without her there's something to that. The point is, the very place I don't want people going is straight to the center of the room. But I wanted something distinctive about each of those corners, not just the one.
Brady, I do actually like it, but yea, I know many people don't. And I'm not regularly going out of my way to make characters different, but if they happen to be different, I'm damned if I'm gonna let someone tell me to make them all the same either. I actually understand where you're coming from though.
---------------
It's this sort of analogy that alterego remind me of. I go into a restaurant and don't know what to order. So I ask her. She says "get the tuna." I happen to loathe/be allergic/etc tuna, so this is a non-option. Or maybe she suggests something that I notice happens to be something either they are trying to sell, or something that is the most expensive item on the menu. So, I ask her advice and don't take it. From her perspective, I'm a jerk, who asks advice only to not take it. But really, it was just that, me asking for advice on what to order. From her advice I found that her advice was biased, or that our tastes didn't match up. This is helpful too, it helped me order what I wanted by basing my advice on her advice.
Doing things because "this is the rule" is a pretty stupid reason. Doing things "to be different" is even stupider, this is not why I do it (in fact, it's insulting that someone suggested it). There's several reasons, wanting to make the most of the several charsets I've got (I like to have many options, then end up with feature creep for characters and just use a bunch), running out of individual charsets of that type and having to choose one, having characters with qualities that nobody of that charset has (if a character has a height complex and talks about it, the purpose is defeated if I don't make them kid-sized or smaller), having no ability to draw sprites from scratch (and thus relying either on CharasEX or on found charsets which yes, are somewhat varied). You can call it "lazy" if you want.
But neither do I insist every character is like a snowflake either, there are entire towns that most every character is the same spriteset (Shoten, Ghobli, Goji/Hinata to a large extent, and Hell to a large extent). Before making a character, I consider what I want them to say, I consider other possible contexts like age or height or weight, I consider whether they're from the town or an outsider (if they aren't from the town they can look like someone from another town), and then I make a generalized idea of how they look. Yes, this doesn't involve a massive character sheet, it involves maybe 5-15 minutes, if that makes me lazy, yes.
But I came asking mainly for help on the scene itself. One person gave me that, and I fixed it. Many people said, your text is unreadable (and yes, I tried to fix that too, and no I like the gradient). And then alot of people gave me unasked for and frankly unwanted "advice" (more like an imperative) that I must fix my sprites or there is something deeply wrong with me and my mother is demonspawn.
It's time. You must watch this movie, alterego.
@alterego:
You can give criticism and critical opinion without demanding it be done. It's the same as play Devil's Advocate in an argument; you don't need to agree with the point to be the one to make it.
That said, I do think that mixing up styles looks totally retarded, but I think that the developers personal opinion matters more than public opinion. If bulma likes the look of somethnig we all find stupid, then why should she change it JUST for us?
I mean, I think cubism looks completely fucking retarded and is the farthest thing from art imo; but Picasso was right into that, so why should my opinion matter to him?
People shouldn't do something just because everyone else says they should, but I do believe that everyone else should still say it, and let the developer decide for themselves after being given all the perspectives on the matter.
This thread isn't aimed at telling people how to conform to one single "this is good" game style, it's for letting people share their screenies so that others can give critical opinion on them in the name of correcting errors and pointing out glaring inconsistencies; ultimately it's still up to the developer whether they prefer their game with said suggested changes or not.
You can give criticism and critical opinion without demanding it be done. It's the same as play Devil's Advocate in an argument; you don't need to agree with the point to be the one to make it.
That said, I do think that mixing up styles looks totally retarded, but I think that the developers personal opinion matters more than public opinion. If bulma likes the look of somethnig we all find stupid, then why should she change it JUST for us?
I mean, I think cubism looks completely fucking retarded and is the farthest thing from art imo; but Picasso was right into that, so why should my opinion matter to him?
People shouldn't do something just because everyone else says they should, but I do believe that everyone else should still say it, and let the developer decide for themselves after being given all the perspectives on the matter.
This thread isn't aimed at telling people how to conform to one single "this is good" game style, it's for letting people share their screenies so that others can give critical opinion on them in the name of correcting errors and pointing out glaring inconsistencies; ultimately it's still up to the developer whether they prefer their game with said suggested changes or not.
Xenomic
1752
@Liberty: Oh, over on the right you mean? I got those fixed, somehow forgot to do them before I took the screenshot. Unless there's another cliff that I'm forgetting?
