[WIP] Partisan Tactics Battles : Animations, woah

[Takai Soyokaze]

I'm sorry, I didn't get much sleep.

What I mean to say is your color choices just don't fit. The purple gray I'm *not* digging, and even if its like everyother rpg out there, I think instead you should use light yellow for the top of the color ramp of the tall grass. The random coloring of the tall grass doens't work. Just tone down the difference of the color ramps. Your sprites have awesome coloring, but the tiles are so random and all over the place in colors, it doesn't fit. Everyone else probably praises you for it, but it doesn't work, it's too, not annoying, but something similar to that, and I think it should look more traditional. Your probably going to disagree with me, but the coloring job on the tiles specifically is just, well... awkward. If I have to do an edit to explain further I will, because it could be so much better.

[Ryumaru]

you probably know what takai is saying adarias, but incase your a tad confused: the tiles' pallette has of course shifted hues, but he thinks( i agree) that they are too spaced and less coherent. kind of how a highlight color much brighter than shades that had been more similair before may look odd.

[ndchristie]

I'm sorry, I didn't get much sleep.

What I mean to say is your color choices just don't fit. The purple gray I'm *not* digging, and even if its like everyother rpg out there, I think instead you should use light yellow for the top of the color ramp of the tall grass. The random coloring of the tall grass doens't work. Just tone down the difference of the color ramps. Your sprites have awesome coloring, but the tiles are so random and all over the place in colors, it doesn't fit. Everyone else probably praises you for it, but it doesn't work, it's too, not annoying, but something similar to that, and I think it should look more traditional. Your probably going to disagree with me, but the coloring job on the tiles specifically is just, well... awkward. If I have to do an edit to explain further I will, because it could be so much better.

Hm.....i don't know what to do about this, since to me there is nothing "random" about the colors selected, and i dont think they are anywhere close to what i would consider "all over the place", so without a better explanation of what is actually bothering you and why, theres not much i can do to fix this.  As far as your suggestion of using direct hue ramps and making the top of the ramp a light yellow, it makes perfect sense, but i have tried it in various ways, and i hate it, at least what ive tried.  making the whole grass lightly colored is not something i want to do, and to make the top of the ramp very bright while keeping the general colors a nice dark make it too contrasty and it steals attention from the characters without even looking nice.  Using washed out colors on a single-hue ramp (which would correct the contrast issue a little) to me just looks bad imo; it's all washed out and no colors.  These colors and shapes have been specifically chosen to create cold soup (specifically taken to knock each other down in the percieved saturation) that will show motion without real distraction, and will not have really defined shapes but should give the general impression of grass.

In the end, i guess i just don't know what either of you are saying. sorry if im being a prick, i just dont *get it*


perhaps you could edit to show what you mean, and how you would solve the problem?

[ndchristie]

bumpdate -

Working on the running frames, and they are very rough atm, here is just the beginning --



thanks to Ptoing for his help and pointers

does anyone have anything to say before i begin finalizing these frames and moving on to the other animations? (besides to add shadows, im keeping them off till i know that the frames won't change much)

[Godslayer]

The hair is too static. The fact that the head is unchanging immediatley stood out to me.

[Fool]

Hair is static allright, also you might move sprite 1 px to the left in frames 3 and 6, it will take care of roughness.
Although all that looks critical only if sprite runing on one spot, when it actually moving - it would look different.
A quick edit, if you won't mind:

[ndchristie]

Hair is static allright, also you might move sprite 1 px to the left in frames 3 and 6, it will take care of roughness.
Although all that looks critical only if sprite runing on one spot, when it actually moving - it would look different.
A quick edit, if you won't mind:

I may take that movement into consideration, depends on how it looks in the game.  Atm, i think yours ends up looking too jerky. thanks for that edit though

The hair cannot really be animated under the current set of rules because the head is a separate set and would have too many frames if it was animated.  as it stands, each headset = 30 jobs - 5 without hats x 4 directions x 3 states (normal, hurt, dead) = 300 frames.  To multiply this by the number of additional frames needed simply wont work.  Like in Ragnarok Online and other games, animation takes it on the chin here to allow for variation.

