Mockup Frenzy #8: Megaman!

[mice]

MtŪ: Gorgeous!

[Ryona]

Aaand.. the boss:

I call 'her' Snow Woman.. for now (name pending)

I gotta be honest, neither the sprite nor the portrait pic looks like a woman. The shape of the sprite isn't really "femme", and the face in the portrait looks rather masculine.

The levels you made though are fantastic!


And on the topic of the color restrictions and 8x8 shablangy... Do I really have to worry about that stuff? I assumed that NES sprites could have five colors because MegaMan does, so I simply went with that.

Some of us are techno-gaming-computer-programming-mumbo-jumbo-illiterate *cough*me*cough*, so if we really have to go by the restrictions, could someone explain them in plain English please?

[AdamAtomic]

Megaman is made up of some blue sprites for his body and a peach+white sprite for his face.  So yeah, he does follow the hardware restrictions that were necessary for games to even run at all on the NES   I think snow woman does read as a woman but could also be more feminine.

As far as the uh, techno-babble, there are a lot of posts in this thread and the last mockup frenzy that break down some of the crazier parts of the NES spec, but it really isn't 100% necessary for this activity.  As long as you aren't using craploads of colors everywhere (which won't look like an NES game then anyways) it's really fine.  If you WANT to follow the spec 100%...well, do a little research   It's really not that complex!

[Conceit]

This is awesome =) I have some good ideas, and I HAVE to do something on this one...I dont wanna go for the regular robotmaster (the official ones disappoint me quite a lot, they are all old designs with one minor armor part changed)

I want to make one of those GOOFY looking robotmasters...I think they're hillarous.

Ryona...

hahah. I know what you mean with the 5 colors! I started pixeling with megaman sprites so that boogled my mind as well.

Basically, think of it like this: Normally, for nes everything can only have 3 colors per tile.

The megaman developers wanted to make megaman more realistic, they wanted to give him a face with skin color, so they wasted a 8x8 sprite there for that.

So if you want to use more than 3 skin colors, try to make it only in a 8x8 area of the sprite.

Even though I'm no expert I could try to explain the other limitations, but you have another doubt you can post it here unless you want me to give u more lip than I have to 

EDIT: DAMN u adam Atomic 

and a crit for your WarpWoman Ryona...while you know how to make a curvilcious woman, you are not posing her like one, so when one reads her in real size the negative space that indicates her waist gets totally lost, because the way her arms go straight down create a sort of square that brings all the attention away from her body...

[MtŪ]

Aaand.. the boss:

I call 'her' Snow Woman.. for now (name pending)

I gotta be honest, neither the sprite nor the portrait pic looks like a woman. The shape of the sprite isn't really "femme", and the face in the portrait looks rather masculine.

The levels you made though are fantastic!

Thank you Ryona, I can see what you mean and I agree with you. I tried my best to fix it and hopefully it looks better now:
Old:

New:


Better/Worse?

[Zccc]

I present you Honey Man, my first NES pixelart. I tried following the restrictions, not sure if worked. Otherwise, I don't like it, cuz' it doesn't fit Megaman   

[Luzeke]

Went back a step and messed around and came up with this:



Cut off the legs and made him fly instead 
The chest detail is a separate 8x16 sprite (I assume 8 is height and 16 width).
Anyway, he stays this way. At least for now, flicker be damned.

And here's an enemy:



A bird-bot. I'm actually not sure if I think it fits at all...

Working on the tileset. That's always the hardest part 

MtŪ: The new avatar is an improvement, looks good.

Zccc: Looks cool, beehive stage ftw!

Btw, is the 8 sprites per scanline a finite amount restriction, meaning there can't be more than 8?
Or is it that more than 8 causes severe flickering?

[AdamAtomic]

more than 8 causes severe flickering

 

[rdcarvallo]

I know of the "no edits" rule ,but Mettols(the yellow hats) and Sniper Joes (the green men with shields) themed for the stage???

[Amon]

Recently got done with a dealie similar to this one.  Only it was just making the robot masters, so I've got a whole sheet of my own creation done.  Just a matter of making levels and enemies.



Sharkman!

[vierbit]

wip!

Have trouble to come up with a theme which is not used yet. but whatever.

