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Freelance pixel artist, RPG designer, and hungry... for fooood.
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are these sprites good?
I'm too lazy to continue this but it should give you a general idea. Basically, make the tones stand out more from each other. I like to use a middle grey background to test the contrast. If, zoomed out, I can't really see a difference, then I work on it so that the colors stand out more. I also tried looking at a pic of vincent to get an idea of what the hair would look like. Hair can be difficult though so don't be discouraged if you don't get it right the first few times. I have a pixel artist friend who's better than I am who hates doing hair.
I also try to clean up lineart, and not make colors feel too random. There's a tutorial on keeping clean lineart here:
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=221
I have other tutorials on my blog http://tilesettutorial.wordpress.com (plug ahoy), so feel free to check those out as well. I like the "So you like to be a pixel artist" link, as well as sprite art.
I like using a sort of pinkish/peach tone for highlights for red, and I tend to go to reddish/purple for shadows/dark reds. Then for grey, I try to make the darker colors more grey/blue while the highlights a little more yellow.
I don't really like the animation I did but I was lazy.
I hope it helps in some way.
Hire Me(I need Hot Topic money)
The concept drawings I got for my game from TFT were pretty interesting and I managed to make sprites such as these from it:
It was very creative stuff and the resulting sprites I found were better than when I tried to design them myself.
It was very creative stuff and the resulting sprites I found were better than when I tried to design them myself.
Why is RPG Maker stuck in the 20th Century, graphics-wise?
If it were 3D I'm pretty sure you'd get 99.99% of the people relying on the RTP for it, since even less people would be able to make their own graphics. At least with 2D you can draw it, pixel it, paint and scan it or something to that effect.
Summer Screenshot Spectacular!
@cilence: A fair amount of it are color edits of NES objects actually. I could make my own but at first I was largely working from FF1 and gameboy FF tiles so I just use that.
Also, I like the screen. I think the blueish grass stands out a bit too much but otherwise it's looking pretty good!
Also, I like the screen. I think the blueish grass stands out a bit too much but otherwise it's looking pretty good!
Summer Screenshot Spectacular!
Item Carrying
I think that if there's a choice to be made between Realism and Fun, I like to go for Fun. I don't think there's always an either or, you can have both a lot of the times. But for item carrying, I feel the same thing about running/stamina systems: It's something that supposedly feels more realistic but usually makes the game less fun. There are exceptions of course.
Final Fantasy legend 2 has a lot of item limits, but the battle system revolved around a variety of equipment and uses, so you don't just spam attack or the strongest thing you have, but neither are you afraid to use the strong stuff because there are strong battles that will need it. I don't like either extreme, feeling that you can casually throw out your strongest attacks/items, or being afraid to use an item because there may be a battle where you really needed it and you already used it. I'd at least like to lean towards the 1st one though.
Seiken Densetsu 3 is another one. You can carry 99 of each item, but you can only hold 8 item types in battle and only 9 of each. I thought this was good, you don't go on super item conservation mode because you have up to 99 as a backup after battle, but you don't throw them too liberally because you can run out before the battle is over. This is the way I want to do it for future games.
Otherwise, quite a few of the games I played that have limited inventories usually just interfere with my greed. Either you're making multiple trips, you have to do boring inventory management, or something to that effect. "Oh hey it's a tiny dagger but positioned so a pixel of the daggers graphic goes into another box, and placed diagonally in the bookbag so it takes up 4 spaces instead of 2." I'd at least prefer weight based, though Oblivion was ridiculous and I was dragging items around until I gave up and then set a mod for unlimited carrying capacity.
Also, I agree with kentona, usually I see items as underpowered compared to magic anyway, so that's mainly something you'd use outside of battle when you don't feel like spending that MP to heal, or in the beginning when you only have one healer with a single target heal spell, or for someone to throw a phoenix down to your healer. Unless I've been playing the wrong games, I don't ever find 99 elixirs or megalixirs, and usually don't even find them in the double digits amount.