What we *may* do is to add maybe 1 or 2 movements, which would only make for 400-500 frames, and just milk those for all they are worth

[vedsten]

you could take care of the head by delaying the heads horizontal movement a frame (relative to the torso). That'd spice it up alot and save you the imense workload of seperate animation. Very nice thread btw. top nudge stuff and it's been an absolute pleasure to watch the work evolve 

[cave]

Adarias this is so incredibly awesome i can't even put it into words, can't wait to play this thing! Tough I have to say I liked your 'washed out' pallete more than the new one for the characters

[Shifty McSly]

wow, the sheer quantity of work you do, let alone the amazing quality astounds me. Out of all the different classes my favourites would be the ones with helmets, they just look way too nifty. The run animation looks nice, but the head movement does seem a bit strange, then again, I guess I'd have to see it actually moving across the screen to judge it properly. Keep up the good work   

[AlienQuark]

Is there any sort of production website or progress website you have for this? I'd really like to see all this beautiful work compiled somewhere where I can just browse it all and see how far along it all is and whether I will ever be able to play such a pretty looking game.

If not... I suggest you find someone to throw such a thing together for you/ put something together yourself so as to keep track of all this and whatnot.

Looking all too sexy my friend, can't wait for the next sexcellent update

[ndchristie]

cave,  hmm....idk about the palette. i like the new colors because they stand out more :/

vedsten, thats a good idea

shifty - thanks the helmets are the most fun

quark - http://partisan-tb.blogspot.com/

look for an update later this week(end?)

[ndchristie]

wow, i REALLY don't have time to update this tonight, I have so much work to do and most likely will not like, sleep but i promised to update this weeks ago....so we are going to cheat >.<

24.10.06
Oups, à la bourre

Brrr, j'ai honte de laisser passer autant de temps entre les mises à jour. La semaine a été mouvementée aussi bien chez Adarias que chez moi mais j'imagine que pendant les vacances je serai un peu plus bavard =)

·Bon, vite vite les images pour me faire pardonner. Tout d'abord, un artwork de toutes les épées du jeu :



Comme d'hab, on clique pour voir en grand
Avec ça, le jour où on sera à la rue on pourra vendre des artbook Partisan hahaha !


·Adarias a continué à dessiner les tiles et un tileset de ville commence à prendre forme :



J'ai vraiment hâte de voir les toits, les fenêtres et toutes les fioritures.
J'espère quand même qu'il fait pas ses maps avec des copier-coller. Vivement que l'éditeur de maps soit operationnel !

·Bon c'est pas tout ça mais y'a aussi le coding, l'editeur de map avance plus que bien. J'ai mis au point le système de chargement et découpage automatique des tilesets (animations comprises). Ca a été bien galère car j'ai plus l'habitude d'utiliser des tilesets inclus à la bibliotheque du jeu, là il a fallu coder à la main l'équivalent d'une petite timeline pour chaque tile animé. Un vrai bonheur ^^
Les menus suivants de l'editeur sont codés :
-choix du tileset
-choix du tile et du bloc à placer
-affichage de la combinaison du tile et du bloc choisi
Et la partie "interface" (déplacement des panneaux, pliage/dépliage des panneaux...) est bouclée aussi. Ouf !

·Un savant calcul nous a poussé à diminuer le nombre d'armes de certaines catégories et au final chaque classe de perso a, à la fin de son évolution, accès à 24 armes. Ca re-équilibre les différents jobs et ça fait moins d'armes à dessiner. Tout benef'


Voili voilou, c'est tout pour aujourd'hui.

posté par Fil Razorback at 21:32

i plan to actually update this soon but it turns out applying to colleges and for financial aid and building a portfolio etc. is no quick task

[Skulkraken]

Those swords look sweet.  Will they be that size in the game, or will they be shrunk down?  By this, I mean, will there be a preview menu when shopping or equipping items that will show the item you're viewing with that amount of detail, or will they all be represented by simple icons like in most games?

