Video Game Trader is the only store I know of that sells old games, but does not sell them at a low price.
Generally with old games, the rarer they are to find, the more their worth.
And Game Trader really overprices is their games because it's the only way to stay in business I guess.

Also, I'd like to add that I have never once paid full price for any retail game - I usually wait for it to go down in value and ends up in the $5-$20 bin.

Of course, cool kids remember a time long ago, when Super Joe interviewed Phil Fish:

http://superfundungeonrun.com/pigscene/?p=269

This is one of the greatest interviews I have ever read.
Super Joe is quite the investigative journalist.

Am I the only one who thinks the neck is a little too thin?
Great edit though, you really softened the face and gave the hair volume.

Jslattum@dA aka Justin Slattum







Dumaker@ dA aka Moisés Martín




DH666@ dA aka Dan Harding

[Updates]

Oh hey, didn't notice your post Nate.
The tracks are decent, but not sure if some of the noises seem suitable in-game.
I really am digging the large ominous windy sound you have, certainly gives the tracks a cold feeling.
If you think you can chop something down to 2-3 minutes, send me a track or two and I'm sure I'll find a place for it.

Updates

• Working on implementing an inventory system of some kind
• Coming up with item ideas that will be useful in particular areas or used against particular enemies
• Working on more boss animations

Also reading over this got me questioning my game's map

Games Without Maps

I have a notoriously poor sense of direction inside buildings, so maybe it’s just me. Still, in the video game world where all the walls and floors use the same textures, places look too much alike. In the real world, even the most rigid cubicle-hell office building has something to distinguish one area from another – a stain on the carpet, a cartoon posted outside someone’s cube. I played Doom and had a great time. I fired up the Quake demo, found out there was no map, and dumped it. I want a map. There’s no reason for withholding a map from me unless it’s just to slow me down, and that’s a poor substitute for providing real gameplay. Bad game designer! No Twinkie!

This is my map, well technically it's the chapter listing, each circle will have 10 levels or more.
So my question to the forum is, should I create a more in-depth map or is this fine to keep track of where you are?


In the meantime here is more inspiration art I have laying around.
(I did not draw these)

Doodles

I totally had forgotten about KAG I pre-ordered it.
I should go play some more. :B

So your advice is just to play them and make them? No advice on how to critically deconstruct them?

Playing them is probably the greatest form of critically deconstructing them.
Since learning how games and AI is constructed, I can't help but play a game and understand all the design mechanics of the game.
I understand how things are moving around the level and I get how everything in general works.
(though reading the previous posts I understand that this convo was about board games not video games)

To be honest the only way I can really understand how a game works is to see it with my eyes, either via video play through or actually playing through a game myself.

If you are looking for some good design links, this has been the best collection of links I've found, and I got this from the GameDev sub-reddit.

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html
Plenty of info on these subjects to name a few.

• Shortest Paths
• Artificial Intelligence
• Game Design
• Tile Based Games
• Hexagonal Grids
• Object Oriented Programming
• Adventure Games
• Scripting Languages
• Economics

Walls count as a sketchbook right?

New here so thought I'd start by posting here. Was bored so decided to draw some sprites from a show I've been watching recently. Probably only familiar to UK forum goers as they are based on the UK TV series, Sherlock.

Reminds me of Carnivac's Doctor Who sprites.

Looking good, though I think some more solid colour blocking could make the forms of the arms pop out more.
Especially for the guy with his arms crossed.

Lol Sonic does have a weird skull shape now that I think about how his eye(s) work.

My father just shaved off his bushy playoff beard, so I turned it into a stop motion animation.
Cause that's what sons are for.

I vote for all of the above.
Looking sexy as always im9.

Why thank you Rhubarb, I'm trying my damnedest to make it all look pretty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g6Wrsl3Ggw
Working on the void boss known as "The Horror"


(this animation still needs to be finished)

Doesn't quite work how I want it to, the bullets are also supposed to start homing in on the player.
And then the player is supposed to boomerang back into the void, still not sure how that will even work...
Cant seem to get any screen capture software to run well enough cause my computer has like no virtual memory D:

Here is some Guns N' Roses cause they support being lost in the Garden of Eden.

I'd say your best option is getting your hands on a copy of Game Maker or Multimedia Fusion 2 MMF2. (pirate them if you must)
Follow some tutorials, try experimenting, find examples of things you want to make (there are lots  of open source examples out there for game maker)
Test the variables, break the examples, basically open source hacking away at code can help you understand how it all works.
This may not be the best way to go about it, so usually the application also has a helpful Help section and Manual so start reading those right away.

Your 12 you have lots of time to learn.
I started making my first game 3 years ago, I'm still making it.
I had to learn how to program, but I was already an established artist so I had a one up on some programmers since I can do most all my own art.

I spent 4 years looking for people to help me make games, and I was offering pre-made graphics! And all those projects died, working with people online is very difficult half the time people just dissappear and with a 12 year old who may or may not know what he's doing, I'm not sure everyone would stick around for the long haul.

Basically, instead of finding people to make you a semi-working prototype, why don't you just make your own?
And forget about starting a kickstarter I highly doubt people will throw money at a project being organized by a 12 year old with 0 experience in game development.

Just try your best to make a prototype of what you want, make some art even if you think it's bad (you are always your own worst critic)
At least if you had a working prototype and an idea at least slightly fabricated, you'd be more likely to find someone willing to help or add art to an existing prototype before you ever find an artist willing to put time into something that doesn't even exist yet.

Time goes by quickly when your working on something man, by the time your 16 you'll probably have a better knowledge about the undertaking you are trying to take.
We were all 12 at some point, but not all of us had the direction or resources that you have today.
Just get the ball rolling, hope this helps.

