Viridia: Expedition (Development Thread)

LOL! I've been in the OHRRPGCE community for longer than these forums have existed.

http://www.castleparadox.com/ohr/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=531


For example, there's also the matter of some of the detailing of the shading reducing contrast, I particularly noticed that on the hawk under the wings. That's a design issue, where if you give everything the same level of detail, it 'flattens out' -- we normally get depth cues from detail level, but that's lost. It's worthwhile to consider where your focus hits (IMO, the inner edge immediately next to the hawk's body) and reduce the detail on planes at different angles from that.

An example of this problem in someone else's work is http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/5481.htm
I mean that's freaking amazing detail (it's in the Hall of Fame!), but it actually detracts majorly from readability. -DE- has been working on that problem since then.

A counter example, the 'Dry Carniyave' is pretty well done in the contrast stakes.
And then the Ariete next to them have the same problem I described for the hawk. It's like: detailed 'lines', but pretty flat shading. If you have more or less the same level of light everywhere, it means you are flattening out 3d shapes ( the male Ariete particularly has this, 'cardboard cutout' affliction. or maybe 'claymation' would be a more accurate simile.)

TL;DR version: You actually could use the exact same colors, I've changed my mind about that, the basic problem is that you seem to be over-considerate of 'detail' and under-considerate of 'depth', when IMO the former is a far more powerful communication tool than the latter. If you shade well, your shading 'hugs' the contours of all the interesting parts and makes it read like nobodies business

If you're interested I can do some example edits.



It's not 'really ugly'.. it's just on some sprites, the emphasis of detail over depth is visually distracting.



Seriously? UK websites and Colombian websites are somehow more credible than Netherlands ones? Fail.

Oion9 seems to be taking the modest approach when he fails to remind Baconlabs that he (NeoTA) is also one of the OHR's silent developers, and that working with the engine's colors and overall display is his specialty. If I'm not mistaken.

Baconlabs, NeoTA, I believe, is also the guy who wrote the OHR's current palette. He's already made his credible point, but I thought you'd be interested to know how plugged into the community he actually is, and how relevant his coloring advice may be when you consider his service to the OHR as we know it today. I think he's the guy we're supposed to pester for alpha transparency, but I may also just be starting rumors.

If you subscribe to the mailing list, you'll find familiarity in the words that appear in his signature link.

So, yeah, I'm staying up way past my bedtime to state obvious things. My service here tonight is done. ;)

Oh, and your sprites look nice in my opinion. I don't have any real criticism to offer, though. I think you've got it covered.

---

Place Obligatory Signature Here

I for one enjoy the less realistic art style Bacon's going with here. The only two I don't like are the Digdive (looks like a marshmallow peep to me) and the Flanerro (its brandishing a rock, right?) They look overly confusing to me.


Not fail. Everyone knows the Nether Lands are evil.

---

—- So anyway, how are you?

Thank you for that recommendation, Pepsi Ranger; you are quite accurate on all but one count - I know nothing of plans for alpha transparency. Maybe you meant the new sprite format plans.. A lot of miscellaneous graphical enhancements got bundled into that whole plan, and we were discussing alpha transparency at one point, but my knowledge is out of date -- TMC's planning to work on various sprite-y and script-y stuff in the very near future, and he's the guy to ask what's what about the sprite setup.
On the ohrrpgce ML, we were recently talking and he posted this list of things he plans to do or begin soon..

Amongst it was "32 bit graphics (too big)". So, probably happening(according to how you interpret '32bit'), but not necessarily Real Soon Now.
There were a few other items relating to graphics, which I'll leave up to TMC to choose whether he wants mentioned or not.

(BTW, if you've been browsing the plans on the wiki, they're pretty out of date. Like, most plans, but especially graphics-related ones.)



The realism or lack of such isn't really the problem. You wanna do flat shapes, do flat shapes. Celshaded, toonish, realistic, whatever, I can dig it. The problem arises when you draw these flat shapes and then shade them incompletely. If you're gonna have shading, it looks weird when it's not at least roughly uniformly applied across the entire sprite.
If you don't have shading, you don't have that problem.

To be perfectly clear, I have no intention to suggest that BL's sprites are somehow below his actual ability level, that the effort put into these is somehow lacking. On the contrary it seems quite clear that BL puts a good deal of effort into them, and that's quite admirable. That's precisely why I'm willing to take the time to formulate this critique - he seems willing and able to improve.

Regarding the Flanerro, if it can be done within the available space, having the pose be more of a 'winding up' one (with the rock held further back and the blob around it arching back to match) could improve the clarity of the design.



That's a funny way of spelling 'I'

Ah I misinterpreted you completely then. I guess I've heard "More realism! Contrast! Dither! Dither EVERYTHING!" so many times I just assume that's the direction most art advice goes. I come and go every few years. I have no idea what you kids are into these days.

And I agree whole-heartily on the Flannel...er..Flagon...Flatulanace...Farfedkuger... Red Slime. The tendril being mid-swing would add a lot of vibrancy to the sprite.

Incidentally, Bacon, I love the idea of having the same enemy in multiple poses. It adds a bit of variety to the battles, while keeping the balance.



You have absolutely no idea how hard it was to NOT make a joke about how odd I spell "your mom."

---

—- So anyway, how are you?

I am pretty sure this is a legitimate user, dude

(Edit) turns out there's a whole nother page just sitting over here

---

Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Phew! Thanks for getting back to me, uh, IonNeoGuy! I hope you can understand where my anxiety was coming from, but I'm happy to see you were legit the whole time, and I'm flattered that your first post in Slime Salad was directed towards my little game.
I'm even more thankful that you followed up with some really substantial criticism for my sprites, I can do a lot more with this new feedback. Hearing others tell me where I've excelled and where I've done poorly really helps me put everything in perspective. I look forward to revising some sprites later today.

