Blossom Tales - Wizard Crocus attack animations / walk cycle spritesheet [page3]

[RetroRob]

Hi all,
I'm posting today to get some feedback on some sprites that I've been working on for an XBLIG titled Blossom Tales.   So far we are still in the early stages of development but things are coming a long very nicely.    I would love to get any feedback from the users on these boards on how my sprite graphics look.   The one thing that bugs me about my sprites is that I'm not using a small / limited color palette.    The color palette for Blossom Tales is rather large as you can tell from the screen shots.   

Title Screen
http://robertmaherdesign.com/StartScreen1.swf

Intro Scene
http://robertmaherdesign.com/IntroScene2.swf

Wizard casting spell on king
http://robertmaherdesign.com/WizardCastKing1280.swf

Zombie Summon
http://robertmaherdesign.com/big21.swf

Gameplay Video
http://www.youtube.com/embed/tBdL4-Ucpfc



Cover Graphic


















Thanks in advance,
Rob

[EvilEye]

First let me say, I like it. It has a cutsy zelda-meets-legoland feel.

You mentioned you had a large palette to work with and frankly, I don't see it. You don't seem to be using any more then a few colors, and in many cases those colors are poorly selected.

For instance the mermaids hair, bright blinding yellow, is barely distinguishable from her skin color making the hairline almost unnoticeable.

Many of the other colors are just too basic and glare out at the viewer. In the mermaid scene the water the bushes the temple all are examples the overuse of basic fluorescent colors. There is nothing to tone down the overly purple tint of the temple, or the dull yellow of the sand or the blue of the water etc.

Looking closer at your work I see you do indeed use many colors, most of which add nothing to the peace, they are hidden beside colors almost identical.

[RetroRob]

Hi EvilEye,
Thanks for the feedback.  I have to agree with you on the mermaids, my girlfriend did that sprite for me a while ago along with the bushes (starfish haha).  I probably shouldn't have posted the beach mocks yet as they really aren't complete at all.    I've considered color to be one of my weaknesses but I try my best.  I'm a big fan of using very bright and saturated colors when possible/appropriate.  I've tried keeping my sprites color limit to 3-4 colors although I don't always stick to that.  I checked your post history and you have an awesome works.  If you have the time I'd really appreciate if you'd do a recoloring of one of my images for an example.

Thanks,
Rob

[adamisgr8]

Plus, in the king scene the left wall, it is awfully flat!
But, I think that the idea is clever (even though not too original) and the maps are very well done!

[ptoing]

Could you please replace the pictures with something that is at native resolution (as in a pixel is a pixel). We have a zoom feature here, you can simply click on an image to zoom it and I think shift click to zoom back out. Also perhaps without the windows stuff around it. That would help if anyone wants to edit your stuff for critique.

[RetroRob]

Hi ptoing and adamisgr8,
Adamisgr8, I totally agree on the castle.  The windows were more of an after thought and I'm definitely planning on revisiting them when it comes time to build the throne room / interior of the castle   ptoing I'll resave the images as soon as I get home tonight.  Most of the sprites above I've blown up to 400% so you can tell what they'll look like in game.

[malkomk]

I think I like it. But I have a few questions!
#1: What's with some being very low res and other images high res? Are you planning to have it all high res when it's finished?
#2: What program were you using in the fifth picture where you had a file called tester.tmx? What does it do? How much does it cost?
#3: ... I guess there's no third question

[RetroRob]

Hi malkomk,
1. I just changed them all to 100% zoom.   When inGame the sprites will be blown up 400%.  The game is based on 16x16 tiles.
2. That's Tiled - http://www.mapeditor.org/  It's a great FREE program used for creating tilemaps for games.  You can save out a tilesheet and then use Tiled to assemble them.

[Lizzrd]

Toyed around with the values slightly, reduced saturation a bit.

[RetroRob]

Thanks for the example Lizzrd Playing with the saturation levels on a lot of my stuff is def on my list of things to do.

[StaticSails]

An edit of LIZZRD's edit.

I completely agree the images are over saturated, but just (drastically) dropping the saturation won't work. You've got to also work with the contrast too. Those thatch roofs are essentially one color. I think it reads better with just three distinct colors, add one or two more colors to create that thatch texture.