[Steb Sly]

Haha well thanks but those enemie designs are not mine.
Just a collection of masked creatures I've found on dA, if I choose to use any of them I will be sure to get permission from the original artist like I have for the creatures I am using that are not of my original design.

First on the agenda, some awesome news! (this is not an april fools joke)
I met Steve Sim aka Steb Sly at the Global Game Jam in January.
He has offered to help me out with creating some original sound effects for the creatures and bosses in my game.
Steve was the Lead sound designer for Bioware he worked on Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Jade Empire and Star Wars : Knights of the Old Republic to name a few.
So lets make a warm welcome for my new mentor in sound design!  
He's moving to Nova Scotia... D: Frack.


Saw this in the game "Rage"
Thought it would make for a good Hand of God.

Here are a few notes I've jotted down from a few books I've been reading.
"The Tree of Life: Image for the Cosmos - Roger Cook" & "Creation Myths: Man's introduction to the World - David Maclagan"

- Hidden Seeds
- Root of all Roots
- Spheres of God
- Seven eyes of The Lord : Seven Heavenly Bodies
- Hand of God
- Word of God
- Light of God
- Center of the World consists of two Olive Trees "Not of the East nor of the West"
- The oil from these trees burns even if no fire touched it
- Burning Bush
- The Tree of Life : Cosmic Tree grew from the earth to the heavens, it is the fulcrum of all things.
- The four rivers

A dark door at the base of a tree. The door leads to the depths of the unconscious and signifies the need to renew a disturbed and troubled consciousness by making a return to the depths of psychic life.

I'd like to make the suggestion to not over AA your objects.
When you over-use AA it creates a strange blur around your work.



For general use you don't want to usually AA a 45° line.
Unless of course you AA your line giving the impression that it's thicker than usual (eg. 7 colour example above), in which case you'll have to AA the 45° to give it thickness. Sometimes a 45° line can also look too clean against some AA'd lines.


This is from here.

On the left, you see what many people new to the concept try to do: adding a single light shade to every pixel step. Not only is this wrong, but it looks like crap. In the center is a right, but not particularly good way of doing it: adding a shade only where it's needed. The curve is smoother, but the apparent pixel-steps are not eliminated. The final one is correct: I used two shades and it creates the illusion of a smooth curve. Notice that some steps have no AA at all, and some portions have multiple pixels of the same shade together. Single isolated pixels are not always the best way to go with AA, and I have found that often lines or groups of the same shade can complete the effect better. Just keep in mind what you're trying to acheive (and if you've forgotten what that is already, slap yourself* and go up to "Squaring the circle...", and promise you'll pay better attention next time.)

I notice that your reference image from Ilkke uses a lot of AA, but you should notice that he uses larger lines of AA to make the lines smoother.
Perhaps you should take a closer look at Ilkke's work to see how he uses his AA efficiently.

To contribute to this topic, even though I haven't finished a lot of the games I've started to make. I'm sure I have a bit of insight since I have not read a single book on game design yet here I am designing games as an artist.

However I did opt out of taking Game Design courses at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) and instead decided to undertake a Bachelor of Fuck All at Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD).

As an artist I have no formal art training up until recently I was a fully self-trained artist, animator and programmer.
I'm attending an art college, so I can't say too much about game design schools.
But the local technology institution offers Game Design courses but they are all very laughable.
My art college has Character Design and Storyboarding, but that's about as far into game design as they get and that's only in Visual Communications. Which basically tries to set people up to work on AAA games and basically become dime a dozen concept artists. Which is not something I want to become, but the knowledge of those courses is probably well worth the money.
I'm still trying to introduce game creation into my school through the Media Arts and Digital Technologies.

I have to agree with baconman that being too formulaic could be a bad thing unless your working on like a tactics RPG, or some sort of statistics based game with experience bell curves and all that good stuff.
Action based games like platformers are all strongly based on level design and flow of movement for the player.
Each type of game you make has an entirely different design aspect to it.

I myself as a game designer try to create unexpected results.
I like random chances in most my design, while that may not be the best way to go about doing things it's the way I like to design games.
I feel as though chance creates strong emergence in video games, things happen to the player that you as a designer couldn't really foresee even though you created it all and made it possible.

Though I am probably one of the worst people to give advice in game design.
I feel like all the game design books in the world wont help you too much in making a fun game.
Either your game will be fun or it isn't.
Design theory may sound like a good study, but I find design comes from repetitive practice, though studying actual games is much better than studying a book.
Hands on experience is much better then theoretical experience.

Though to answer your question as to what sort of courses I would like to take as a game designer.
I'd say a useful study would be the study of puzzles and enigmas.

and the Infjernal:



Yes, I know some people are going to disapprove of the second one because it's not "true" pixel art because I used a glow on him... but man, it looks nice against the game's dark background tiles! Still, it 95% qualifies as pixel art, right?

I second the approval of this enemy animation.
As much as it yearns me to accept the glow effect, it does work well in this case.


Time for Detective Bones to do some pixel investigation and stick his nose where it doesn't belong...

Hmm... A lot of your work reminds me of early work from Tuna Unleashed aka Red

 
Similar stances, and those same damn feet that I hate so much with a burning passion.

I'm pretty sure you're not the same person since Red reacted to your shark sprite.

I made a shark with pants today.
Manly pants.

lol wtf

Am I the only one who sees the similarities here?
This may be because I spent so much time trying to get Tunaunleashed to change his "bad habits" back at pixelation.
But I see a weird relation between the two artists.
It's like Mr-Venusaur is attempting to emulate Red's old style.

Maybe I'm just going insane.