With shaded troops... Looks better?

Ah thanks for the feedback man.  Did I mention I've been loving some of your games Hayden's shown me lately, especially your 1D creep entry into the CB compo (name escapes me)?

I originally planned it to be very flat and minimal, but as I work on it it's becoming more Apple-like with subtle gradients...  Still not sure on the overall shading style. I think the mechs are working quite well so I might go back and adjust the troops to have a bit more shadow.  I just put those particle smears in at the last minute and I agree the pixellated jet-pack trails are more appealing, so I think I'll go back and make the lasers more consistent with that.

The hills are very much placeholder atm.  Think the colours are ok though.  I still wonder which tree I prefer, the regular more shaded medium one, or the one to the top left of the yellow mech which is more flat but contrasty.  Trops also need shadows on the ground...

Still got a long way to go, but here's a new version... 

Wow there's been some great pixel art in here of late.  Great work gentlemen.

I'd say it was for mature audiences - although the graphics aren't that gory, the sounds can be pretty frightening I'm told! 

I personally hate using a palette. Having to set a colour on the palette before being able to use it just makes colour experimentation awkward. I far prefer just using the image itself as my palette and picking colours off it.

Sorry I should have added the qualifier:  these suggestions were for my personal dream package.  Obviously that varies hugely from person to person, and I wouldn't expect you to change your basic design for Tixel!  Just thought it might be helpful to add so you can see what different users are after.

I've been thinking about making a simple sprite ed myself, but palette-based, as anything otherwise I can do quicker in PS... 
That's why I wouldn't want layers, alpha channels etc.  I guess what Im after is a retro-spriter, rather than a full paint package.  Pixen, Gimp and PS don't get it right for me.  Haven't tried GG though, it sound like it might be what I'm after!

I think if anything it might be good to focus Tixel (sounds like something by Mr Fish) on palette-based spriting to begin with, as this is hard enough to get right.  Full 24 bit + alpha makes it into a PS competer, and there's no real way to compete there.  The palette-pool could still be 24 bit, but the one you work with shouldn't be imho.

Also, I'm into Annabelle's suggestion about Z & X for zoom.

Been thinking, and there's a couple of features I really miss from Dpaint:



- The way it was full-screen.  I'd really prefer one written to be strictly full-screen so you could easily hit the buttons on the right (especially as a Mac user...  Don't think it'll happen though, haha.  I'd probably do it in something like BlitzMax.  Keep it simple, snappy and fast.  Windowed mode would still be a one-surface interface.  I find customisation makes things more cluttered generally.

- The onscreen palette.  This was a nice size and easily selectable with a mouse. One quite radical idea here I have comes from sprite package I once wrote, and I added an extra palette by holding space that was full-screen.  The more custom colours you had, the more would appear onscreen, starting with just two colours, then four, eight etc, so the actual hit-boxes for the colours were huge!  Releasing the space bar switched right back to the picture.  This made palette selecting lightning fast and I'm surprised no-one else did it.  I use the same kind of system in my tile editor, just without the hold-releaase so I can tweak tile settings.  I digress..

- The grid was spot on.  It never got in the way.  It was easily turn-off-and-on-able,

- The set of tools.  I loved the way clicking on on the top-left did un-filled, and bottom-right did filled. All useful and clear (except maybe the spraycan and 'unjoined' line haha.)

- I also dig how the selected colour and background colour are laid out, really clear to see which is which, unlike PS.

- The stencils.  You could lock certain colours from the palette.  This was really handy!

My dream feature list? A direct port of Deluxe Paint IV on the Amiga!  Then I'd love you guys even more than I do already....

Seriously though, it would be good to take a look at the ex-industry standard when designing some sprite-soft.  The animation, gradient and morph features were neat, as was colour cycling. But it was the general ease of use and simplicity of interface that made it the pixel king!

Hey more news about the project on the blog.  Link below.  Also come and say hi on the forums if you like!  Not that I want to poach anyone away from my beloved TIGs! 

what if i made a game about dreaming
with time limits
you've got to do things in the dream before time runs out
otherwise you begin to wake up
however, if you almost, almost run out the time without quite doing it
you become a lucid dreamer and get god-like powers
if you fall behind too much you wake up
$20million budget
produced by EA Sports

Eh, trouble being in dreams you don't actually know when it's going to end (at least I don't).  There are likely subtle clues (which would be really cool in the game), but anything blatant goes against the feeling of dreaming.