Those straight lines in the dirt don't do anything for it. I knew it was dirt because of it's color and it's context. My texture is probably better suited for sand but with some extra work could pass for a beaten path of dirt.
Your grass tiles looked quite a bit like lumps of something instead of blades of something. Grass. Again, not a great example for grass but it's just a scribble. Look at some old NES and SNES RPGs to see how they tackled it.

I'm pretty proud of what I did with the three characters. In small dimensions (16x16) I don't really mind using bjorked lines, you might want to try it out. I've noticed a lot people try to render eyes on small scale or at least try to get the eye color in. I don't think that works out very well, not in this case either.

I really have nothing else to say.

OH! Stairs, look at em.

[RetroRob]

Hi StaticSails,
Thanks for the edit!  Those characters look awesome.  I've decided to not go the "bjorked" lines path and keep everything with the hard black outlines.    I also totally agree with you on the dirt pattern.  Most of the images above are still in early mock stages and straight horizontal lines for dirt / sand wouldn't make it into the final.  The grass is also something that has bothered me.  I originally had done the grass much as you have it but to me it just looks to busy.   Those stars are def sweet and I also had done some very similar to them, ingame however as the player was walking over them I felt they were out of scale.

Thanks!
Rob

[schmohawk]

Wow Rob! Great work. This looks really promising, I can't wait to play it. Why not put it on XBLIG rather than XBLA? Seems XBLA gets a lot more media attention.

[StaticSails]

Wow Rob! Great work. This looks really promising, I can't wait to play it. Why not put it on XBLIG rather than XBLA? Seems XBLA gets a lot more media attention.

I bet it has to do with setup costs. The price to make a game on XBLIG is a fraction of the price of XBLA.
With XBLA you need a Developers kit with is pretty pricey. Also you need to be picked by a publisher, which is no easy task. It requires a very high standard of game (no offense Rob) and something like a 140 point test on you game.
XBLIG is fairly cheap. You need a XNA dev account, an XBOX360, a computer and a XBL subscription. Most of things we already have. I've worked on a few XBLIG games and the standards are oddly low. You just need like certain amount of votes to get you game on there. If you don't get the votes you go back and fix things then try again. There are no publishers and it's essentially just you and maybe a team.

But maybe Rob just wants the indie cred.

@RetroRob: Think we'd get to see some of the spritesheets for some villagers so we can more esily offer critiques? It's kind of a paint to pull things off the map unless we're already editing the map and stuff.

[RetroRob]

Wow Rob! Great work. This looks really promising, I can't wait to play it. Why not put it on XBLIG rather than XBLA? Seems XBLA gets a lot more media attention.

I bet it has to do with setup costs. The price to make a game on XBLIG is a fraction of the price of XBLA.
With XBLA you need a Developers kit with is pretty pricey. Also you need to be picked by a publisher, which is no easy task. It requires a very high standard of game (no offense Rob) and something like a 140 point test on you game.
XBLIG is fairly cheap. You need a XNA dev account, an XBOX360, a computer and a XBL subscription. Most of things we already have. I've worked on a few XBLIG games and the standards are oddly low. You just need like certain amount of votes to get you game on there. If you don't get the votes you go back and fix things then try again. There are no publishers and it's essentially just you and maybe a team.

But maybe Rob just wants the indie cred.

@RetroRob: Think we'd get to see some of the spritesheets for some villagers so we can more esily offer critiques? It's kind of a paint to pull things off the map unless we're already editing the map and stuff.

@schmohawk Yep, that's why we aren't publishing to XBLA... pretty difficult.  Aside from xblig we're aiming for a Steam release too.

@StaticSails I'll def get some sprite sheets up tonight if anyone would like to get some edits in

[RetroRob]

Hey all,
Sorry I haven't posted any sprite sheets yet but I thought I'd post a new mock up that I've been working on.  Right now we're trying to get the first dungeon completed for our DreamBuildPlay demo.  This is a screen of the outside of the fire dungeon.  Again, these sprites are intended to be viewed at 400% magnification.  The img below is at 200%.   Let me know what you think!

