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[Wander]

Hehe - i guess i'm "that guy".

i DO like the art, but it feels very flat, so before I come across as primadonna - I just wanna qualify my statement. 


- added another grid behind the ship
- outlined the silhouette with a slightly brighter variation  of the main color
- threw a slight gradient over it.
- and added 50% white pixel dots at line intersections (so it looks liek a lazer drawn object or oldschool vector sorta...

It took me a half minute and I think you could easily apply a batch like this *IF* you like something like this.

i can't help be a pushy art director cause that's what I used to do for a paycheck. 

[BadgerManufactureInc]

@Wander thanks for passing through, and for making that image.  Perhaps you could discuss this more with Bones over msn?  Don't worry about being pushy, we are all enjoying making this too much for any new ideas to not be of interest.  On the one hand I am tempted to say that I'd had the Warning Forever style at the back of my mind since the the ver beginning of this project.

Initially we'd agreed on pixel style graphics in Bones' defense, and what has already been drawn has made things progress much faster.  I'm suprised no-one has complimented Bones on his sprites so far!!  The shading is a possibility; we should remember that Bones has also come up with some awesome enemy shapes and gameplay ideas.

Having seen your craft above, which adhere more to Warning Forever
 


I am torn between the two now.  In fact I am tempted to say I prefer the new look.  Bones, what do you think?

It's a good point about the explosions Bones, they do look good as a single color.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Guys I really like what you have both done!!

Bones, if you think you can manage to make all of the enemies in that fashion, I am more than happy with the new style.. but leave them as they were if you like. I will let you decide man.

 

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I love that new craft man.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I think I prefer your own solid fill cell shade Bones, to the warning forever translucency type shade.  What do you think Wander?

Trouble is we're veering from the original design a lot.. hmmm.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Ok we are sticking with the pixel look, although the image posted by Wander does indeed look awesome in its own way, we are focused on making a truly retro pixel style - back to the days when they didn't have gradient fills or vectors. 

@Wander: Thanks once more for your input and help; it has opened up an interesting possibility, and I hope you may have more advice for the game.

Some more ideas from Bones, we are not having a shop anymore.  Instead, each boss will leave a weapon behind in a crate, that you shoot and then gain that weapon.  The weapon will be the same color as the boss you just destoryed.  Each level will have aliens with a distinct attack type, eg armored, spike, heavily armed.  Also snakes will be hidden in crates.  Crates will now appear after every wave of enemies.

I have made a couple of tweaks to the crate spawning / moving code so as to make it smoother now, this is reflected in this latest demo:


http://www.badgermanufacture.com/The_Excavator_091030.html

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I am building up level 1:

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I am making a preloader for the game.

[EDIT] Done. It doesnt have a progress bar yet, but is still 100% functional.  If you want to see it work more than once you have to clear your browser cache first.

http://www.badgermanufacture.com/The_Excavator_091031.html

Great, I can move on and not worry about that anymore.  I will be editing this today to make up level 1.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I have made the demo longer now.. and I made a new enemy bullet type that spiral out - the Tie FIghter style craft shoot that way.

I will update the demo (31.html) in a moment.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

The game has a preloader in it. I made the craft move faster and the game much harder for now..

http://www.badgermanufacture.com/The_Excavator_091101.html

[Bones]

The art is cool and all and I really like the edit as it does kind of give it some 3D appeal.
But yea, it's straying a bit far from the original style.

I don't know what is with the obsession of making everything very bright in simple pixel shmups.
Personally I don't really like gradients, I try to avoid them at all costs.
Also don't have photoshop installed, and so I have been making these ships with Windows 7 MSPaint.

[Wander]

New demo works great although the ships speed feels chuggy compared to the bullet/enemy speed but that tuning should happen once you get death in.

Here's the thing about what I was trying to do with the art:
When the ships explode, it's just pieces the same color that they are - which is comfusing visually since you want to avoid or shoot things of that color.  When you put a BG color on them, (which i did as a gradient just for interest) it sort of groups the ships into shapes that are easy to see and have a mass.

having black on the inside of the ships and the outside of the ships sort of serves to make it more confusing.

To each his own though.

It's commendable that your'e using MSpaint. 

the art looks really good but there's a sprite in the bottom right of that sheet that is preatty rad albeit more complex than the rest and probably unused?

[Bones]

Well, I think I'm going to turn all lasers white.
Because its hard to notice green lasers in a cloud of exploded pixels.

The problem with adding "more" color such as a gradient, is that when the ships were to explode.
They would not look the same as they do right now, and we kind of want to keep the whole single pallet pixels.

The only reason they are colored in black, is so they don't show up through each other.
Such as the crates which overlap.


Some new logos drawn from the original logo.

[Wander]

gotcha.

Those logos are pretty good throwbacks.  Reminds me of Zaxxon, which I played when I was a mere fetus. 

[BadgerManufactureInc]

We are going out on a limb a little with our design philosophy of minimalism and yet with an engine that wants to throw as much as it can at you.  I'd be really interested on your comments as we wrap this project up over the next month or two, leading up to Christmas.  Do keep in touch, and thanks for the interest.

On a technical aside, I coded up a scrolling map editor, even though I am not using one for this game. I wanted to put my thoughts down about the spawning once again, hopefully for the last time now.  Making the editor really helped me go over all the concepts I am using so that has helped with this project too.

As is, each alien is given a spawn frame, and the program assigns these to entire waves at a time.  At this stage, the engine states the targets for each alien too..

I want to change this; I want to separate the spawn frame assignment from the target data so that I can just state the type of alien to appear on a given frame, rather than have to state all its targets before.

This shouldnt take long to adjust, and it helps having it down on paper exactly what I intend to do.

Love the new logos Bones.  ALso, good idea about making the bullets brighter, that may help things seem less indistinguishable.  We may be able to have the ship absorb the piixel dust too - which would serve to further declutter the overall environment - I am working on it.