nesdev.org

When I work with 16-color sprites instead of 4-color sprites, I work just like traditional art; block the shape in first, put base colors in, then use lighting and shadows to sculpt the 3D form in. For 4-color sprites, I tend to just cheat and not worry too much about shading, unless I'm drawing something really large, but care needs to be taken that certain regions of the same color don't overlap or touch in a way that makes something look ambiguous.

So when you change your restrictions, some things get relaxed, but other things require more focus as a result. Therefore, I see NES and SNES art as equals in difficulty.

Drag wrote:I see NES and SNES art as equals in difficulty.

I don't know, when I look at screenshots of random games, I see so much bad SNES art! Sure, the NES had its share of bad art too, but to me it seems this usually happened when people who weren't used to doing art decided to give it a shot for whatever reason (low budget, small team, whatever), but when actual artists were involved, the worst that would happen on the NES is that the graphics would end up looking too simple, but not necessarily bad. On the SNES however, it looks to me like actual artists often ended up making bad use of gradients, contrast, and the console's resources in general. It might be just an impression, but I honestly feel that it's easier to screw up when you have more things (colors, resolution, animation frames) to put in place.

I think it's more of a case that, if your art is bad, it'll be more obvious on the SNES than it is on the NES. The technique is different because you need to focus on different things, but I don't think it's any harder or easier to get something to look good on either console.

Heres the updated title screen with the crossbones

The slow fade bothered me a tiny little bit, but other than that, awesome title screen!

Pint of pixels anyone?

tokumaru wrote:The slow fade bothered me a tiny little bit, but other than that, awesome title screen!

Yeah I'll have to speed it up a bit

tokumaru wrote:

Drag wrote:I see NES and SNES art as equals in difficulty.

I don't know, when I look at screenshots of random games, I see so much bad SNES art! Sure, the NES had its share of bad art too, but to me it seems this usually happened when people who weren't used to doing art decided to give it a shot for whatever reason (low budget, small team, whatever), but when actual artists were involved, the worst that would happen on the NES is that the graphics would end up looking too simple, but not necessarily bad. On the SNES however, it looks to me like actual artists often ended up making bad use of gradients, contrast, and the console's resources in general. It might be just an impression, but I honestly feel that it's easier to screw up when you have more things (colors, resolution, animation frames) to put in place.

l never liked it when they tried to cram (no pun intended) in too many shades of a color into a small area, just because they could. It always looked nice when they tried to mimic the 4 shade gradient scheme of the NES, but with more varity of hues.

psycopathicteen wrote:l never liked it when they tried to cram (no pun intended) in too many shades of a color into a small area, just because they could. It always looked nice when they tried to mimic the 4 shade gradient scheme of the NES, but with more varity of hues.

I personally like a 6/5/4 ratio on a lot of things. I don't every use more than 5 totally different colors, and I often don't even use more than 3.

I see the pirate has been made a little smaller. I was also going to mention that I -just- noticed that the Pirate used to have a pink nose. I'm not sure how well the pink would stand out from his skin if this were an NES game, so seeing how it blended it well, I figured it would be rather wasteful to waste a single tile from the scanline limit when you couldn't really see it. Then again, I don't know how to use Blargg's NTSC filter, so I can't judge.

Also, Tepples' comment about "pixel piracy" gave me an idea. It's not the primary focus of the game, but you can find weapon blueprints across the game world, and you take these to a weapon making shop to make the weapon. It will essentially boil down to a game of picross, which will be a blown up version of the weapon's sprite. Sound cool, huh? Just don't steal my money making idea from me, okay?

OneCrudeDude wrote:Also, Tepples' comment about "pixel piracy" gave me an idea. It's not the primary focus of the game, but you can find weapon blueprints across the game world, and you take these to a weapon making shop to make the weapon. It will essentially boil down to a game of picross, which will be a blown up version of the weapon's sprite. Sound cool, huh?

Good job of fleshing out the suggestion.

Just don't steal my money making idea from me, okay?

Pixel pirate pirate?

So I'm thinking to have the interiors a little different to the exteriors, 4 options as follows:

• [li]Side view (metroidvania)[/li]
  [li]Oblique 45 (rivercity rampage)[/li]
  [li]Oblique 90 (final fantasy)[/li]
  [li]Isometric (solstice)[/li]

Any opinions? I'm not really drawn to isometric...

Isometric and oblique 45 look really cool, but are much harder to pull off on the NES, because of all the overlaps. If you end up deciding on one of these, I guess oblique 45 is more fitting.

The other 2 look more like your typical NES game. A side view is very limited in terms of interaction with the environment, so oblique 90 would probably be the next best choice IMO.

Well it turned out Oblique looked like too much work in the long run. So I'm going with "top down" (Oblique90)

Here's a little mockup of the ground floor of Alias Arms.

Do you plan on changing the sprites for the characters when they are indoors, because I am getting the impression that they are lying down on the ground.