I'll be back soon, but I'd like to leave one last tidbit: Slime anatomy is hard! Or at least, it's hard when the slime actually has anatomy, and it's not just a pile of goo or a gelatinous cube. It took me quite a while to draw that slime and decide how I wanted it colored, and I'm still not satisfied with it, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get it "right" since the very idea of giving an amorphous blob a fantastic yet plausible "body" is really nebulous and can be mind-boggling. Nonetheless, fixing my slime's "arm" shouldn't be too difficult of an edit. That'll probably be my first revision of the day.

I admit I also jumped to the conclusion that 0ion9's first post was a spam until I saw the nohrio link in the signature.

That "Posts: 1" is a dreadfully powerful spam-flag in the minds of forum users :)

Haha. Neo has been the author of numerous OHR utilities and helped James to document engine internals since at least 1999.



You're thinking of Jay Tennant; he wrote the new graphics backend API and software rasterisation/blitting functions to allow that. But I'm the one you should be pestering about it (other parts of the engine need updating to make use of it). I've decided to put it off to finish a backlog of smaller features first.

----

I was actually surprised to see the Dry Carniyave brought up as an example of good contrast, because I think that the head and right wing as well as well the tail and left leg of the first one blend together quite a lot. But to be honest I have no idea how to improve it, and wouldn't change it.

They've definitely had a lot of effort put into them and look good as a result, but in places the art style is inconsistent, such as on the male Ariete, as already said.

I suggest you play around with Blender's 'Metaballs' function, it's really ideal for slimy or other organic modelling, so you can make a reliable reference for your drawing. I just knocked this together in 15m, with the help of http://artofjoe.blogspot.com.au/2007/10/digital-sculpting-tutorial.html :

http://i.imgur.com/5ye0Z.jpg

which while obviously incomplete, hopefully demonstrates how useful Blender can be for this sort of thing.

BTW, I'd change my username to a less spammer-suggestive one (I favor some variant of 'tilkau' these days.. tilkau, kitlau, kiltau, laurtik, taurlik. [/lojban geekery]) but the facility isn't provided.

Haha, I misread that as "Blender's 'Meatballs' function" and thought "modelling flesh with metaballs? Looks like plain old metaballs to me, a bit silly to call it 'meatballs'".

More seriously, metaballs are just the simplest examples of distance field raymarching, have a look at some spectacular work by iq (site chock full of tutorials). Does Blender have any tools for more advanced distance field rendering?

Only other related thing I know of is fluid simulation (and oddly, there's a distinct 'ocean simulator' modifier as well).
It's overkill for making a simple working model.

We have a Kamina-slime emote? That's incongruous.

Sorry I up and disappeared so abruptly - went on a brief vacation and came back to find the internet broken as all get-out. I forgot to bring my .rpg file with me, too, so I lost all opportunities to adjust the game like I wanted to. I've been working non-stop over the past two days trying to get some battles up and running. I've got all the basic data laid out and spent quite a while cleaning up some garbage in the game file from many years ago. I've got enough to work with, and seeing as how the HotOHR deadline is less than two months away holy smokes I'm content to leave it as such so that I can work on other things. As much as I'd like to work with the golden criticisms Ion has given me on my sprites, there simply isn't enough time for that and I'm going to have to come back to it in December.

That being said, I'm going to have to start borrowing a lot of graphics. Right now I've taken a number of attack sprites from Vikings of Midgard and plan to use them all the way to the deadline, but even Vikings doesn't have everything that I'm looking for to make my attacks stand out.
I'd like to re-open a request for help with sprites. I'm lacking the following sprites to finish detailing all my game's attacks:
-A spinning femur projectile
-A big burst of sand
-A watery splash
-A net projectile
-Something indicating that someone has contracted Stun status
-Noise emission - similar to the "growl" and "screech" attacks from Pokemon
-Noise wave
-Thin, sharp Feather Flechettes
-A wave of wind
-A tight stream of water or lava (depending on the palette), as if spat from the mouth of a large monster

None of these sprites need to be fully original - they can be from a game you've already completed or any open domain freeware game. Just make sure it's clear who I'm going to be crediting for the sprites. They all need to be 50x50 per frame and saved as a .bmp or .png. Please send them to me either in a Slime Salad Private Message or via email to mboyd[dot]yes[at]gmail[dot]com

I'd like to sound more encouraging than desperate, but I must confess that the HotOHR isn't the only deadline breathing down my neck right now and I'm very afraid I'm not going to make it in time. What's more, this year might be the last I'll get to spend with Viridia before going off to videogame school and switching to work on completely different possibly-not-RPG projects. If you guys want to see this concept get lifted off the ground so that I can do more with it in the future, I think I'm going to need your help. Could I get a volunteer or two?

Please?

Noise emission sounds fun to do.
I'll try to get you a sound for that, but I'm too busy for much else though. But hey, one thing is better than no thing.

---

dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Made: http://www.filedropper.com/noiseemission

Better download it asap, they only host files for about a day or two for free members, I forget the precise amount of time.

Edit: I may help with something else later if I get done with some stuff quick enough.

Further edit: I noticed I didn't really specify where the sound originated, I made it myself, like, two seconds after the previous post. I can make different sounds if you like.

Nonsensical even further yet not unrelated edit: A third arm (no hand required, just arm minimum) would be useful for making sound effects, especially when it requires two hands to make a sound.

---

dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x