ASHEN_HEAVEN'S PROFILE

The rugs look fine to me, although the golden lines on the large purple one does get a mite distracting. XD It's the walls I have a little beef with. And the lack of shadows. 8P

Is it just me, or the light overlays got brighter? XD

I like this map. Clean and with wide spaces. XD

author=kitten2021
I greatly appreciate this <3
However, I would like to let you know that I only used this as a mountain/waterfall/stream testing area; this map has been completely removed, but will be re-added once I have the map for this area re-created. Trust me, there will be plenty of 'life' growing all around it when you see it next time. :)

No prob. XD Will be looking forward to see the remastered maps. XD

Nice article here. XD

author=Sagitar
When you see features like those you discussed in Earthbound, or when Psycho Mantis reads your memory card, or evenwhen Sonic stamps his feet impatiently and looks to the camera... These "illusion breaks" were intended and delicately handled. But more prevalent in the indie community are things like continuity/timeline discrepancies, grammatical mistakes, nonsensical design, and poor user interface -- the dangerous kind of breaks.

THIS. I'm always on the lookout for these, especially when it comes to the story and characters. A good interface is all fine and dandy, and so is seamless programming, but when cliches come flying out of the woodwork and plot holes appear...yeah. D:

author=catmitts
While we're on the subject of analogues between lowbudget plays and nilbudget games: I've been to a few plays that just used a small number of props, lighting, and dialogue cues to suggest actions and locations without bothering with things like scene backdrops or elaborate stage design. Sometimes it's awkward but it can work susprisingly well: a stepladder becomes an enormous mountain, a fake window hug on a backdrop becomes a house or a street at night, some sound effects and a chair become a car ride. There's an initial moment of adjustment when you're watching and then you take it in your stride. It's not so much that you're deliberately imagining these things to be something else as that you're recognising them as symbols for larger structural elements. I guess the immediate analogue here would be in stuff like early Commodore 64 games and so on, where a careful deployment of sprites against a featureless black background could suggest anything from a cabin or a church to a solar system or the bottom of the sea. Sometimes this felt jarring, especially since the sprites used could be weirdly ambiguous, but at best I think it could be more effective than some of the huge hi-res environments in something like recent Final Fantasy games just because since you had to decipher them for what they represented you automatically felt more connected to them than you would if you were just staring at a prerendered mountain. They became evocative through their abstract nature, while sometimes more detailed stuff leaves no room for the imagination.

I suppose it depends on the nature or theme of the story. A game with the theme of psychological horror can work with silence, echoes and a 'vacant' level design to evoke 'nothing is scarier'. But if it's one of those gorefest games then I suppose it will be filled to the brim with rust, blood and deformed creatures at every turn, just to give the air of fighting for your life.

author=catmitts
Basically I guess that nowadays even indie devs don't have to worry as much about brevity in graphics but it's always interesting to see people manage to suggest a lot with just a little, and how a few carefully chosen tiles can suggest an entire world with little effort while the sense of place generated by detailed ripped graphics etc can fall apart at the first misplaced tile.

I think for such a 'minimalist' production to work, the very theme and acting talent must pull the audience in. I suppose that in this case, the 'props' can prove to be distractions to the real draw of the play (or game), which is the story. Then again, with today's generation of gamers, detailed worlds (generally, rich visuals) have become a selling point. I guess the prevalent belief is that a richly textured world equals to an immersive gaming experience. Of course, a pretty-looking game goes to waste without effective story-telling, but sometimes you're just holding the controller because the effects on your screen is so darn awesome-looking.