Feature 07 - Savage World (artistic nudity)

[big brother]

Hi everyone,

I recently uploaded a mockup on Pixeljoint, which you can see here: http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/37752.htm (Favorite it and give it the highest rating you can, thanks.)

The community there had a lot of comments and good criticism, so I decided to open up a "WIP" thread here to refine the piece. Hopefully, the end result will be a fully-realized mockup Pixelation can be proud of as well as some artistic growth for me (and perhaps others). But I'm the important factor in the equation; don't mistake this for altruism. Me me me me ME!

History

In conversations with my awesome buddy Andrew, we talked about remaking a Pysgnosis classic, Barbarian. If you don't know this game, you can't be my friend. It helped shape me into the badass I am today. Here are some links, visit them often:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_(Psygnosis)
http://hol.abime.net/35


This was my first take on the remake, specifically the swamp scene in the beginning. As you can see, it showcases green water, bubbles, mud, and bones. Lots of bones. The statue versions of famous reclining nudes in art along the bottom of the screen were supposed to represent lives. With every death, a statue would shatter, starting with Ingres, then Boucher, and finally Titian. You don't want to try what I was apparently smoking. I stole the mossy wood arches from Roger Dean (http://www.imageraptor.com/1/rdean/pages/mh_rdean_Cal2004_08_ArchesMist_SFF.htm) and the sky and mountains from Frazetta (http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=QMan_FF_Legacy_552_Night_Winds.jpg). That last painting is particularly awesome because it also features one barbarian, one breast, and if you kinda squint you can see some vagina. Edgy!

Here's the ladies separated out from the crappy tiles so you can save them to your hard drive without all that other clutter. Oh baby.

Andrew pretty much told me it sucked and to get the hell off his driveway, stalker. I went back to the drawing board because I wanted to not because he told me to. At this time, I felt less enthusiastic about working on a simple remake of Barbarian. I really wanted to make a classic platformer. You know, the games that have the points floating in mid-air, like Commander Keen. If you don't know that game either, you can't be my friend. It helped shape me into the badass I am today. Here's a link for the Philistines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_Keen

After some sweat and tears, I came up with this:

I abandoned the swamp location for now, since there are some tricky issues making water tiles that overlap the sprite's feet. I added a skull wearing a Viking helmet and sporting an armored tail, so it picks up a few points in the awesome department. I replaced the classical art with pin-up girls, since the former belongs in galleries and stuff where people can pay to ogle. The little space under the weapon selector was going to be a power meter so you can charge your weapon, or to show upgrade progress or something. I put ink-spill elements behind the HUD because ink-spills are awesome, just watch a SF4 trailer.

Since I was having trouble tracking down Andrew again (seriously, who moves without telling their closest friend), I asked my artsy, movie industry roommate for feedback. He suggested that I add some black into the tiles so they look like they're on the same plane as the sprite. I also asked one of my coworkers at the time for feedback and he suggested I make the left pinup girl's butt bigger. I told him to get the hell out of my driveway, stalker.

Which leads me to:

The Current Version

I have to admit this iteration pleased me greatly. Surely it would join PixelJoint's Hall of Fame and become my highest rated work yet! However, as comments trickled in, it became clear that few people saw the awesomeness I saw when I looked at the piece. My initial thought was that it must have been a coincidence; PJ members are all a bunch of Pokemon-loving, hippie metalheads.  While it's easy to dismiss the opinion of that demographic, it would take more work on my part for the piece to achieve the Hall of Fame status it deserved.

This lead me to put the piece up for critique here.


HUD
The progressive HUD gathered lots of criticism on PJ. Some said it was unwieldy and didn't match the rest of the mockups. The general agreement seemed to indicate it was too sexy for this world. My philosophy with the HUD was, if it's worth drawing, it's worth drawing big. Few shared this view.

I sketched up two alternatives for a smaller HUD that could float in a corner of the screen.

I'm leaning towards the top one -- it seems more concise and less phallic. I'm planning on rendering it in the same style as the sprites for consistency.