@alterego: I don't know, there really shouldn't be THAT many caves. There's 9 actual caves that you really go through (5 of which are mandatory dungeons, the other is part of a dungeon but not just a cave). There's just not much for me to do with caves, and I don't like mixing tilesets really because of style clashing. It's bad enough that I'll have to use Gilgamesh's FFV overworld sprite with my current overworld sprites due to how bad the sprites are gonna clash...x_x; As for the ramps, I can see what you mean. Still not experienced enough with them. ^^;
@alterego: I don't know, there really shouldn't be THAT many caves. There's 9 actual caves that you really go through (5 of which are mandatory dungeons, the other is part of a dungeon but not just a cave). There's just not much for me to do with caves, and I don't like mixing tilesets really because of style clashing. It's bad enough that I'll have to use Gilgamesh's FFV overworld sprite with my current overworld sprites due to how bad the sprites are gonna clash...x_x; As for the ramps, I can see what you mean. Still not experienced enough with them. ^^;
@Bulmabriefs: "Forget you"? ...Wait, was that supposed to be an insult? O_o C'mon, man! Don't take it that way. There's nothing wrong with laziness. Well, there is, but it's understandable. Look at our games, they use rips or edits or whatever. That's lazy too, in a way. But we don't have a problem admitting to it (at least I don't). And that doesn't stop us from trying our best however way we can.
@Brady: Where do you get the "demand" part from? I haven't seen anyone demanding anything here. We just say what should be changed and why. At the end of the day nobody is really that concerned about the end product, but rather the "work ethics". The problem is that if you first give reasons and then say "Fuck that" in the same post, and with those words, it kinda sends the wrong message.
Edit: What does that movie clip have to do with anything? =D ...Are you trying to call us (call me?) "parasites"? And imply that you're, Oh! such a paragon of integrity for not giving in to reason -sorry- "peer pressure"? Pu-lease! You're being stubborn. That's all.
@Brady: Where do you get the "demand" part from? I haven't seen anyone demanding anything here. We just say what should be changed and why. At the end of the day nobody is really that concerned about the end product, but rather the "work ethics". The problem is that if you first give reasons and then say "Fuck that" in the same post, and with those words, it kinda sends the wrong message.
Edit: What does that movie clip have to do with anything? =D ...Are you trying to call us (call me?) "parasites"? And imply that you're, Oh! such a paragon of integrity for not giving in to reason -sorry- "peer pressure"? Pu-lease! You're being stubborn. That's all.
Let's face it, AE, a lot of things that get said in this thread do come off as demanding or overly harsh towards the subject. Don't get me wrong, I value a strong critical sense, but whether it's intentional or not, many people get the impression that they're being told "if you don't do this, then you might as well just quit" or something to that effect.
I'm not just saying "Do this...y'know what, fuck that" and changing my mind at the end. What I'm saying is that you should change/do whatever to improve your game in a way that we will view as better...however if you (the developer) feel the game would be diminished by that change or you personally don't like what that'd do...then our word isn't law. Ultimately it's up to the developer to decide whether they're happy with the project.
This isn't mainstream/commercial gaming. A developer on a hobbyist site that makes a technically perfect game won't feel any satisfaction if they, personally, don't like how it turned out. If the game is total and utter shit but they like it, then that's all that matters. I just tell them to not be surprised when everyone else points out that their game sucks.
I just also point out that who really cares what the rest of the world thinks, as long as you're happy. Life is too short to be designing hobby projects with other peoples priorities in mind over your own /shrug.
I'm not just saying "Do this...y'know what, fuck that" and changing my mind at the end. What I'm saying is that you should change/do whatever to improve your game in a way that we will view as better...however if you (the developer) feel the game would be diminished by that change or you personally don't like what that'd do...then our word isn't law. Ultimately it's up to the developer to decide whether they're happy with the project.
This isn't mainstream/commercial gaming. A developer on a hobbyist site that makes a technically perfect game won't feel any satisfaction if they, personally, don't like how it turned out. If the game is total and utter shit but they like it, then that's all that matters. I just tell them to not be surprised when everyone else points out that their game sucks.
I just also point out that who really cares what the rest of the world thinks, as long as you're happy. Life is too short to be designing hobby projects with other peoples priorities in mind over your own /shrug.
SnowOwl
5188
@bulmabriefs144
Just friggin edit the outline already. It's done in 10 seconds. You are spending so much time defending your laziness when you could have just put that time on doing what was pointed out.
This is painful to watch.
Just friggin edit the outline already. It's done in 10 seconds. You are spending so much time defending your laziness when you could have just put that time on doing what was pointed out.
This is painful to watch.
Sion
37
author=XenomicMy god, what the hell did I even create here!? I confused myself making this. @_@;;
Those are some sexy cliffs there, friend.
Boing.
~Sion