The enemies on screen are
:: Lava man :: These guys will leave behind a trail of lava that the player cannot cross, inside the dungeon we plan to use these guys to create moving maze puzzles.  They will not be killable until the water spell is unlocked.  When hit with a water spell they will turn into black Basalt statues (like the one in the middle of the two Lava creatures).   The basalt statues can then be pushed around like push blocks, and placed over depressable buttons to unlock doors/trigger events.

:: Devil Imp :: These guys are sort of the default enemy of the fire level.  When the player is in line of sight they will perform a dash attack or fire a fireball at the player.  These guys pay no attention to the collision grid and can fly / hover where they please.

:: Living Skull :: The living skull is another unkillable creature.  To be destroyed they must be knocked into lava.

:: Flame Creature :: When struck by the player sword the flame goes out and it's coal is left behind,  the coal must be knocked into the lava to destroy the flame creature.  After 3-4 sec pass the coal reignites and the Flame creature springs back into life.

:: Fire Serpent ::  I only want them to be able to attack downwards and be triggered by trip tiles.  Ex. Player is walking up a path and hits the trigger tile - the fire serpent explodes from the lava and starts spewing fireballs at the player - after the player is out of the dragons radius it returns to the lava.








Thanks,
Rob

[Ichigo Jam]

I've probably deviated way too far from what you were going for here and it's kind of messy, but hopefully it will give you some ideas about colours and lighting.

[RetroRob]

I've probably deviated way too far from what you were going for here and it's kind of messy, but hopefully it will give you some ideas about colours and lighting.

Oh man, thanks Ichigo Jam, your edit just put me to shame lol

I did a quick edit this morning based on your lighting.  I'm gonna push this a bit further later today or tomorrow.

[Jad]

in an environment that's only lit by hot colors like red and yellow it makes no sense to have neutrally gray smoke. It's even impossible given the lighting conditions. Everything would end up red-yellow. Gray is impossible in this environment.

[RetroRob]

in an environment that's only lit by hot colors like red and yellow it makes no sense to have neutrally gray smoke. It's even impossible given the lighting conditions. Everything would end up red-yellow. Gray is impossible in this environment.

Thanks for the comment Jad, I updated the img by saturating the smoke with a red color. 

[RetroRob]

I've started mocking up the interior to the fire dungeon and thought I'd get peoples impressions on it.   Again, this is only a mock up sort of kicking around ideas. Also, the graphics are meant to be viewed at 400% magnification.  Here's a link to the 400% img - http://robertmaherdesign.com/firedungeonInt400.png



Thanks for any feedback!

[ZargonX]

Love the atmosphere in the fire dungeon; the colors give a great sense of heat without being overbearing. The fire jets look pretty snazzy, but read more as a laser than a jet of fire, perhaps?

[RetroRob]

Love the atmosphere in the fire dungeon; the colors give a great sense of heat without being overbearing. The fire jets look pretty snazzy, but read more as a laser than a jet of fire, perhaps?

Hi ZargonX,
Thanks for the feedback.  I think the fire jets will feel a bit more readable when they're animated.   They give off little fire particles and smoke and only blast every so often.

[edu1337]

a flamethrower is actually just a source of gas with a flame on it, when you release gas, it spreads



in your fire jet gas does not spread from the source, it actually becomes narrower

[RetroRob]

a flamethrower is actually just a source of gas with a flame on it, when you release gas, it spreads



in your fire jet gas does not spread from the source, it actually becomes narrower

Righttt, I'm going for more of a butane torch deal




You do have a point though, I'm probably def gonna revist these flame jets before they go into the final.

[RetroRob]

Ok here's an updated pic of the fire dungeon.
 In this mock up you can see:
1.  What we're planning to use as currency on the left side - Purple, blue, and yellow seeds. 
2.  The glowing blue object is a save point. 
3. The crumbling tiles below the wall.


Some smoke animations I've been working on.