@MtŪ
Very good, only the stone tiles could be a little more simplify done. Like the background in your second screen.

@luzeke
the bird bot looks actually not very robotlike. Maybe show more the mechanical joints.

Otherwise great topic, but i like to see more backgrounds.

[Ryona]

That Sharkman looks really cool, Amon. Totally diggin' the style.

BruteMan is looking good too, though I gotta say, I liked his original design best.
I think making him hover doesn't really work with his name because flight suggests agility. A guy like BruteMan would work best being well-grounded with thick legs, like an inmovable mountain.

MtŪ, your portrait and sprite definetly improved. I can definetly see a woman there now.

And thanks for the critz, Conceit. I'll work on her poses.
How are these so far?



WarpWoman here has a blaster attack, similar to MegaMan. She can teleport, as you can see. And she has a neat power where she creates a warp cone that will suck MegaMan in (if he's in range), then creates a new warp hole on the wall which pushes MegaMan out, hurling him against the oposite wall.


MODIFIED:

That is one sweet background, vierbit. Love the style.

[AdamAtomic]

I know of the "no edits" rule ,but Mettols(the yellow hats) and Sniper Joes (the green men with shields) themed for the stage???

No, draw your own you lazy git!

[Alex Hanson-White]

nice depth vierbit, looks like you broke out of the style very well.
i'm trying to take a different approach aswell,
here's my wip:

[Krut]

I think the eyebrows on your sprite are a bit distracting Kon, maybe a lonely dot, or vertical line would do the trick better; tho, the shape of the helmet looks a bit funky too, but that might be the work of the tiles..i love the aproach you took tho!
Vierbitīs, Ryonaīs and Konīs are my favourites right now.
I love the scenery on his, and i love the character of Ryona.


Might enter this when i get a change

[Sherman Gill]

If you want to be more efficient, Kon, you could reduce the use of pink of yellow to one 8x16 block so it's only one extra sprite.

[Froli]

New:


Better/Worse?

I edited the eyes and lips, hope this gives you another perspective.

another edit 


Vierbit, that's looks awesome 

[Ryona]

Those edits are nice, but I believe they stray away from the MegaMan art style. The face proportions are too close to realism where as the MegaMan style is more exagerated.


MODIFIED:

I was just playing a ROM of the first MegaMan game for NES and noticing how stupidly difficult it is. Damn you, NES, for being so hard! 
Seriously, most NES games are way too difficult. I can't believe that they were actually designed for kids. No wonder us adults of my generation are so messed up in the mind.

[Conceit]

Veirbit indeed that is quite awesome, as usual. Why oh why must you kick ass at tile sets?
I've been thinking of a way to make clouds that give the sensations yours do but couldnt quite think of a way. I would love to learn to tile the way you do...have you ever thought of recording yourself while you make a tileset? I would love to see something like that.

Ryona: Here's a suggestion for your warpgal....=) is she projecting her warp cone from her vagina?...that reminds me of the hilt suggestion I gave ya on the ninja topic =) I think warp is a much better theme for the debutant robotmaster-woman. I mean call me a perv but I couldnt help but think of squirting when they came up with SplashMa'am O_o

[Sherman Gill]

How does every topic Ryona is in end up on the topic of female sexuality?
And Conceit, I am gonna call you a pervert. Seriously, I think you're the only non-13 year old who made that splash woman connection .


And oh great now I'll have to make a Megaman boss because I posted in this thread.

[Rosse]

Great mockups here already! I especially like vierbit's approach of a slightly tilted perspective (so that you can see where megaman's walking on).
NES restrictions are very fun to work with, definitely going to do more mockups. I did a very generic one (Megaman 1 perhaps?), but I won't work further on it (adding enemies or a boss). I'll try a new one from scratch.



[edit]
Is tile-flipping (x/y) allowed? I think it's possible for sprites (Zelda 1 did it at least), but what about background tiles?

[AdamAtomic]

sprites yes, bg tiles no, but you could store 1 extra tile and voila

also, <3 sharkman, awesome stuff

[joe123]

 

This is my mock-up..
Might change some things, take the turret anyway. Planning to do the boss soon.

Btw, do we just create one.. 256x224 map? or the whole.. level?

Also, on the boss picture, do we use the colours in the pallete or can we use our own?