Final Fantasy legend 2 has a lot of item limits, but the battle system revolved around a variety of equipment and uses, so you don't just spam attack or the strongest thing you have, but neither are you afraid to use the strong stuff because there are strong battles that will need it. I don't like either extreme, feeling that you can casually throw out your strongest attacks/items, or being afraid to use an item because there may be a battle where you really needed it and you already used it. I'd at least like to lean towards the 1st one though.
Seiken Densetsu 3 is another one. You can carry 99 of each item, but you can only hold 8 item types in battle and only 9 of each. I thought this was good, you don't go on super item conservation mode because you have up to 99 as a backup after battle, but you don't throw them too liberally because you can run out before the battle is over. This is the way I want to do it for future games.
Otherwise, quite a few of the games I played that have limited inventories usually just interfere with my greed. Either you're making multiple trips, you have to do boring inventory management, or something to that effect. "Oh hey it's a tiny dagger but positioned so a pixel of the daggers graphic goes into another box, and placed diagonally in the bookbag so it takes up 4 spaces instead of 2." I'd at least prefer weight based, though Oblivion was ridiculous and I was dragging items around until I gave up and then set a mod for unlimited carrying capacity.
Also, I agree with kentona, usually I see items as underpowered compared to magic anyway, so that's mainly something you'd use outside of battle when you don't feel like spending that MP to heal, or in the beginning when you only have one healer with a single target heal spell, or for someone to throw a phoenix down to your healer. Unless I've been playing the wrong games, I don't ever find 99 elixirs or megalixirs, and usually don't even find them in the double digits amount.
How do some of you complete games so fast?
I've finished more games than I have available to download right now, but I lost nearly all of them except for Island Sky which I did have backed up. So now I only have 2 complete games and one near complete. What's been keeping me back lately has been working on the graphics for other projects (paid requests usually), and I had University+Work+Online work.
Basically, I first plan out the systems on paper. I make some drawings, I design the HUD, I write down what characters the system allows for, things like that.
Then I will go to notepad or Word and write down the outline and any new things that may come up, as well as a list of things I have to do. It's not a big design document, I may give that a try sometime, but I do tend to keep multiple text documents (or word or excel or a combination of the 3) for them. I can generally tell what would be too much work for me, so I don't overplan and go ambitiously 2305923894082309 quests and 3290582390582390 areas or whatever.
I then start with the systems. I want to make sure the game is at least fun to play and that those work before I start going off and creating the game itself. There's been quite a few projects where after a lot of testing, I cancel it because the system wouldn't work for long term. The system making shouldn't take much more than a month, although that depends on a lot of things. Could take a few days if it's simple enough.
When that's done, then I start going about making the maps and the story. I do graphics as I go along, so in the meantime I use RTP or graphics I have lying around already. Music is also something I have placeholder music for until I get around to composing for it, but composing tends to be the last thing on my to do list generally.
I also don't like giving up on things that I want to see finish, so yeah, some things will require work that won't be fun, but I just get it over with and then go back to making the other things in the game. The beginning planning and the ending seem to be the most fun times for me.
What I think also gets people is the desire to make a new project instead. I just write down the ideas and try to forget about it, because if I switched to that every time I had a new idea, I'd never get anything done.
Basically, I first plan out the systems on paper. I make some drawings, I design the HUD, I write down what characters the system allows for, things like that.
Then I will go to notepad or Word and write down the outline and any new things that may come up, as well as a list of things I have to do. It's not a big design document, I may give that a try sometime, but I do tend to keep multiple text documents (or word or excel or a combination of the 3) for them. I can generally tell what would be too much work for me, so I don't overplan and go ambitiously 2305923894082309 quests and 3290582390582390 areas or whatever.