Tiles
There were several complaints about the tiles being too rectangular. That's an issue easily solved -- I can add more edge tiles for an organic flair to the platforms. Adarias brought up the issue of the similarities in color value between the top of the platform and the background. Would a black stroke be a satisfactory solution? It would definitely separate the two, and it would tie the tiles closer to the sprite style.

Sprite
The barbarian is awesome and I am closed-minded. He will stay the way he is. For the giant eagle, I'm planning on adding additional detail so it matches the detail level of the player sprite.

Background
This is the one aspect that didn't receive too much criticism. Adarias mentioned demanding temperature shifts. I feel like the background will stay receded as long as the colors remain unsaturated.

My apologies if I didn't address your PJ crit in this post. All the writing is giving this barbarian a powerful appetite.

[ndchristie]

I think that a black stroke could solve your problem, but that the primary issue is in making it organic.  It's easier than it sounds I think.

[EvilEye]

The women and the skull are great, but I have to agree with the guys at PJ, they just overpower the rest of the scene.

On the very first picture I thought they were mermaids underwater or something. I didn't realize it was a HUD.

I think you need to reduce the HUD size and make it look a little more cutout-ish.

[Dr. Kylstien]

I think the first HUD could have worked if there was no vertical scrolling and the ground never went much lower. The second one simply can't work with the left side being so tall. As awesome as they are, smaller is definitely better, particularly in a platformer. Maybe they could find a new home in a 90's-style FPS?

[Helm]

Hello big brother.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the GUI is pretty but cluttered. I'm not one to suggest that visibility is the biggest and most important priority for art, and I know we're on the same page as on the pretty specific (though probably accidental) aesthetic these old Amiga games carried especially because they broke so many design rules. But. When you have a main sprite and also GUI elements that are the SIZE of the main sprite, humanoid, stretching into the tileart even, there starts a problem I feel. I know you like the girls and they're very well pixelled, but I'd have to say for the real estate they carry, I'd drop them. Along with the big health bar. Prince of Persia (1) is a better game than any Psygnosis game and all the GUI it has are these little triangles at the bottom left corner, you see? You can save the awesome pixelly girls for inside the game! (make a tribe of amazons fight the barbarian dude, perhaps! Me wishes hard!)

That's one thing. I'd also suggest settling on a perspective projection and then making your sprites fit to that. Here's where I'd say Prince of Persia fails where Flashback works. If you have the 60 degree angle going on, I'd space the legs of the main character with a few pixels worth vertically so he seems to be actually on the same plane as the tile art. Would probably make judging the jumping distances easier. Hmm, this would take some experimenting though, not sure it's valid critique. let me try to edit a bit.



hm halfway through this image I realized that when you flip the sprite there's going to be huge angle dissonance. Therefore my suggestion is to Lionheart it. Flatten perspective, made the edges more poignant, likeso:



The Frazetta sorta artwork you've going going is great. I say unify the effect by treating your characters with the same rendering style. This doesn't mean as soft! You can have more contrast but you can have the rendering style intact, like Frazetta indeed does.

Sorry for not roughing more terrain than that but I think it gives a general idea. Again, look at Lionheart by Thalion studios for the Amiga more than you look at Psygnosis stuff, heh.

Interested to see what other users will say.

[TrevoriuS]

Helm, the way you're rendering things now would decrease the effect and atmosphere the swamp would give. I don't know if the game features more scene's like the first, but it'd be wasted if we turn to a direct side view. Perhaps there can be worked something out to avoid issues with flipping, by having the character stand more vertical to the camera and still keep the vertical spacing between limbs. Only adjust a platform sprite version (alike Helm's last image) in the vertical axis might work there, keeping the ability to flip it.

Otherwise... just draw him again in the other directoin, maybe even with the back to the camera like the front is now. This could also be a good design decision, as you're generally moving from left to right. Going the other way would mean 'turning your back on things' - running away from the goal, moving into the wrong direction. A (subtle?) hint there that would suit greatly here if I'm not mistaken.

Also, I love the first version of the GUI the most actually, and I suspect it won't be as odd to look at when it's actually floating across the rest along with the 'camera' and character. I recommend you to test things in motion, before discarding the user interface(s) you already created.