You should try and flush that idea out though and actually make an indie game from it, there aren't nearly enough games that explore "dream logic" (Psychosomnium being one I guess).

I'm working on one right now that includes a number of these elements.  It's all played out in dreams. I wrote a little piece about it on my blog, below.  It kind of is a 'dream project' in the sense that it's the one game I've wanted to make above all over the last six years or so.

Hey there, been messing about with a theme for my new game.  This is very much a w.i.p with placeholder samples, and it's more of an driving version of what i see the final 'main' theme being - in other words the same notes but more whistful and dreamy. This version I could see being used towards the end of the game on the other hand.

www.superflatgames.com/Amnesia_2.mp3

I had total faith in you...  Well done man!

[Jet Set Willy]

I found this saved on my computer, I never got round to posting it cos I wanted to add loads more:

Well I thought I'd start a new thread for people to share their seminal moments in gaming, particularly the ones which lead some of us to become programmers / artists.

For me it began with the ZX Spectrum.  With the machine there were a couple of crappy included games, like Horace Goes Skiing.  Manic Miner, Sabre Wulf + Attic Attack got me excited, but it was:



Jet Set Willy

That really made me into a gamer.  I didn't have the colour code copy protection sheet so my brother and I had to keep re-loading the game and enter random colours hundreds of times just to play it.  When we finally got it working, I couldn't sleep it was so good.  I think I cried when it crashed (I was about 8 or 9!)

Then there came:



Lords of Midnight

This game introduced me to the power of the computer as a story-telling device.  I played it with my dad, until we eventually defeated the evil Doomdark.  I really felt like I was in Lord of the Rings.

So, inspired by this I got hold of a copy of a book called something like 'Adventure Game Programming' and learned to make IF games in Spectrum BASIC.

Fast forward a few years and we got our first Commodore Amiga.  There were so many great gaming moments on this - but one that stands out is the first time I witnessed the graphics and music of:



Shadow of The Beast

It blew my mind!  Ok there wasn't much gameplay, but it was strangely compelling... You just had to see all the sprites and hear all the music.

I also wanna talk about the first time I played Kung Fu Master, Final Fight and Street Fighter II...  Very important games on the arcade front.  My jaw hit the floor like it never has since the first time I saw SFII.

Hmm I think it's the latter, sadly...  I developed on OSX.4, so it should run fine!  Have you tried re-downloading, might just be a corrupt download?

Well done everyone for getting on on PC Gamer...  That's great news, and can only be good for TIGS!

[Cave Story]

Cave Story - Before Cave Story, I thought that free games had to be things like Text Twist and Gem Drop. Cave Story showed me and new and wonderful side of gaming and inspired me to start making my own games. It was also the first game to touch me emotionally (+ MAJOR SPOILER).

Oh, dear, it's been spoilt for me!  I'm sure you figured everyone arleady knew, but I've been waiting years to play it on console (since they announced defunct DS port), deliberately not playing the home version...  Perhaps you could put the font really small like some peeps do around here?

FullSpec -
Anyway, it's funny I started to do a thread on exactly the same topic, little bro - in fact I still have a folder with screenies of my fave game moments.  SHII is up there for me too.  Many others though, will post when I have a minute!

I appreciate that it's not that hard, but I made the mistake of starting the project without it.  I'd have to re-write a lot of it, as it was made in a hurry for the compo and very hacky.  Not gonna happen unfortunately.  Sorry!

Thanks for your kind comments my friends.

AClarkFS, sorry about the hyper-speed mode.  Did you find some places where it was ok, like cutscenes for example?  Just trying to figure out what kind of screen flip is needed.  I tried deliberately disabling vsync on my card, and saw the effect everyone's described.  For me it only happened in-gameplay, not in cutscenes.

With most modern cards, you can enable ysync quite easily: for my Nvidia, for example, you go to the Nvidia Control Panel, find the settings for individual games, add Soundless Mountain exe to the list, then change the vsync setting from 'Default' to 'Force On'.  This means it will only happen for this game.  ATI (AMD) cards have a similar program, as far as I remember from my previous Mac.

Kaffee, I could put a Win exe up on my website with window mode by default.  I did want it to be fullscreen only, but I appreciate Windows often stretches on widescreen - it doesn't on my Mac, which I developed on. When I have a minute, I'll do it.

Cheers!

You have my vote, Dock-kun!

Hi everyone,

I've started a development blog over at: http://www.superflatgames.com/wordpress. 

There's also forums up for testing: http://www.superflatgames.com/phpbb3.

Come and show my site some loving!

Cheers.