Ground Spike animation

[RetroRob]

           


the timing is a bit off in the gifs

[zez]

This isnt really a critique on your sprite work, but I think you should probably render the sword last (so it appears ontop of the other sprites) it going under things looks wonky.
If you really wanted to get fancy with it, you could also sort the render order of sprites by the y axis (sprite_array.sort(heightsort); function heightsort(sprite1:whatever class you use, sprite2:ditto):number{if(sprite1.y < sprite2.y){return 1}else if(sprite1.y > sprite2.y){return -1} else {return 0}} or something...)

[RetroRob]

This isnt really a critique on your sprite work, but I think you should probably render the sword last (so it appears ontop of the other sprites) it going under things looks wonky.
If you really wanted to get fancy with it, you could also sort the render order of sprites by the y axis (sprite_array.sort(heightsort); function heightsort(sprite1:whatever class you use, sprite2:ditto):number{if(sprite1.y < sprite2.y){return 1}else if(sprite1.y > sprite2.y){return -1} else {return 0}} or something...)

Hi zez,
Those gameplay vids are super old.  We now have implemented a lot of great things like depth sorting certain game objects.   We're planning to get a new demo vid out this month or early next month as we prepare for DreamBuildPlay

[pistachio]

It's really hard to critique this stuff what with all the non pixel-art effects you have stacked on top of it. Mostly, though, I hope you know what banding is because there's quite a bit of it on the player sprite as far as I can see. That's not all. It's in a lot of places really. A few of the sprites aren't readable as well, such as the caped/winged demons (?) running throughout the fire-dungeon.

Also, about the "butane torch" thing, that's not really how it looks. Note that the whole thing isn't actually straight, rounding off at the end. I think that gives me the impression it's like a laser. It's more like a very long ellipse with most of the "light" of the flame at the center/source of the torch. Since you have transparency with all your fancy-schmancy newfangled tools and I don't... I'll just make a basic silhouette to give you an idea.



(Yours on the left, mine on the right. Yeah... Sorry if I over-anti-aliased, but I guess it's to convey amounts of transparency. And it's at least it's a bit better, no?)

However I'm fairly sure those things (butane torches) are pretty small, and unless your knight is about the size and/or height of one of those little plastic figures on top of my PC tower and you're doing this for a sense of scale, I recommend leaning towards the traditional flamethrower look.

[RetroRob]

It's really hard to critique this stuff what with all the non pixel-art effects you have stacked on top of it. Mostly, though, I hope you know what banding is because there's quite a bit of it on the player sprite as far as I can see. That's not all. It's in a lot of places really. A few of the sprites aren't readable as well, such as the caped/winged demons (?) running throughout the fire-dungeon.




Also, about the "butane torch" thing, that's not really how it looks. Note that the whole thing isn't actually straight, rounding off at the end. I think that gives me the impression it's like a laser. It's more like a very long eclipse with most of the "light" of the flame at the center/source of the torch. Since you have transparency with all your fancy-schmancy newfangled tools and I don't... I'll just make a basic silhouette to give you an idea.



(Yours on the left, mine on the right. Yeah... Sorry if I over-anti-aliased, but I guess it's to convey amounts of transparency. And it's at least it's a bit better, no?)

However I'm fairly sure those things (butane torches) are pretty small, and unless your knight is about the size and/or height of one of those little plastic figures on top of my PC tower and you're doing this for a sense of scale, I recommend leaning towards the traditional flamethrower look.

Thanks for the feedback Pistatchio.  Can you show me what you mean by banding in the player sprite?  And is banding a bad thing?  I'm pretty happy with how the player looks and so is the developer.  I'm not sure if I'd really be able to change anything major in it as I already have a giant sprite sheet of animations for the knight done.    Hopefully the little red demon will be more readable when you can see him in motion instead of static image.  He's one of our fav characters    I tried doing up a more flame thrower type of fire emitter but my dev is in love with the current butane type ones.   I did do an edit to the torch since I last posted which looks more like the edit you posted with a tapered tip to it.   Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll be able to post up some of the newer pieces for the fire dungeon..   

Thanks again!
-Rob

[RetroRob]

First attempt at a 8 frame run cycle.

[PypeBros]

First attempt at a 8 frame run cycle.

Imho, all that black kills the readability. Ever considered to have only the *outline* in black and colored art line for what's whithin the silouhetto ?

[RetroRob]

First attempt at a 8 frame run cycle.