Good luck on this, I like where it's going

[Helm]

Yeah I agree about the swamp... it's a cost/benefit thing. A lot of games have swampy areas that they pull off due to depth tricks and parallax instead of parallel perspectives though. It's certainly doable and big brother is amazing at pixelling so I don't think he'd have a problem there.

I looked at it a long time and I figured out what breaks the original rock tile version most than anything. It came to me in contrast to the swamp pic which works much more... the angle is too steep on the rock tile, and that it doesn't have a lot of z-depth makes me think of a very harsh right-angle laser-cut piece of rock, which really isn't what I'd expect a natural rock formation to look like. If you still want an angle I'd suggest softening it (33.3 degrees might work better) and I'd give it just a bit more depth and irregularity of depth too! Personally I'd go with flatspace like in my edit but I really like those sort of platformers.

Edit: btw here's an interesting take on swampy area on the generally flatspace

http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/alisia-dragoon/screenshots/gameShotId,63008/

platformer for the genesis, Alisia Dragoon:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/alisia-dragoon/screenshots/gameShotId,63010/

Helpful in establishing that you can have a flatspace platformer and still use some parallax depth when you need it!

And here's a rock path that works I think.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/alisia-dragoon/screenshots/gameShotId,63087/

Man, crazy dither effects in this game. It looks like it's made from sand in stationary shots!

[vierbit]

I really enjoy looking at all the little details here. Very smooth overall, giving a nice painted look especially to the sky and the mountains.
Most things are allready mentioned by others, and yeah Helms latest edit shows a good direction.

But I would go with a slightly tilted look and to be honest, your current foreground tiles look very bland compared to the awesome
background. So a slightly more "organic" approach is needed in my oppinion.


And yeah, these huge GUIs remind me always of amiga and c64 games.

[buloght]

I love those tree-stumps in the swamp, absolutely amazing. I really like the girls as well, maybe there is place for them inside an inventory or some other screen (when you aren't running around). This art makes me feel embarressed about the game I am making. It's always inspirational seeing your work.

I was going to suggest something between helm's last edit and the perspective you had, but vierbit nailed what I had in mind better than I could show myself. I do prefer helm's rock colours and his sprite colours too for the main character.

Initially in your first version on pixeljoint, the only really thing that bothered me much more than the rest was the bird that looked out of place.

Amazing stuff, bb.

[Ben2theEdge]

I LOVE the giant obnoxious HUD. But you are being an unfaithful lover with your design.

You've designed this game so that the bottom left corner of the screen is always more dangerous than the bottom right. Because down-left jumps must be made completely blind. You might get away with this if it were, say, a shooter. Or even an adventure game maybe. But I think you need to commit either to making an obnoxiously huge HUD like it is on the left side, or commit to making it compact like on the right side. You can't have your cake and eat it too. (Although in real life you CAN have a cake and eat it, but that's beside the point)

If you're determined to make this asymmetrical HUD work you're going to need to find an unconventional solution for keeping the viewspace clear. Maybe the whole thing somehow reorients itself when you change directions? Just throwing that out there. But personally I'd say either make it actually take up 1/3rd of the screen like the obnoxious billboard it wants to be, or submit to peer pressure and make it compact.

[philipptr]

These mockups contain an epic amount of awesomeness.
Still I think there are some things you could optimize.
Imho, this version looked the best:


and while I see what you mean with the planes, I don't think it is a problem here.
actually I think the blocky platforms in the current version are kind of problematic.
Have you tried a more natural formed way like this:

It's just a very quick edit but I think it looks less out of place and would work just as well with the gameplay.

[big brother]

Oh, lots of great feedback! This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for. I'll try to address the points I can.

Evileye: Did you see the sketches I posted for the floating HUD? What do you think of them?

