The VG Resource

No, you can't smoke this thread, don't even try .

I guess I should have my own general place where I can get some feedback on my work. As you all know, I'm an aspiring game developer, and have a few projects underway. However, I've mostly halted the other projects in favor of working on my own. There are two primary original projects I have going on at the moment, being World of Chaos 1: The Jewels of Life and World of Chaos 2: Kenta's Journey.

Here is a basic screenshot of what I have done so far with the new version World of Chaos 1. Some of you may remember the last time I worked on it a few months ago before I lost the data. Due to that, I've started from scratch, but it has also allowed me to make various changes and updates to my ideas for the game. So that said, here's an early preview screenshot; how does the graphical style look to you?



Just a note:
-I'm aware that the sky and panoramic backdrops are missing. I've yet to draw them, and have very little to no experience in doing so...so I'm basically putting it off for a bit while I build the base engine. Doing the code to get them to move around based on the screen is easy; actually drawing them is far more difficult o.o.

I like the style here, and I wish I could have played the last version of your game, It looked like it was shaping up to be a lot of fun.

As for critique, The eyes on that portrait kind of bug me as they are kind of.. bug eye. I'd suggest maybe squashing them a little bit, like this



Also, your dirt tiling is nice, but a little much, maybe make some tiles that fade the dirt to black, so your eyes don't have to process so much on
the screen at once. It would bring more focus to whats happening on the ground, rather than whats in it.

Other than that, It looks good to me, good luck on your projects!

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated =). As for your critiques~

-I know human eyes are regularly wider than tall, but it just looks extremely awkward here, especially when it's squashed that much; makes him look incredibly Asian (no offense intended) o.o. This one, I'll have to say I'm not up to fulfilling.
-As for the dirt, I'm definitely agreeing here. I'll have to experiment with some tiles to see what I can do. Thanks for pointing that out =).

EDIT: It turns out that it makes it look a lot better actually, with the dirt.



I'm really liking the look of that =D. Thanks again~ Boss man! Boss man! We've got a keeper!

I'm thinking that maybe the background should be less saturated than the character. In the first screenshot I could hardly see him.

Can I ask what the character portrait is for, exactly? Is it just HUD embellishment, or Is it dynamic? Like, does it change depending on health, or damage or something?

If not, in all honesty I think it is a little unneeded. Getting rid of it would trim the HUD down considerably. This is somewhat of a personal preference as well though,
I prefer a small or nonexistent HUD in games, It allows more focus to the game. If it can be tucked into quick-view menu or only show up during character Idles, It
really doesn't need constant face-time on the screen, I think.

@Trollerskates: Not sure. I mean, I want the world to be nice and vibrant just like the characters, similar to great SNES or GBA games like Sword of Mana. This is the reason why I made sure sprites would have an 8, 8, 8 outline around them while those of the tiles never got that low, to allow them to be separated just enough to not get lost in confusion. The player is kept center screen anyway, unless near the edge of a room, so it won't be like Smash Bros. Brawl or Melee where you constantly lose track of your character.

@Sevenstitch: The Portrait does act dynamically. Different expressions for each 4th of remaining Stamina, and jitters when he gets hurt. Basically, think Kingdom Hearts 2. IT also blinks~

Finally trying my hand at Panoramic Backgrounds again, since I've little to no experience with them. I figure it's best to make the panorama similar in style to the foreground, keeping it "blocky." The hardest part was shifting the colors towards the sky...

Looking great! The cloud shapes and shading looks a bit weird, but other than that, nice job!

the three looks unbalanced for a pine tree, but this is more of a suggestion than a valid criticism

Redid the trees and added one more size to them. That largest one took 3 hours @o@. Next on the agenda, after making leafless versions of each size, is to make things like rocks, bushes, tall grass, flowers, and logs.

Just a little something I did, inspired by playing Crystalis. I was getting ideas for a game similar to it, a top-down realtime RPG, with elemental abilities to gain and use for specific scenarios, and just thought I'd try spriting a few things. There's the quintessential slime, and then for one of the forest creatures, I was thinking about some hostile bunnies that'd use their carrots for attacking, whether by melee or chucking an infinite number of them. I'm not sure what to do from here, lol.

this is a pain to look at. Too noisy and distracting as hell. Make the background less saturated than the characters and make the hud more proeminent as right now it's camouflaged into the elements.

the biggest problem is that you tend to break up the tiles and make too many texturing on it. Try simplifying that

I quite like your pallet choices, the rocks and characters I also really like,
but I'd have to agree with Gors, the HUD is hard to see and you've tried for texture too much in the backgrounds (and in my opinion the trees too) given the resolution your working in it comes off as noise and just makes the screen too busy to focus.

*blows off the cobwebs on this thread*

I do have some things to show that I've been tinkering with lately.

Messing with 4 colors per 8x8 tile restrictions:


Practicing Hi-Res:

Those trees look really weird (kinda like big yuccas) and also super cluttered compared to most of the other tiles.