Imho, all that black kills the readability. Ever considered to have only the *outline* in black and colored art line for what's whithin the silouhetto ?

Thanks for the input.  I think the readability on the sprite is just fine.  I'm keeping the blackout lines though to keep it consistant with the rest of my graphics.  Plus if you were to take out all the black lines and just leave the color it becomes WAY unreadable.

[pistachio]

Thanks for the input.  I think the readability on the sprite is just fine.  I'm keeping the blackout lines though to keep it consistent with the rest of my graphics.  Plus if you were to take out all the black lines and just leave the color it becomes WAY unreadable.

Not really. Some more contrast in the shading... Better palette (but the overall color schemes look nice), maybe just lightening up the outlines inside, and there's your answer. Well, sort of. You've seen successful sprites without outlines, haven't you?

But I see your point--redoing every sprite in the game would be a pain and it'd probably leave you way over your planned release date.

But not that it'd be interesting to see, and would improve your skill in future games. I mean, you don't actually have to do it for the real game, more just for practice.

[RetroRob]

Thanks for the input.  I think the readability on the sprite is just fine.  I'm keeping the blackout lines though to keep it consistent with the rest of my graphics.  Plus if you were to take out all the black lines and just leave the color it becomes WAY unreadable.

Not really. Some more contrast in the shading... Better palette (but the overall color schemes look nice), maybe just lightening up the outlines inside, and there's your answer. Well, sort of. You've seen successful sprites without outlines, haven't you?

But I see your point--redoing every sprite in the game would be a pain and it'd probably leave you way over your planned release date.

But not that it'd be interesting to see, and would improve your skill in future games. I mean, you don't actually have to do it for the real game, more just for practice.

Yeah I know what you mean Pistachio.  If I were to start all over again I would def consider taking the lightened outline look.  I had thought about doing it but there's just to much already to go back through and edit.  Here's a little edit I did awhile ago with using lightened outlines.



With some of the newer sprites I've been doing I've been trying to lighten the outlines as much as possible without it being SUPER noticable.




Anyways, here are some of the new sprites I've been working on.




   Angel - for the death animation of the knight
Big Chest
Little Chest - looks a little wonkey due to the gif
Flame Enemy
Jets :: Revised, they look better in game.  frame rates a bit off in the gif
  Skull :: You can run into these guys and talk to them for clues to the dungeon puzzles / riddles

[pistachio]

Nicely done. The lightened outlines are certainly better. Not that I'd actually recommend you do it for the whole game, of course, as stated before. Now the only thing else I can see could be improved, though, is the palette--it's mostly just a straight ramp, lacking hue-shifting. Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.

But you have to wonder how the knight manages to squeeze his/her head into that helmet. It's pretty wide..

[RetroRob]

Nicely done. The lightened outlines are certainly better. Not that I'd actually recommend you do it for the whole game, of course, as stated before. Now the only thing else I can see could be improved, though, is the palette--it's mostly just a straight ramp, lacking hue-shifting. Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.

But you have to wonder how the knight manages to squeeze his/her head into that helmet. It's pretty wide..

Thanks gain for the feedback pistachio.  Could you elaborate on what you mean by "Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.".  I think I get what you're saying but would like some clarification.  Good eye, yes the head is about 2 pix to big to fit into the helmet but whatever.

Here's one of the first rooms for the interior fire dungeon :



Again, users will be viewing the sprites at 400%. We're just doing the very base of the maps and adding in things like wall/ground torches, enemies, blocking pillars ect through a game editor that my programmer did up.  Areas blocked off by lava will only be accessible after you've unlocked the water spell which will allow the player to cool lava tiles amongst other things.

[RetroRob]

Hi all,
Apart from getting crits on my boss door, I wanted to share with everyone a technique I've been using for some of my sprites.  I haven't seen this info anywhere else so I thought I'd share it here as a thank you to all the awesome people that troll this board 

So I start out with a 3d model done in any of the 3d software ( I use blender ).



Then toss it into a photoshop mock up of the scene where the object is going to live and get it to a size that I want (Make sure Edit > Preferences > Interpolation drop down box is set to 'Preserve hard edges' before you scale it.