Helm: I looked at a bunch of Lionheart stuff, and while it has minimal HUD space, it definitely uses depth to the platforms. The character himself is rendered in flat profile, though.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/lionheart/screenshots/gameShotId,231762/
I would consider dropping his left foot down a pixel to give the illusion of depth. I don't think this minor change would look too horrible when flipped. Your take on the sprite rendering style is interesting -- the purple outlines for where the light hits the sprite and the extra shades within the colored regions (while the shadows remain black). It makes the sprite look less flat, but I'm not immediately sure that's the direction I want to go.

As for the HUD, I have no problem axing the cheesecake. Faulkner said, "Kill your darlings", and it's as applicable with pixel art as it is with writing.

Those Alisia Dragoon shots are interesting food for thought, since they use flat profile tiles as well as tiles with varying depth in different parts of the game. I would want to keep mine consistent to make it easier to build levels.

Vierbit: You have a good point about making organic tiles. The trick for me would be building those shapes into a tileset without too many excess tiles. I'll look into it.

Buloght: Do you think if the bird matched the detail level of the character sprite it would still look out of place?

Ben2theEdge: Good call on the asymmetry. If I go with a big HUD, I'd have to mask off a section of the field of play -- a rectangle that is only used for the HUD, and has no transparency (so it wouldn't interfere with playability like it does currently). It would provide a level of awesome, and that's more of my focus. I am concerned with the complaints of style clashing. I'm not interested in making a huge HUD that matches the comic-like style of the sprites. If it's gonna be big, I want it ornate and fiddly like the HUDs I did before. Otherwise, I could make a free-floating HUD like the top one in my sketch and render it in the same style as the sprite.

Philipptr: You're right, adding tiles to make the edges of the platforms less rectangular is an easy fix. As the mockup is right now, I think there are bigger problems I need to address first.

[HughSpectrum]

Your art is amazing, and this game looks beautiful.

My suggestion about the statues is that if they're going to be used as lives indicators, maybe have them be displayed only when you:

- Start the game or a level to show how many lives you currently have.
- Every time you die, which one breaks.
- If you collect an extra life, which then one reforms.

That way they'll still exist as a noticeable part of the game, but only during times where the information is relevant.

[buloght]

Do you think if the bird matched the detail level of the character sprite it would still look out of place?

Yes. I understand the idea is to separate it from the background, but the bird feels very big and clumsy, maybe too "cartoony" almost, when you see the amazing painted sky and marble girls. I would like to see with a more rendered realistic approach, longer stronger legs, smaller head. The wings too don't read well to me. I like this example googled. Edit: or this one is like yours, so better.

[TomF]

Haha, I found your post entertaining, and I really enjoy the first swamp scene. What didn't Andrew like about it?

Something to consider is to have the top surface of the rocks a different colour around the outside of the platform. It's a bit hard to explain so let me use a sloppy example:



It's probably a bit too subtle actually. I used the same technique in the cave tiles I did, which I actually stole from Contra 4 (this goes a step further and changes the colour and texture):



Actually come to think of it, it's been around for ages, including in the last shot Helm posted. Anyway it's up to personal taste really, I just think it looks cool.

[big brother]

I like the border of raised stones approach -- very cool.

Well, it's back to the drawing board... I'll post the next version when I have a WIP indicative of the final.

[EvilEye]

Evileye: Did you see the sketches I posted for the floating HUD? What do you think of them?

I like the skull / spine idea, but not the bubble.

I wouldn't put it at the bottom of the screen I would put it at the top, along with the score, and keep it small. As mentioned by another poster if you have the HUD at the bottom in a platformer it hides important parts of the map from the player.

[big brother]

Remember how I said the sprite style wasn't changing? Well grown-ups lie, too. Just like in that Jim Carrey movie how he can't get through his life without fibbing. I guess they cast him because he's gone through a few divorces in real life and that movie was all about the kid falling through the rift between the parents. The ex-wife's new fiance even tried to mimic the "claw" game that Jim used to play, if only to solidify his character as a dick.



I took Helm's suggestion with adding shading to the character a la Frazetta. I still don't want to lose the heavy blacks. Overall, I think the new sprite meshes better with the background. I also added a new HUD. The green signifies a hit point, the blank space is a wound, and the armored one is a locked health capacity.



