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[Farmergnome]

Ok, so, I and farmer, the other farmer, spudfarmer (EDIT: I think hes noodlejuice on this forum), have been busy on a game called Zompocalypse! for the last month or 2 after seeing my prototype he offered to program it, magical.  Since everyones doing it, I started a thread to start progressively pimping since we are closing towards the end of this mini project, and will soon be actively looking for a small group of testers devoted to making spuds life a living hell. 

Briefly, the game a side scrolling shooter, zombies piss onto the screen, busting out of every orifice on the map, smashing down basically most of the background to get to you.  This is where you come in, your like the modern day judge dread,  Sgt Chuck McPain, law enforcement officer.

Not knowing, or caring, that the entire city is on the brink of the zompocalypse, which if you cant connect the dots, is basically the zombie apocalypse, you speed towards a reported area where minorities are doing bad things, in your kick ass, pimped out police cruiser, shit yer.  But shit, wait! Even Mc Pain is no match for a infected suicidal who throws himself into McPains car, sending him skidding, turning his pimped out cruiser into a twisted heap.  The game basicly starts here, as Sgt McPain gets out of the wreck unharmed, because hes all man.  He dusts of his donuts and walks away from the wreck and notice the normally busy streets are quiet, that is, until shambling silhouettes of zombie like proportions move towards him.  Now Chuck McPain aint no dumbass like in most zombie movies, hes read the zombie survival guide, and world war Z, he knows his shit, so he drops the donuts and whips out his pistol and prepares to bring the pain!
EDIT THREE (Newer Screenshots):

Updated particles and flares, still got a bit to go but its getting there.





EDIT TWO (Screenshots):





Ill leave the rest in link or it will break peoples browsers.

http://www.iron-gaia.com/test/4.jpg
http://www.iron-gaia.com/test/5.jpg
http://www.iron-gaia.com/test/6.jpg
Another EDIT:

Its McPain in his pigger-mobile!  Throwin back some donuts while he drives, what a man.



Chuck rocking out on a chainsaw.

Some shit.


ill be posting random art junk and screenies.

[Inane]

Haha. Sweet.
But what's with the blurring?

[Farmergnome]

Long story short, we are going to filter the crap out of the pixels in-game with bilinear filtering.  The crude pixeled look works for some things, but we decided against it.  So its just practice I pretty much either let the engine do the filtering, or check it the editor.  Its also laziness, I don't like color palettes, but we wont go there.

[Inane]

It works for the game, but I think you might be inhibiting yourself as an artist by making graphics with filtering in mind.

Either way, best of luck to ya' .

[Ivan]

I really hope you've just been sarcastic all this time and you just made a mistake scaling the images. If not, then please PLEASE unblur that gorgeous pixelart.

[Farmergnome]

It works for the game, but I think you might be inhibiting yourself as an artist by making graphics with filtering in mind.

Hmmm i doubt it, ive always done the art as a "what it looks like ingame", infact to me atleast, it shouldnt be any other way.  For example some things look total ass with filtering, you should think about this shit before you stick it in the game and brick your pants with shitcake.

But on that note ill post some unfiltered sprites next round. 

[spellcaster]

The thing that seems strange for me, is that the char is blurred, but the background sharp. This clashes a bit with the depth of field perception. Also, we got trained that "blurred" means inactive or not important.

I guess, what I want to say is that if you have to blur something, then blur the background, not the active elements.

Besides that I really like the art and the style of the background story.

[Alex May]

The character isn't more blurred, it only looks that way because the detail is higher.

Agree with unblurring the whole lot, unless there's a plan for some fancy TV-movie style effects like. The art looks great either way, but it seems at odds with the idea of doing it at low resolution to blur it away.

[Zaphos]

Long story short, we are going to filter the crap out of the pixels in-game with bilinear filtering.  The crude pixeled look works for some things, but we decided against it.

Pixels + bilinear filtering isn't really avoiding the "crude pixeled look" ... it still looks very much like crude pixels, just now also blurry.  There are scaling algorithms specifically for pixel art ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_art_scaling_algorithms ) but it's probably better to either go for the pixel look or to actually do high res art?

[Farmergnome]

Alot of the effects in the game dont realy mix well with unfiltered graphics, yep we already have a inhouse batch upscaller for hq2x/3x, but the main reason for using stock bilinear is it blended the game together better, especially with the effects and could be edited without having to be upscalled externally, or the other option being adding it to the code but forcing it to be open source for most of those agreements.

Time wise im not prepared to sit down and do them all oldschool similar to say metal slug, we wanted to take advantage of Torque game builders particle engine and do the effects by spaming assloads of alphaed sprites around.  It also doesnt help that if I were to animate all the effects by hand, it would almost double my art time.  The main character has about 30-40 odd animations, and each zombie has alot too, and theres 4 zombies, not to mention basicly everything on the background shop layer "Busts open". 

So basicly, im taking a cut on filtered sprites so that the whole game meshes together better, which is more important than on there own they look blured/filtered.

[Alex May]

Fair enough

Anyway, I love the rocking out chainsaw sprite 

[team_q]

I am most def excited about this project, I love the art style of the backgrounds. Its too bad you have having a bit of trouble with feature harmony, but it still looks sweeet

[Derek]

God damn do I love your pixels!  I do prefer unfiltered in still shots, but I could see that in motion and with special effects filtering might make sense.

[Shoot-em-upper]

I had a dream several years ago about a guy rocking out on a chainsaw.

No joke.

 

[Farmergnome]

I had a dream also,

of zombie babies....   kickable zombie babies.

flammable kickable zombie babies.

shit yer.

[Guert]

Pretty good stuff!
What's the gameplay like? I mean, the artwork reminds me of Metal Slug (obviously) but how will it play? When are you going to have a playing demo for this? Be sure to post it in the feedback section when you do

[team_q]

Man those babies want me to play this that much more! YEAH!

[Farmergnome]

its sort of pretty simple, ever played crimsonland or similar?  Its just that on a sidescrolling plane, the objective is to survive until dawn, the game starts at dusk.    Its playable now, just not publicly playable .  Spud n I realy want to take our time polishing it, even if it is a realy small project at the moment, that way if people like it we can build on it without having to go over stuff.  Theres a heap of weapons in the game, and we plan on doing a few releases of it if its actually decent, in which we will probably add more than one level and expand the playfield a little, maybe powerups, who knows.

[ravuya]

Is the flaming one running faster?

[noodleJuice]

Hi all.  I am actually the farmer of spuds that is working on this sweet little game with the farmer of the unknown.  I think the description that its something along the lines of Crimsonland is a good one, at least in terms of how the game feels.  One of our other goals is to inject a healthy (or not so healthy, YMMV) does of black humour... and plain fun for that matter. 

Cheers