After this I copy the newly scaled object into another document where I do a 'Save for Web', Choose GIF as image type.  Set the # of colors to whatever looks good then screen shot it (When I'm doing the colors I usually scale it up so I can see what I'm doing, before I take the screenshot I set the zoom level back to 100).



I then paste it back into the mock scene and do the colors and whatever other edits I think need to be done.

[RetroRob]

[Stratto]

You might want to clean up the outlines on the gates.
Do you have any lava animations yet? i can't really picture the current tiles as lava yet, they look more like red rocks.
everything else seems pretty good.

[RetroRob]

You might want to clean up the outlines on the gates.
Do you have any lava animations yet? i can't really picture the current tiles as lava yet, they look more like red rocks.
everything else seems pretty good.

Yeahhh I'm def gonna clean up that outline on the door (Use a photoshop outterglow for the outside black outline), I'll repost it laters with an edit. 

Here's a pic of the twin dragon statues that I'm going to have in the boss room would love any feed back on them   Right now the color isn't totally in stone yet and I jus thave them sitting ontop of a bunch of stuff in my mock dungeon.   Do you guys think these look to detailed to put in the dungeon?   Used 8 colors on em.

[Cyangmou]

The lines are jaggy, I guess you should clear it up.

[Greger]

Nicely done. The lightened outlines are certainly better. Not that I'd actually recommend you do it for the whole game, of course, as stated before. Now the only thing else I can see could be improved, though, is the palette--it's mostly just a straight ramp, lacking hue-shifting. Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.

But you have to wonder how the knight manages to squeeze his/her head into that helmet. It's pretty wide..

Thanks gain for the feedback pistachio.  Could you elaborate on what you mean by "Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.".  I think I get what you're saying but would like some clarification.  Good eye, yes the head is about 2 pix to big to fit into the helmet but whatever.

Here's one of the first rooms for the interior fire dungeon :

<picture>

Again, users will be viewing the sprites at 400%. We're just doing the very base of the maps and adding in things like wall/ground torches, enemies, blocking pillars ect through a game editor that my programmer did up.  Areas blocked off by lava will only be accessible after you've unlocked the water spell which will allow the player to cool lava tiles amongst other things.

I just realized that the perspective is all kinds of fucked upp, you're mixing the old view that so many old fantasy RPGs has with watching directly from above, and it's really, really bugging me out. Make up your mind, it looks like you've just thrown in one perspective into another and then adding another perspective.

[RetroRob]

Nicely done. The lightened outlines are certainly better. Not that I'd actually recommend you do it for the whole game, of course, as stated before. Now the only thing else I can see could be improved, though, is the palette--it's mostly just a straight ramp, lacking hue-shifting. Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.

But you have to wonder how the knight manages to squeeze his/her head into that helmet. It's pretty wide..

Thanks gain for the feedback pistachio.  Could you elaborate on what you mean by "Making darker colors lean towards blue, and likewise, lighter colors towards yellow could suffice for an RPG like this.".  I think I get what you're saying but would like some clarification.  Good eye, yes the head is about 2 pix to big to fit into the helmet but whatever.

Here's one of the first rooms for the interior fire dungeon :

<picture>

Again, users will be viewing the sprites at 400%. We're just doing the very base of the maps and adding in things like wall/ground torches, enemies, blocking pillars ect through a game editor that my programmer did up.  Areas blocked off by lava will only be accessible after you've unlocked the water spell which will allow the player to cool lava tiles amongst other things.

I just realized that the perspective is all kinds of fucked upp, you're mixing the old view that so many old fantasy RPGs has with watching directly from above, and it's really, really bugging me out. Make up your mind, it looks like you've just thrown in one perspective into another and then adding another perspective.

Yes Greger,
This game is modeled after the legend of zelda games where the rules of perspective are thrown out the window.  Outside views :: Everything is at about a 45 degree top down view.  Inside :: The walls are as if you're viewing them from a 90 degree top down view while all the objects contained within are at the outside perspective of 45 degree.   The difference between the Zelda games and oldschool RPGs is that the RPGs keep the 45 degree top down view regardless of being inside/outside.   

Outside


Inside

[RetroRob]

Lava fall.