This is a sketch of an inventory screen that could be accessed by hitting TAB. I can clutter this screen with some of the ornate statuary.

[tehwexxl0rz]

I love the new shading on the character! And it still retains the comic-booky feel. Well done!

The new HUD I'm not so enthusiastic about.... The compactness is great and the layout is generally good, but the structure of the health bar I don't like so much. The way each hit point is individually framed makes them each look like an item or power-up or something in storage. Also, is there a gameplay reason for locked-out spaces to even exist on screen? Why not simply add to the health bar as needed?

I have a suggestion for the health bar in the same vein as your shattering statues concept: why not have a spine extending from skull (like before) with each vertebra representing a hit point? The vertebra could shatter one by one until all that remains is the skull which would shatter at the next hit, dramatically ending the life of the player. Rather than having locked spaces, the spine could simply grow from its base.

Another quick note: the little zeroes look a bit too much like Ps, I think. If they were actually written by hand, the trail-off point would be at the top, wouldn't it?

[big brother]

I just realized the new HUD looks like male genitalia in profile. Dammit!

[McClaneGames]

I just realized the new HUD looks like male genitalia in profile. Dammit!

That, or a key...

[Jad]

That is SO not a problem. Subconscious phallic associations do not hurt this game at all!

[ptoing]

Looking swish. Some general thing: When having hud elements or stuff with faces in general it is usually better to have them facing toward the action, and not away, unless you want to go for an effect of disagreement or something from their side. So this goes for the statue in the inventory and also the skull in the hud (skull I see is supposed to then go to a spine, so that is not as simple)

[big brother]

Ptoing, that's a good point about facing. DO you think it would work if I mirrored the HUD but kept it in the upper-left corner?

[ptoing]

Worth a try, I guess. But you would need to fiddle around with the scoreplacement and such I guess.

[TrevoriuS]

You could attempt putting the skull mirrorred on the other side of the bar, or have him attached differently, perhaps at the bottom looking more downwards. In your previous UI you hade the spine all wiggly, it would be nice to see that again here in the healthbar, it's a separate element, let it be non uniform!

PS: Perhaps you can think about why you started off with characters facing away, in the very first version also! Ladies look to the sides of the screen instead of the action, and the one with her face directed to the camera most, looks down and avoids our gaze. Who knows subconsciously there is a message for you to express here.

[Accident]

S STANDS FOR SPINE! O:

You can take my sucky approach if you'd like. <: Just experimenting. You're a great pixel artist, but I think you already know that!

[Helm]

Your new sprite looks so much better to me than the old one.
About inventory screen is that dude to be a statue or a representation of the main character? If it's the main character, isn't he a bit too bulky for battle? Seems like a bodybuilder flexing, not like a barbarian!

[hotnikkelz]

Helm, Conan the barbarian is a bigger guy than that so i think that one battle ready

I also think the new sprite looks leagues better.

[big brother]

My idea would be to make it a big picture of the player character with all the veiny detail. Plus it could show the weapon he's currently using. I would kind of want him to be larger-than-life rather than a realistic portrayal of a barbarian.

The problem with the organic spine is that it doesn't communicate health segments as a uniform collection as well as the series of cloned objects does. I could try moving them up and down so there's a little variety, but if the difference in positioning is two much it looks more like 2 interspaced rows of stuff.

[Feron]

This is really great so far.

Just thought i'd make a really crude HUD edit, perhaps you can get some ideas from it.



Good Luck.

[Accident]

Oh, I agree with Feron~

However, I really think the icon part looks odd, and you should also keep the comic style, instead of having the skull all sel-outy like that one.
C: But Feron did have a much better idea than I did.

[ilkke]

Coupla thoughts on the HUD:
Why not split it so that energy i son the left and weapon and score is on the right, thus giving a kind of ornamental symmetry to the HUD overlay?
Also, the metal boxes pretty much disintegrate the whole spine idea, so I would suggest going for staying with the spinal segments but adding some kind of blip that can be on or off. Also, doesn;t it make sense for the health to disappear from tail to head and not vice versa?
I'll try and make a quick sketch to explain and to see if it would work.