[Ben2theEdge]

Aaand.. the boss:

I call 'her' Snow Woman.. for now (name pending)
Also them yellow thingies in the mugshot are the blinking sprite thingies you see while you're selecting a boss.

I'm a little late commenting on this, but I think you can push the feminine qualities a lot with the pose. Right now the football player-like stance is communicating "macho" - all the other robot masters have it but they're dudes so having a female robot master requires a bit of straying from the beaten path.

[mice]

'I'm tinman'
Still not megamanish.

[Luzeke]

BruteMan is looking good too, though I gotta say, I liked his original design best.
I think making him hover doesn't really work with his name because flight suggests agility. A guy like BruteMan would work best being well-grounded with thick legs, like an inmovable mountain.

Yea, on second thought I agree. He'll get his legs back.
I like where Warp Woman's going, looks good.

Here's the avatar for Brute Man 

[Atnas]

I didn't know spriting with restrictions was so much damn fun, why didn't anyone ever tell me?!

Someone tell me if I broke any rules. All I really followed was the color restriction per tile, is there some kind of height restriction on these things?

[Dusty]

Heh, that's an awesome take on Megaman, Atnas. The only thing I think needs fixing is the face... the eyes look absolutely empty, for some reason. Perhaps because they're 'attached' to the helmet. You actually did great with the limitations... I broke apart the sprite and you pulled off some nice work. The transition between the skin tone and light blue wasn't even noticeable until I actually broke apart the sprite.

It actually looks like it'd go great with Vierbit's tileset... which is also awesome, even if it doesn't really look anything like Megaman in the slightest.

[Atnas]

Thanks.  I kind of meant him to look lifeless because of something Arne said which made me look at the first few games in a whole new light.

Megaman has always been a silent lethal assassin to me. He got in there and did the job without bla bla bla teen angst. His mouth is just a neutral line most of the time, and the first games didn't really have any lines/speech for him.

I'll do some tiles for the little guy tomorrow.

[Conceit]

Megaman has always been a silent lethal assassin to me. He got in there and did the job without bla bla bla teen angst. His mouth is just a neutral line most of the time, and the first games didn't really have any lines/speech for him.

WHAT?...he's nuts! if he's just a silent assasin then what was the megaman2 ending all about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiT_3kwgvwQ

I thought that obviously said murderer trauma, and a Pinochio complex!  O_o interesting though....I just cant wrap my mind around getting "silent assasin" out of that 

maybe he could be played as a robot who because of Dr.Right's morals WANTS to have feelings...and that's his pinochio complex =)

Atnas: Awesome little megaman! that's an excellent blend of good volume and symbolic anime-ish expression!

[Lord Ash]

@ Conceit, I always saw at as a recollection of the travels he went through during the game,j like it took him a whole year to defeat the robot masters, and restore peace. Rock is the the perfect assassin, he travels alone primarily, and defeats  insurmountable odds. All without complaining, and with the same melancholy attitude about destroying billions of dollars in rogue machinery. Just my interpretation.

[xenobond]

These all look real cool guys(&gals). Just saw this so hopefully I can get something in on time. XD

Already got my idea, just need to get it going, son!

[mice]

ZX anyone? Tried to, anyway.

[Dusty]

Thanks.  I kind of meant him to look lifeless because of something Arne said which made me look at the first few games in a whole new light.

Megaman has always been a silent lethal assassin to me. He got in there and did the job without bla bla bla teen angst. His mouth is just a neutral line most of the time, and the first games didn't really have any lines/speech for him.

I'll do some tiles for the little guy tomorrow.

Well I did a minor edit:

I think the problem was his eyes and mouth were so spread apart from each other that it ended up looking like a mask instead of a face. I know this is kind of against what you were going for, but it was really distracting me.

[Zombiechao]

I'm guessing this won't count but it is only a work in progress anyway. I'll post the final product later. (When its done. DUH)

[Ryona]

Ryona: Here's a suggestion for your warpgal....=) is she projecting her warp cone from her vagina?...that reminds me of the hilt suggestion I gave ya on the ninja topic =) I think warp is a much better theme for the debutant robotmaster-woman. I mean call me a perv but I couldnt help but think of squirting when they came up with SplashMa'am O_o

That's a pretty neat style, Conceit. I might make her hands black like what you got there.
As for the warp-projection-thing, yeah, I guess it does look like that. lol ..She's actually just creating the warp attack infront of her in mid-air.
Oh, and about SplashWoman, when I first saw that she's a robot mermaid, my first thought was that Mirre would get a real kick out of her.