I then start with the systems. I want to make sure the game is at least fun to play and that those work before I start going off and creating the game itself. There's been quite a few projects where after a lot of testing, I cancel it because the system wouldn't work for long term. The system making shouldn't take much more than a month, although that depends on a lot of things. Could take a few days if it's simple enough.
When that's done, then I start going about making the maps and the story. I do graphics as I go along, so in the meantime I use RTP or graphics I have lying around already. Music is also something I have placeholder music for until I get around to composing for it, but composing tends to be the last thing on my to do list generally.
I also don't like giving up on things that I want to see finish, so yeah, some things will require work that won't be fun, but I just get it over with and then go back to making the other things in the game. The beginning planning and the ending seem to be the most fun times for me.
What I think also gets people is the desire to make a new project instead. I just write down the ideas and try to forget about it, because if I switched to that every time I had a new idea, I'd never get anything done.
Project DOAD
I played this earlier. All of the scenes can be skipped so if you really don't like the story or the artwork, it can all be skipped and you don't have to see it.
I think the map design could be improved, because most of them were straight forward maps and doesn't encourage much exploration, especially with the amount of enemies present. I think it wasn't meant to be a big part of the game but it'd be nice to have more variation in the tiles and the map design itself. Perhaps less enemies to deal with as well.
I think the map design could be improved, because most of them were straight forward maps and doesn't encourage much exploration, especially with the amount of enemies present. I think it wasn't meant to be a big part of the game but it'd be nice to have more variation in the tiles and the map design itself. Perhaps less enemies to deal with as well.
Honest Challenge, and Positive Reinforcement
author=gerkrt link=topic=3052.msg59727#msg59727 date=1233410073Yeah, we're not arguing that "There should be a win button because anything that is remotely challenging is too difficult", or that we should be a passive spectator. You can require a strategy to beat battles/bosses in an RPG and still do it without it being unforgiving, or having to redo a whole puzzle, then listen to a big cutscene, then go back to fighting it every time you lose. Gameplay itself can be fun without it being very difficult as well. I'm sure most people don't really consider FF6 to be extremely hard yet that's thought of as one of the best FF RPGs.
The real solution is to use Difficulty levels. Rewarding more the good player its useless if the game itself its a piece of crap, because you will feel like a totally stupid when you see that you have 99 potions in every moment. ¿Where is the challengue here?
Rewards are interesting, but death, penalities, setbacks... are need to create tension. The real reward must be the satisfaction of the player who see that with effort, he can beat incredible things.But failure (in-game death, penalties, setbacks, and so on) stops every other type of player from having fun. They stop seeing new things. They stop having new conversations. The story stops. The sense of accomplishment stops. The spectacle stops. They stop experiencing new dialog, scenery, plot developments, new characters, new jokes, new foes to conquer, and all the other things that might have been entertaining them. All they have left is this single challenge.
The problem is that you are assuming that the gameplay itself can't be also the spectacle. Nowadays a lot of people play only for mindless historys, but playing RPG its fun for some people. See older games, like SNES or NES, why people played them?
Now i have a play station 2, but im playing Dragon Quest V and the original Phantasy Star. ¿Why? ¿Why im going to sell a lot of rpgs i have(like ffx, rogue galaxy, suikoden, etc)?
Because they are BORING. Makes me thing im STUPID. Because my mother can beat they.
PS and DQ are intelligent games. You need to plan your moves, use your brain, its a challengue. I dont think good history and challengue are enemies, just use an Scene Skip system and move on.
Sorry but i think you all are a frustrated cinema directors or book writers. If you can't make and interesting gameplay that works with history, its your problem, but this is a interactive medium.
The basic of rule of everything: to become better you need practice and anticipation. Without that, you will never make nothing. Death, failure, are needed. If you cant make wrong things, you cant grow as a player... or as a person. I dont want to be a spectator.
Hell, when I work on a game, I first work on trying to make the gameplay interesting long before I even think about the story or anything.