Thoughts?



Programmers going to add in a little particle emitter at the bottom of the fall to make it look like little embers floating off it.

[Mathias]

The particle effects will add a lot of life.

The flat top of the lava fall and the lava pool being the same tile feels a little recycle-ish. And logically, the dried cracked desert mud-esque lava tiles, used for the flat top of fall and lava pool, get that way due to stagnation - little plates and shapes form from partially dried chunks with hotter more liquidy veins in between.
The moving/flowing flat top of the lava fall would benefit from a tile indicating some forward motion, like the vertical lava falling tiles.
Tried transparency for the vertical falling lava tiles?

Would be nifty/kewwl if the lava fall was redesigned so the dragon sculptures were disgorging the lava from their mouths.

[pistachio]

Lava waterfall looks cool as it is, but personally, I'd like to see a hint of orange, perhaps bits of yellow in places, using more general warm tones and not just red. You know, like real lava. It would also help to really pronounce its... Dangerous... Fieryness.

What Mathias also said about the top and bottom waterfall tiles being one and the same is rather true, actually. Doesn't really make the vertical movement, that is to say the flow from horizontal to vertical that obvious. While lava is, of course, not as fluid as water, it's still fluid. Upon further reflection, just where is the lava-fall coming from? The wall? Doesn't make much sense, but I suppose this is all just a placeholder position.

[RetroRob]

Thanks for the awesome feedback guys!

The particle effects will add a lot of life.  
(We have this effect on the Flame balls from the exterior / interior mocks they look really Cool)

The flat top of the lava fall and the lava pool being the same tile feels a little recycle-ish. And logically, the dried cracked desert mud-esque lava tiles, used for the flat top of fall and lava pool, get that way due to stagnation - little plates and shapes form from partially dried chunks with hotter more liquidy veins in between.
(Right, I tried doing this at first with cooler solidified black plates on top but I just didn't like the way it looked, I wanted it to look like hotter liquid lava).

The moving/flowing flat top of the lava fall would benefit from a tile indicating some forward motion, like the vertical lava falling tiles.
The reason for it seeming recycle-ish and using this tile for the top and bottom is that I wanted to be able to hook pools of lava together, all the lava in the game is going to have a downward motion.  This way I can have multiple lava pools and hook all of them together with lava falls.

Tried transparency for the vertical falling lava tiles?
Not yet!! But def going to

Would be nifty/kewwl if the lava fall was redesigned so the dragon sculptures were disgorging the lava from their mouths.
Heck yeah, I have a thinner strip of falling lava that you can see in the img with the knight walking into the dragons mouth at the top.  If there's time I'm going to look into something like this

Lava waterfall looks cool as it is, but personally, I'd like to see a hint of orange, perhaps bits of yellow in places, using more general warm tones and not just red. You know, like real lava. It would also help to really pronounce its... Dangerous... Fieryness.
Every now and again I've been doing this and I just can't get it to where I'm happy with it with the orange.  I like it this red too though.

What Mathias also said about the top and bottom waterfall tiles being one and the same is rather true, actually. Doesn't really make the vertical movement, that is to say the flow from horizontal to vertical that obvious. While lava is, of course, not as fluid as water, it's still fluid.
Just did this to be able to hook lava pools together.  Also as of now the fall is in 3 sprites.   One is the animated tile at the top, second the fall, and the third is the edge highlight of the fall to sort of buffer the transition from horizontal to vertical.   Here's another version of the top tile.



Upon further reflection, just where is the lava-fall coming from? The wall? Doesn't make much sense, but I suppose this is all just a placeholder position.
Yep, I'll probably use door frames in the walls to give it a starting point or as Mathias said have it originate from the snake mouths

Thanks again!

[RetroRob]

Hi all!
We submitted Blossom Tales : The Sleeping King to Dream Build Play competition last Tuesday.  I just wanted to give big thanks to everyone on these boards who gave me all the great feedback and critiques.   In the coming week I'll be posting more sprite work as production continues.  Probably going to start working more on the Dark Wood area.   Anyways here's a link to the youtube video that shows off some of the graphics and gameplay..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afD44SgH55w

Thanks again!