[ndchristie]

I hesitated to post this before since it uses so many placeholders and fil hasnt coded all of it (so its a mockup, not a screencapture......)



but anyway, while much of that will change, weapons are resiszed i think to approx 50% as shown here (give or take a few percent since they arent all drawn exactly in proportion to each other) and then will be pixelled over (the handdrawn versions are for me to trace)

[Helm]

Oh my, not a radial gradient! I hope that's place-holdery too?

[fil_razorback]

Adarias told me he wanted to keep it but I haven't told him yet that I don't like it (at all )

[ndchristie]

it is jsut a placeholder, but it's not changing till someone comes up with something better, because a plain dark background does not work at all for the weapons and a plain light background doesnt look good either, nor is it in keeping with the shop inventory screen preceding the purchase screen

[big brother]

You should have five backgrounds for the weapon "portraits", one for each point on the pentacle. The four standard ones would correspond to earth, wind, fire, and water while the fifth could be a spiritual element (for holy/unholy blessed/cursed weapons).

[fil_razorback]

Except that our weapons do not have any elemental power and I don't think we'll add some.

The idea was not bad tough, thank you ^^

[AlienQuark]

I think the gradient is fine, a game of this proportion doesn't need to be completely pixelled in my opinion. I think you just need a better colour for the gradient, and maybe make it non-circular. I think that menu would benefit from a more neutral colour in the gradient, maybe a rich chocolate brown gradient or something. Make it feel earthy and full-bodied (lol, like a good cup of coffee)

That's what I would suggest.

[big brother]

Except that our weapons do not have any elemental power and I don't think we'll add some.

Well, the weapons wouldn't necessarily have to 'posess' the power of the respective element, just be related to it. For instance: clubs, quarterstaffs,  obsidian spears, and the like would fall under the earth element, since they relate to a land-based resource like wood or stone. Weapons with forged blades would represent the fire element. The wind element would be comprised of ranged weapons or higher-tech stuff. The water element could represent weapons made from its resources like a swordfish sword, a reed blowgun, or a coral blade lance. All magic weapons fall under the spirit weapon category.

[ndchristie]

Well, the weapons wouldn't necessarily have to 'posess' the power of the respective element, just be related to it. For instance: clubs, quarterstaffs,  obsidian spears, and the like would fall under the earth element, since they relate to a land-based resource like wood or stone. Weapons with forged blades would represent the fire element. The wind element would be comprised of ranged weapons or higher-tech stuff. The water element could represent weapons made from its resources like a swordfish sword, a reed blowgun, or a coral blade lance. All magic weapons fall under the spirit weapon category.

it's a fine idea, but not for this game.

[Larwick]

For a moment last night i remember imaginging some sort of subtle (so as not to be distracting) repeated pattern of an axe icon (or sword, spear.. etc for diff types of weapons) in a particular colour in the background, sort of cloth-like. I don't know if that's any use to you, but i just thought i'd let you know about the idea.

I really like that latest mockup, kind of looks like some part in a storyline... with an antagonist listening in to a conversation or something.

Haha, my mind goes to weird places sometimes. Good luck with the next bit of the game, can't wait to see more updates.

[Dhaos]

Very nice work Adarias. You've done *quite* alot with your project; it's nice a 'pretty-pixel' game that's actually getting somewhere. I particularly love those sword sketches you did, brilliant designs. I'm glad you're using colored shadows in your game too, they much better than standard transparent black/gray. For your shop/weapon's background dilemma, perhaps you could go the baldur's gate route and use a paper/scroll like background (pixeled of course, with the weapons being just a pixeled sketch?) Anyways I can't wait to see more, good luck with Partisian Tactics.

[Kable]

I just wanted to add how impressed I am with the amount of improvement in this screenshot over what you had to begin with. The sprites really "pop" against the background. I think the transition to this point is the difference between good art and good game art. These edits take into consideration the overall functionality and feel of the art within the overall game. I really like it.