Honest Challenge, and Positive Reinforcement
Yeah, I agree. I found the links Shinan posted pretty interesting. Yeah, a lot of the times I think the difficulty is due to poor design or something stupid (Like the controls not really making sense, oh I didn't even see that hole you had to go into, or things like that). I recognize that I am pretty bad at games, but I have very different reactions when I lose because it's my fault, and when I lose because the game is poorly designed. Or sometimes I just think it's more difficult than it actually is because I don't fully understand how the game/AI works and am applying real life logic in it instead.
What I generally do for an RPG is make the main quest on the easy side. The optional stuff I can ramp up the difficulty. I've also never liked it when the last boss or last dungeon is a huge leap in difficulty compared to the rest of the game. That's fine for optional dungeons. I like to think about the people still playing for the story (by then, the ending), or that just want to beat it. Even worse is when the last boss is really difficult and requires learning new techniques/methods that the player never had to deal with in the game itself. I've seen a few games that do this.
I was playing Beyond Good and evil. The game rarely made me use the special attack, and even then you never were really pressed for time to pull one off (only really having to avoid the enemies attacks, that's all), and it was rarely necessary to use it. The last boss however, you had a very short time where you had to charge and attack with it, and if you failed you had to repeat the pattern over and over until you get it right, and you have to get it right multiple times. Not only that, but the first attack very easily led to a combo attack, which instantly made you run out of time to pull off a charge. It was the most frustrating part of the game for me.
Beyond Good and Evil for the most part though was forgiving. If you failed a puzzle, died in a fight or something, you just get sent outside the room with half of your health. You don't have to restart, get sent to the last save point, or get a game over, you just try again. When you accomplish something, you get a heroic sound effect to let you know that you solved it. I thought those were nice touches. Even in the last boss battle, when you died, you only go back one form and retain your items from then, you don't have to redo every single form.
Also, if a game doesn't have a story at all, then you know that if the game is hard, that the players are playing it for the difficult puzzles/fights/whatever, not because they want to enjoy the story but are getting frustrated because the gameplay is being an obstacle to the next part of the story for them.
This is a nice quote:
What I generally do for an RPG is make the main quest on the easy side. The optional stuff I can ramp up the difficulty. I've also never liked it when the last boss or last dungeon is a huge leap in difficulty compared to the rest of the game. That's fine for optional dungeons. I like to think about the people still playing for the story (by then, the ending), or that just want to beat it. Even worse is when the last boss is really difficult and requires learning new techniques/methods that the player never had to deal with in the game itself. I've seen a few games that do this.
I was playing Beyond Good and evil. The game rarely made me use the special attack, and even then you never were really pressed for time to pull one off (only really having to avoid the enemies attacks, that's all), and it was rarely necessary to use it. The last boss however, you had a very short time where you had to charge and attack with it, and if you failed you had to repeat the pattern over and over until you get it right, and you have to get it right multiple times. Not only that, but the first attack very easily led to a combo attack, which instantly made you run out of time to pull off a charge. It was the most frustrating part of the game for me.
Beyond Good and Evil for the most part though was forgiving. If you failed a puzzle, died in a fight or something, you just get sent outside the room with half of your health. You don't have to restart, get sent to the last save point, or get a game over, you just try again. When you accomplish something, you get a heroic sound effect to let you know that you solved it. I thought those were nice touches. Even in the last boss battle, when you died, you only go back one form and retain your items from then, you don't have to redo every single form.
Also, if a game doesn't have a story at all, then you know that if the game is hard, that the players are playing it for the difficult puzzles/fights/whatever, not because they want to enjoy the story but are getting frustrated because the gameplay is being an obstacle to the next part of the story for them.
This is a nice quote:
The question of why play if you can't lose assumes that everyone plays for the same reason. Or at least, that they should. It assumes that the development and proving of raw skill is the central drive of playing videogames. But we all play for different reasons
Games - Tester
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