Hey everyone, artist back again to answer artside questions and post a brief update:
(the image is too big but you can open it in a new window or scroll to the left, there are some units on the side)
Been tweaking the palette map a bit so things read cleaner. Trees went from too much contrast to too little now but I like how the grass blends better now. Also removed the seams from the roads as was recommended here!
As for everyone's concerns, I definitely won't say that it doesn't look like Advance Wars, from the get-go that was the style we shot for, though gameplay itself will be a lot more like Company of Heroes or World in Conflict if anyone has played either of those games, due to being real-time.
In the bottom right are some enlarge images of new units that may or may not be in the final version based on play testng; a Jeep, a Truck, an APC, a Medic, an LSVW, and an anti-tank infantry.
- drastically change the colour palette
This is actually quite easy to do, and the palette is still undergoing evolution as I work on various art aspects. Currently the entire terrain is exactly 29 unique colors, with a maximum of 32 I've allowed myself but I don't see myself adding too many new colors at this stage, in fact I might pair it down to less. You can see the palette bellow:
(slightly out of date with the current colors, I was tweaking the grass while I made this post)
That being said, while it still changing as I work, I do like the mix of colors I'm using now. There are broad strokes I can make like changing the overall saturation or brightness, but the feeling we are shooting for is brightly colored, cute and happy feeling warzone, which I feel is conveyed pretty well so far.
Each game in the Advance Wars series tended to move further and further away from its cute happy origins into things like Days of Ruin, a drab brown desaturated game, which we're vying away from in favor of the feeling of the first original.
- make the team colours show up in accents, like coloured stripes, helmets, team logos etc. instead of colouring whole sprites in the team colour
Readability is paramount here especially when each unit is no more than 16x16 pixels wide. It may be easy to pick out from a screenshot what units belong to whom, but in real time where there are 10x as many guys moving around the player has to be able to glance at the screen and identify friends from foes, medics from infantry from antitank inf., who is damaged, who isn't, and a whole host of other information to be able to play effectively, there can be no room for confusion. Attached is the current team color palettes:
(in descending order: White, Blue, Teal, Green, Yellow, Orange, Brown, Red, Pink, Purple, Black, then some other assorted colors semirelated. Dev stuff.)
As you can see, each team has 6 unique colors to themselves, and share the same white, black, three shades of neutral greys for metal pieces like wheels and guns, and two shades of peach for exposed skin on infantry units.
Using the new units shown in my first image above, some could get away with being more neutrally toned, such as the APC with a team colored stripe, however this means introducing more colors into a palette that strives to be as minimal as I can manage, and for units that are already very small like the infantry, might introduce confusion over which player it belongs to if for example its only the infantry's helmet that is team colored.
- change the pixel density, the sprites look like they are 16x16 and the AW sprites look the same, maybe try making your tiles 32x32?
They are as you said, 16x16! That's the size we're shooting for, while I COULD redo every single art asset I've done so far to match a larger resolution, imo with pixel art games the smaller is better, both with asset sizes and palettes. Look what the gameboy did with only four colors! I strive to only make my artwork and palettes as large as absolutely necessary. I could capture more detail with larger units and tiles, but the game would lose its style and start looking like some of the weird "trying to be retro while targeting none of the restrictions retro games actually had" look that is all too common. Like something like Shovel Knight COULD have used twice as many colors and twice as large graphics but then it wouldn't have looked like the NES that it does.
- use a different environment, maybe dead trees without leaves instead of pines? canyons instead of rivers?
Dead trees aren't cute! That being said, I DO have a full set of canyon artwork that works like Starcraft/Warcraft's high and low raised terrain, it's just not pictured here as its too complex for our alpha at the moment. I do have an example to show though, from a much earlier alpha stage:
(with white and black team units instead of red and blue)
You can see the raised and lowered edges and it uses mainly the badlands mud terrain instead of grass everywhere, and also the badlands roads instead of asphalt roads.
- change the artstyle, instead of cartoony big heads and tank turrets try more realistic proportions
No can do can, both Sanojian and I right from the get-go agreed with eachother that we both like the "Cute War" look of things. While I am going to take steps wherever I can to make us distinct from Advance Wars, the cute look is to stay. Besides, even if we DID go 32x32 and gritty realistic war, we'd just end up being compared to ANOTHER Advance Wars 'Days of Ruin' which is exactly as you describe.
- make the units more varied in size, make the tanks twice the size of infantry for example
16x16, actually I did do as you suggested before, the infantry used to be even larger and fill up the entire 16x16 space, they made the tanks look really small instead of just sort of small. They were more detailed but the detail didn't do anything for them.
A lot of the posts so far have been the consensus that being Advance Wars-like in gameplay and style hurts us, but we set out from the start to target that look, style, and demographic, people who want a casual RTS that is simple enough for people who cant play games like Starcraft because the hurdle to get in is too high with the demand for exact build orders and timings and stuff. The last Advance Wars game came out in 2008 and even then the later games got darker and grittier and weirder than the original, even the second game was not as good as the first imo, so there's a big gap for this kind of content.
I don't think being compared to Advance Wars will be annoying or repetitive when that was the -entire point- from the get go, people don't deride War for the Overworld for being TOO MUCH like Dungeon Keeper, so I'm unclear as to why this is bad while theirs is not.
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