Gather 'Round and Hear My Sad Tale (+Graphics)

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Calehay
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Gather 'Round and Hear My Sad Tale (+Graphics)

Post by Calehay »

I can't delude myself any longer.

My external hard drive is dead.

Kaput.

Done for.

...And it has all of my new OHR work on it. :gonk:

I'll spare you all the details, but if you ever reformat your computers, make sure you back up in multiple places.

So now, I'm the idiot that keeps plugging in a USB Drive hoping it will magically stop clicking.

Since I posted screenshots on here, I don't have to start all the way from ground zero, as I can just rip my own tiles. But I did lose quite a bit of updates on them from here, an entire world map set that no one has seen but me, and some walkabouts that no one ever saw that I say were the best I ever made. *sigh* :(

But, why cry over spoiled milk? So I've started anew.

I started off trying to recreate the world map set, but so far it looks like junk. Basically, I got inspired to do something like Lufia II and 7th Saga. I'm not sure if it would have been in the game, but I just wanted to try and make something like them.

Image

The water doesn't tile well, and it's not the way I did it before, but I couldn't get it too look right. I still feel the colors for the grass are off, and the sand tile really doesn't look right.

I also did some walkabouts. I'm not sure if I'm going to use any of them.

Image

Image <--- This one is particularly ugly.

Image Image Image Image

EDIT:

It also seems to occur to me that ever since I started lurking Pixelation that I've been trying to expect much more out of myself than I'm probably capable of. I don't know if it's helping me or hurting me at this point, but I'm starting to feel that I'm never going to advance with the rest of this game unless I just start accepting my limitations and moving on. (There's also the combo battle system I have to figure out, but I'm sure I'll post that conundrum on these forums later.)
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Twinconclusive
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Post by Twinconclusive »

I sympathize for your lost work.

The tile and color choice looks quite nice.
I think they'll work just fine.

Your sprite, however, has an awkward way of exposing belly.
No chest should shine out like that.
The shadow of the vest should be on the chest, so it might look better if you use a darker skin-tone on that area.
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Bob the Hamster
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Re: Gather 'Round and Hear My Sad Tale (+Graphics)

Post by Bob the Hamster »

That is some good pixelwork. I especially like the maptiles.
Calehay wrote:I'll spare you all the details, but if you ever reformat your computers, make sure you back up in multiple places.
Amen to that! I keep an average of 10 backups at a time, spread over three different cities in two different states :)
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Meatballsub
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Post by Meatballsub »

I think what you have so far is looking great man. Sorry that you lost some of your work though, as that does indeed suck.

I completely understand where you are coming from on accepting limitations. That has slowed me down the almost 10 years I have been with this community. Back in the day when me and Timmy were working on our first game, we revamped the graphics more times than I can even count, and it eventually led us to trashing the project. It is good to go back and adjust and fix things graphic-wise, but I guess everything should have its limit at some point.
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Post by Newbie Newtype »

Right now I keep a backup on Geocities, though I should find an alternative webserver to store the game on (because I do not trust my own storage media for this type of backup).

The maptiles are amazing. I want skills like that.
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

I only backup my stuff like once a month, ha!

But yeah, I do feel bad for you. My friend who got me into the ohr, lost EVERY completed project he ever started on. And it really sucked, cause they were all great, even though they all didn't have a single line of plotscripting.

And I lost my OHR-House show right when I was soooo close to having Week 2 done of it. That's one major reason why it got cancelled.

Now I only backup HQ3, and thats only when I've done something huge on it, heh.
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msw188
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Post by msw188 »

One thing that helps my water tiles is making the coastlines animate as well. I mean the white 'coastal outline'. Have it composed of some shades of white and light blue, and animate it a bit. I like the effect I got out of this in Tales I, and it will be done again in Tales II.
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

Yeah I agree. And I'd slow the water speed down (if that's the exact speed) and then the coastline stuff. Don't go overboard with animating it either, keep it nice and simple to give off a subtle but detailed effect.

Little things like that are what people appreciate the most, the fact that the designer spent the time to go back and perfect something that already looked great.

I've never been overly great at worldmap tiles, I generally get lucky with em. But the variations of color for the little patches looked great, and it's inspired me to try that out.
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Only One In All
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Post by Only One In All »

The maptiles are good, though the water kinda looks like waterfall 'stairs', so to speak. As far as backups go, when I'm really working hard on my game, I'll have backups in alternate folders, three different USB flash drives, and my Gmail account. I have yet to experience a devastating loss as you have, but I want to keep it that way.
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Re: Gather 'Round and Hear My Sad Tale (+Graphics)

Post by Mogri »

Calehay wrote:(There's also the combo battle system I have to figure out, but I'm sure I'll post that conundrum on these forums later.)
Ooh ooh ooh! I want to hear about your "combo battle system."
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Valigarmander
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Post by Valigarmander »

That's a damn shame, and I sympathize with you. Lord knows I've had that happen before.

I hope you aren't taking a hammer to the thing like I did.
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Post by Fieron »

i think the map looks good
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Post by sorlok_reaves »

msw188 wrote:One thing that helps my water tiles is making the coastlines animate as well. I mean the white 'coastal outline'. Have it composed of some shades of white and light blue, and animate it a bit. I like the effect I got out of this in Tales I, and it will be done again in Tales II.
I agree; without animating the coastline, it just looks like the water's another layer below the map.
(-> SR
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