[ndchristie]

ok, well, the game has been progressing slowly, but ive come to a major problem - i really dont know how to do tiles effectively.  here are a few screens -




basically, the readability is lacking in all of them and the aesthetics, well, they are falling.  the issue is that i don't know how to improve this, im completely stuck in what im doing.  perhaps there are any suggestions people might have?

[Stwelin]

I think that you have been looking at it for so long, it's starting to bug you.  It looks very well-done and professional. After looking at it for a while, though, I think maybe the lush-ness of the environments almost detracts from the players.

The tiles almost seem like they would be found in a GBA-version of Super Mario RPG.  They are very rich and saturated, however the players have more of a realistic drive, rather than a brightly coloured, comical character.  If you take a look through some of the tiles in Final Fantasy Tactics, (example below) you'll see that while the envireonment is 3d-rendered, it is still less detailed than the characters (along with a much different palette), and in turn, it makes the players stand out.


(i realize that this is a poor-quality screencap, but it gets the point across.)

Trust me, this really pains me to say, because the environments are amazing.  But I think it's something you should consider.

[Akzidenz]

Personally, I don't think they look bad - I think that some palette changes might look nice, but I don't think they look nearly as bad as you make them out to be.

The question that immediately comes to mind when looking at it, though, is "how are your maps built?". Are you forced to build them in the way that you are now, by making "blocks" and then building your scene with those blocks? Is this a programming issue?

If you are forced to build your scene with "blocks", then how many are you limited to using per map? Are your colors limited?

I have some ideas but need to know what restrictions you have..

[Alex Hanson-White]

the problem with the tiles is that they all just look like patterns.
you have to make them LOOK like something, else everything just seems chaotic and crazy.

[Ragnarok]

May I just say that it may well be non-implamentable, but I edited the Paladin sprite. I gave him a cute cape too! 

Newly made to comply with the dark outlines.


EDIT: Oh, and would you accept help on tiles or sprites? I love the pallete choice, and as I can emulate styles and colours but have trouble choosing effective ones of my own to use as a base, I am good on teams with established styles and palletes.

[AlienQuark]

Really, the thing that seems to work against you in these is the overtexturing on the tiles. It makes the whole thing look chaotic, which in turn makes the readability of the whole scene just that much harder. I don't think they all need to be simplified, but some that need to make up large chunks of terrain should be less detailed in order to prevent pulling the attention away from the characters. Like in the town shot, all the areas with the bricks are just pulling your eyes in too many directions at once.

I dunno, maybe just work with the level of detail on them a bit and keep it in mind for when you make new areas.

[fil_razorback]

The question that immediately comes to mind when looking at it, though, is "how are your maps built?". Are you forced to build them in the way that you are now, by making "blocks" and then building your scene with those blocks? Is this a programming issue?
If you are forced to build your scene with "blocks", then how many are you limited to using per map? Are your colors limited?

The maps have to be made of "blocks" (tiles) but there are no color limitations and we can use about as many as we want per map.


Delphinus >> You edited a very very old sprite, we don't use these anymore ^^

[Ragnarok]

Oops, but still, is it possible to join the team? Not to sound desperate...

EDIT: Can I see some of the newer sprites too, please.

[Akzidenz]

The maps have to be made of "blocks" (tiles) but there are no color limitations and we can use about as many as we want per map.

Okay, then - if you have no color limitations, and no limit to the number of blocks/tiles you use - the sky's the limit!

This is a super fast example, I'm heading out in 5 minutes but wanted to show you what I'm talking about.

Right now, you're thinking in terms of creating "blocks" that can then be laid out in the shape of a scene/stage. This is the wrong way to go about it - and it's what's leading to the patterned effect that Alex HW mentioned.

Instead, think in terms of creating whole buildings or scenes, and then making blocks/tiles out of them. For example!

This is some iso building that I randomly grabbed off of eBoy (www.eboy.com):



This is a rough approximation of your grid/tile size:



Now, if you make a larger piece (like that building), you can just lay your grid over it. For example, this is the eBoy building with your grid on top:



From there, you could easily make the blocks/tiles necessary to recreate that in your game. An example (gridlines on top for example only):



Does that make sense? Sorry if it's confusing at all, I'd be happy to explain what I'm saying, more clearly, later - I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment.