Anyway, I had some fun with WarpWoman and animated her!






Good work with everyone else!

Rosse, that's a solid level you designed. Really looks like it would fit in a MegaMan.

There's some interesting styles some people are coming up with, but aren't we supposed to design bosses, enemies, and stages that would actually fit in a classic MegaMan game?
Some of the new stuff I've seen here seems to defeat that purpose.

How does every topic Ryona is in end up on the topic of female sexuality?

Much like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know...

..Oh wait... That's been answered.... http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/367432

[Atnas]

There's some interesting styles some people are coming up with, but aren't we supposed to design bosses, enemies, and stages that would actually fit in a classic MegaMan game?
Some of the new stuff I've seen here seems to defeat that purpose.

I figured the purpose was to show what Capcom could have done with the NES restrictions in MM9, rather than reverting back to MM1. Sure, they had a strong style going, but that doesn't exclude a change in style from being possible. If a new style looks better while maintaining restrictions, I don't see why it wouldn't be a plausible step Capcom could have taken.

[rdcarvallo]

Update of KatanaMan:
Some stage tiles, the boss fighting MegaMan complies with the NES restriction, there is a bigger version of the boss.



Also Here comes a new Robot Master, DinamiteMan



C&C welcome!

Edit: added DinamiteMan.

[Alex Hanson-White]

still a wip:

megaman now uses 9 sprites

[ptoing]

Some very nice stuff so far.

Alex: I like the pixelling going there, good technique, superb details. But atm it's a priority mess. It's very hard to say which tiles are supposed to be be background or foreground.
I think a fiddling with the palettes is in order.



Rough edit with respective greyscale versions underneath. Apart from the colours I also removed the highlights on those background tiles (or what I assumed was background anyway) Actually looking at it, the details, while being nicely done, hurt the readability. Low contrast and fuzzy = not good.

[Alex Hanson-White]

i understand your point, but i don't want it that dark or contrasty, its not the type of atmosphere i was going for regardless of what benefits it has.

[ptoing]

Well, then I would suggest to make something that depicts the atmosphere you were going for but is more readable.

[Alex Hanson-White]

edit: nvm
i dont see why everything should be readible. from my perspective reality is not always readible, so games shouldnt have to always be(even though it might assist the player).

[ptoing]

So games are supposed to depict reality now?

Also, it's not fun to fall into a hole and die because you thought some background stuff was a platform. In games readability is very important. Your way of argumenting actually makes me wonder if you play games at all.

[Alex Hanson-White]

if a game's style is consistant, then the player should be able to adapt to it. i dont think my mockup is that unreadable so as everything becomes incomprehensible. sure things have to make sense, and sometimes unreadability makes sense.

[Dusty]

I do have to concur it is very hard to read, especially when you factor in the fact NES has no background scrolling, which would usually aid in separating even low contrast backgrounds from foregrounds.

[Ben2theEdge]

I think the problem is the *lack* of consistency; there's no clear distinction between positive and negative space. This is one of the fundamental challenges of creating video game art, it can't be skirted around. But it's perfectly fix-able without doing exactly what Ptoing did in his edit.

[Alex Hanson-White]

so if something doesnt implement any positive and negative space, it is inconsistent? i dont understand this statement.
i don't think my mockup lacks positive and negative space.. i find it easy to comprehend where the player can go and collide with. basically the orange and light grey is collidable, and the dark grey isnt.. how hard is that?

[Dusty]

i don't think my mockup lacks positive and negative space.. i find it easy to comprehend where the player can go and collide with.

No offense, but I think there is a bit of bias with that statement. The fact that you made it means you're going to see a lot more than the random viewer is. It might be easy for you to see, but perhaps near impossible for someone else to notice it.

[Atnas]

I myself have a little bit of trouble with seeing whats what, but it would be honestly kind of cool to have Megaman style platforming and have the background kind of disconcerting.