Edit:
Here it is


Note my pitiful attempt at making a 'locked' segment. Also the HUD on the right should perhaps have a naked lady making it more pleasing to the eye

[big brother]

Ok, I've processed the feedback, and here's my latest design. It's a WIP, so don't think that I've abandoned the rendered style for something flat.



It's truer to the spine thing of the original and maintains some of the epic without dominating the screen's real estate. When the barbarian encounters a health expansion, it adds a armor piece to the "snake". The six-plate max is shown in this mockup. The plates are initially gold, but when the player takes damage, a plate turns dark and broken. Healing will restore the plate to its gold state. When the final gold plate (on the helmet) is destroyed, the player must restart (either the level or from a designated point within it). I'm throwing out the lives element because lives are annoying and not player-friendly (see the DS Mario platformer for example).

The weapon selector is big so you can see its cooldown status.

I divided the points from the rest of the HUD to keep clarity.

Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns?

[Feron]

Fantastic. 

perhaps make the end of tail a bit more prominent?

[big brother]

Andrew suggested turning the elements into corner pieces. He also said he knew I was hiding in his closet and gave me thirty seconds to scram or he'd shotgun my demon ass back to hell, so God help him. What do you think of something like this (the above is still a rough)?

[ptoing]

Nice. So far this has improved from the one you have on PJ a lot. The symmetry thing at the top works rather well.

Nothing constructive atm from me.

[big brother]

Good to hear. I'll finalize the HUD so far, then start working on the ground tiles again. Bleh, tiles.

[Helm]

Oh man yeah, tiles. The rest is very beautiful though, but this is the hardest part. Make a full tileset btw, not just a corner of space. Think of what tiles you'd need for all the geometry and start working in that mindset.

[ilkke]

Actually turning them into corner pieces was what I wanted to say but I somehow manged not to be clear.
So, I'm all for it

[big brother]

Other tiles I'll have to make are the ones that go directly behind the playing field. Like crumbling pillars that you could walk in front of, for example. I don't mind making the big pieces, but the actual ground tiles themselves have to be relatively small for flexible level design. Tedious...

[Helm]

big brother I have this preemptive suggestion for you: for every tile you make, make a variation of it. For EVERY ONE. Like, if you plan to make a self-tilable top front rock tile, make another. It should tile both to itself, and to the other variation. Trust me, if you do this, it will save you a LOT of trouble with removing 'too oldschool for me' tilegrids and also create imaginative connections elsewhere. After you make a better part of a tileset, the rest just comes together almost by itself this way and you'll think 'oh I am so clever!'.

[big brother]

Yeah, that's a good suggestion. If you play around with the old tiles (in the split assets file), you'll find that they interchangeably tile in a myriad of different ways. I think if I make the smallest size a bit bigger, it'll be a little less tedious.



Playing around with the idea of less Boucher in the cheesecake. Can't decide which direction I prefer.

EDIT: updated the picture, flipped the direction of the recliner.

[Accident]

I'd have the lady facing the skull, in order to... centralize the image.

[ilkke]

Yes, this way she seems to be taking interest in our hero's adventures

[TrevoriuS]

You know when we were discussing the turning your back upon things is embedded through most images before you thought of that fact... Well... the lady shows her back as well now, and only looks up with something that now seems to be a mere half assed interest on what's happening on screen. Funny how it keeps coming back...

Good improvements thought, or should I say awesome to awesomest?

[ptoing]

She is faced towards the action tho, that is what counts.

[TrevoriuS]

Absolutely, and please don't mind me by too much, thinking about weird relationships between things is what keeps me going

[big brother]

I think I'm just avoiding the pain of making tiles by finding things I can get micro-feedback on from these forums... Beginning of a bad habit.

I'll post something more polished soon.

[big brother]

Hey guys,

Now that I finished my "Digger" piece, I finally have more time to work on this mockup.



I may periodically pick at the shading on the HUD, but I'm satisfied to call it "done" in a working sense. As you can see, I'm still procrastinating doing the new ground tiles. I have an idea for them that will hopefully be pretty cool.