Good luck!

[Evil-Ville]

Akzidenz: That's bullshit. What's the point of having tiles if each one is used only once?

[Akzidenz]

Akzidenz: That's bullshit. What's the point of having tiles if each one is used only once?

Hahahaha.. bullshit? Wow. 

Maybe so that it doesn't look like the stage is made up of tiles?

[Feron]

i kind of get what hes saying.  At the moment adarias has made textured tiles and "randomly" positioned to make a map.  

akzidenz is saying perhaps make a small scene and then divide it into tiles.  then fix it a bit so the tiles can be repeated and the map will appear more coherent.

[Akzidenz]

i kind of get what hes saying.  At the moment adarias has made textured tiles and "randomly" positioned to make a map. 

akzidenz is saying perhaps make a small scene and then divide it into tiles.  then fix it a bit so the tiles can be repeated and the map will appear more coherent.

This is what I'm saying, yeah.

As I said, my example was some ghetto shit that I did in order to illustrate what I was talking about. Ideally? You'd know the grid that you were working with, and you could create tiles as you built your stages with re-use and repetition in mind.

[Faktablad]

the problem with the tiles is that they all just look like patterns.
you have to make them LOOK like something, else everything just seems chaotic and crazy.

That's what I was thinking too.

[.TakaM]

I just wanna say I really like how the tiles look. isometric games usually turn me off, but this looks great 

btw, the little (H) thing in the left text box really reminds me of uTorrent's logo

[Andy Tran]

 Noticing from your work, it has always been one of my favorites.

[ndchristie]

heh, did expect so many responses so quickly

no, im afraid we are not looking for additional spriters, though if anyone is interested in doing high-quality portraits, tremulant no longer has the time to do them (sad face)

ok, about the scene way of doing things.  Ideally, thats what i would do, however, it doesnt work at all with the current methods of construction, and also makes things difficult.  its likely though that many environments will contain larger block elements, in addition to the regular tiles.

Thanks for the advice too guys, some how i had never thought to reduce the level of business >.<  i will try that, as well as trying to unify each face with more local value shifts instead of the high-contrast ones.  now i should only need some time.....^^

could people be more specific about "actually looking like something" ?  everything i've done is a very specific material, and i thought that they communicated themselves rather clearly in that regard but apparently you dont think so

[Akzidenz]

could people be more specific about "actually looking like something" ?  everything i've done is a very specific material, and i thought that they communicated themselves rather clearly in that regard but apparently you dont think so

I think that what they're getting at (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that your tileset is being used to create scenes that look very much like.. they were created with a tileset. If you play through FF Tactics Advance, it's not difficult to tell where the grid sits, but it's very difficult to tell exactly where one tile ends and another begins.

If you think of them less as individual tiles, and more as pieces of a larger puzzle, then I think you'll get better results. You started to do something like that on this screenshot:



Take advantage of transparencies, work on more than one tile at a time, consider how they'll look next to each other, try to fight the lego effect as much as you can. And if you can, get rid of the visible gridlines - I think they do a lot to detract from the quality of everything. Previous Tactics games haven't used a visible grid, have they? I'm not sure.

[Alex Hanson-White]

could people be more specific about "actually looking like something" ?  everything i've done is a very specific material, and i thought that they communicated themselves rather clearly in that regard but apparently you dont think so

forget about materials.. start thinking about forms.
the problem is that everything looks like a material, but the materials have no form.
It's like the material is pasted onto cardboard boxes.
sorry if that sounds harsh.

patterns make no sense if they can't express a form, in effect they'll seem flat.
when you use bunches of various colors in one pattern, that seems to be destroying any coherent form.
also, things dont need to be so squared. the games not going to fall apart if some shapes aren't exactly square/straight..

[Joseph]

I dont know if you have a working demo for this or anything, as I have not played it, but one thing I would love to see in it that isnt in fftactics or advance, is free roam...well within an area.  fft and advance the only movement your player does is based on an event, which gets boring.  id like to go into shops, houses, new areas rather than go along with the story to find out.  with the graphics themselves, they look awesome, I cant wait to play it.  the textbox isnt bad but could use revisions.  and then the tiles are amazing as well as the rest of it, however I think they're too obvious when it comes to tiles.  I think you should work them into eachother so you dont end up with 12 blocks of grass instead of an area of grass.
good luck.

[Akzidenz]

the textbox isnt bad but could use revisions.

I wanted to say something about the type. I gathered from your old posts that you're not incredibly concerned with the UI, but for what it's worth, here's my nerdy design advice:

Lucida Mono is the wrong face to use here. Your interface generally should reflect the type of game you're playing - the type choice should come from the other elements of the game. Your game is set in medival (or quasi-medival) times, from what I can tell. Monospaced typefaces certainly weren't around then, and neither were sans-serif typefaces. Monospaced type is generally something that you should avoid - it's much more difficult to read than other typefaces, it takes up more room, and regardless of the style of the face it will generally evoke a typewriter connotation.

I'm not sure what your limitations are with type. If you can't antialias your type at all, then try using Georgia (it comes standard on all computers now) - it's a really beautiful serif face that's designed specifically for the screen (whereas most typefaces are designed for the printed page). If you absolutely need to use a monospaced typeface, then Century Monospace is about the best you can do (http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=BT.107478.0.0). If you have no limitations, and you can antialias your type, then you can really look around and find something nice. The Serif (http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=FK.108399.0.1) is one of my favorite contemporary serifs. It's almost impossible to make Jenson (http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=M.125307.0.0) look bad. If you don't want to use a serifed typeface (they're typically meant to be printed), there are a bunch of nice sans-serifs - Quay is a beautiful face (http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=EF.547.0.1).

If you want to look through stuff on your own, www.fontshop.com is great, they have a big selection - and The Foundry (www.foundrytypes.co.uk) is probably the best contemporary type foundry out there. If you happen to find a typeface that you like, but you don't want to shell out $150 to try it, let me know via a PM or something.

Additionally, your UI screenshots on your blog are pretty chaotic. If you'd like some detailed advice on how to make them simpler or more effective, just let me know. 

So, yeah. Take that advice for what it is. If you want to ignore all of that, I promise my feelings won't be hurt. But since I can't draw worth shit, I feel like I should at least offer up advice on something that I know about.

[happymonster]

Beautiful work!

I think that your tiles might benefit if you had a little more contrast and a little less different hues in them. Some of them have 3 or 4 different hues, which I think is excessive for some of the materials you are representing. This might help the tiles stand out more.

Have you tried dropping your sprites onto screenshots of other isometric games and seeing if their tiles makes the sprites stand out more?

[ndchristie]

Its been a bit too long since i updated.....

Thanks to all of their help with this, the tiles i think are far better now than they were in previous posts..  Now ive come back to an old issue though - the sand that ptoing has effectively dubbed "that ugly peanut-butter tile"



see the jiffy in hte bottom area? thats what i need to get rid of.  BUT ive never known how to make a sand tile that looks good. does anyone have any ideas?

also note that the background is only a fill that wont be seen in-game, as sky will almost never be seen except in some areas which will be on cliffs.  there is no "end of the world" arena edge for this project, everything will be built within restricted camera angles and obstacles that prevent the player from seeing anything empty area beyond the map

[fawel]

I was wondering what those brown and purple swirls were, they look really bad.  Right now they are way too busy and distracting.  THe fact that you cram as many tiles as possible into your mock-ups, without any transition tiles as well, doesn't do much to help.

Sand tiles... sand tiles.  Look at the far right... (from Tsugumo's tutorials)


http://www.bigbluebubble.com/pixeltutorial/chapter5.htm

I know you've probably seen that already, but I think it should help all the same.  It seems like you try to avoid large expanses of open space in your tiles, try and do something about that.  Also, sand is not in any way bright.  It's plain, mostly with flat unsaturated colors.

That's about as close as I could get using your colors.  So yeah, I hope that helps some