next »

[McMutton]

A bit of a mockup/concept for a town called Highmill that's built in and around five immense windmills:

That little pink dot at the bottom of the main one is a character.

[BoxedLunch]

that looks like it'd be fun as hell to explore.

[Destral]

Agreed, looks like one heck of an exploration site. Can the party wander around in the insides of the windmills too?

[FK in the Coffee]

A bit of a mockup/concept for a town called Highmill that's built in and around five immense windmills:

That little pink dot at the bottom of the main one is a character.

This looks beautiful 

Can't wait to actually see this part in the game.  It truly does look like it'd be a blast to explore.

[Josiah Tobin]

I love that Highmill concept! The scale of those mills really makes me want to explore it.

This game is actually pretty deep in development right now -- this is just a mockup of an incomplete part of it:

Just hum some catchy, trumpet-heavy jRPG battle music to yourself while you look at it

~Josiah

[Rooky]

I love that Highmill concept! The scale of those mills really makes me want to explore it.

This game is actually pretty deep in development right now -- this is just a mockup of an incomplete part of it:

Just hum some catchy, trumpet-heavy jRPG battle music to yourself while you look at it

~Josiah

I thought of the FFX Battle Music after I read and saw that. Which is weird, because I've never played the game, so it's not a particularly memorable theme to me, but whatever. 

Looks pretty amazing. Depth is conveyed very well, and the monsters look fantastic.
Characters, for some reason, look out of place with the rest of the piece. Are they placeholders, or genuine characters?

[Josiah Tobin]

Thanks! Yeah, that theme works, hehe.

The characters may or may not be placeholders -- will probably decide once we see everything actually in-game. Those are just frames from the character map sprites, which are finished and blend in a little better when seen in the context of actual tiles. The battle interface itself is still undergoing some design tweaking so I can't really say with much certainty what'll stay and what'll be replaced

Although, if you had the impression that they were final characters, what would you suggest to make them blend in more?

~Josiah

[SundownKid]

Your characters look too cartoony/simplified compared to the BG and enemies and it doesn't really feel like they are battling since they are ostensibly still images. I would suggest doing something similar to the (retro) Phantasy Star battle system. Instead of seeing the regular character sprites, you see their backs as they attack with the menu underneath.

[Josiah Tobin]

Oh yes, I'm a huge fan of Phantasy Star IV. I considered doing the characters in a style similar to that game, but opted for this method due to it freeing up more space on the screen and the decreased workload (I have a ton of assets to crank out as the sole artist) -- I suppose that is a little lazy, though. I'll try out some compromises. And of course, any suggestions are very welcome!

~Josiah

[Player Ʒ]

I love that Highmill concept! The scale of those mills really makes me want to explore it.

This game is actually pretty deep in development right now -- this is just a mockup of an incomplete part of it:
http://www.josiahtobin.com/wb/bitsnpieces/2011_battle.png
Just hum some catchy, trumpet-heavy jRPG battle music to yourself while you look at it

~Josiah

Yeah, I was about to suggest the Phantasy Star IV approach with the player characters' backs, but it's been said. Loving the background.

[Josiah Tobin]

Tried something a little different and tried putting character portraits where the character sprites were:



Although I had to shrink them down to half their original size to fit and they lost a lot of detail. Also they don't have the right palette as the program I use for pixel art is pretty restricted palette-wise (and with the slightly off palette, the portrait on the right looks startlingly jesus-like).

Oh, and that portrait on the right is the wrong character, I don't have portrait art done for the character sprite which was there in the previous mockup. Just a note so as not to confuse.

Visually, I think still prefer the full character sprites compared to this look, but I'm not entirely sure. Kind of a tricky situation as I'd really like to keep the large amount of screen space this sort of layout offers.

~Josiah

[SundownKid]

I think your menu is just too small. Your characters are an important part of the battle and yet you are forced to squeeze them into a tiny square. You should check out Etrian Odyssey- they made the character info into smaller boxes and put the character picture and commands in a pop up menu.

[i.i]

Guide and upgrade the creatures to ensure the survival of the super organism.

[Geti]

I really like that. It would be fun to create something massive scale in that style.

[Pixelgent]

JaJitsu: like the color scheme, its kind of hard to tell the perpectives of eveyrthing . everything seems like a straight on view but the arrow sign has this perpective on it. I would maybe think about getting rid of the perspective on it. also maybe flatten out the tilt in the ladder too. looks like one side is tilted out towards the camera.

block pushing game. more work:

I really wanted to see what this would look like in 3d so i had to make it, hope you don't mind.  



lol, just one big illusion.

[Scut Fabulous]

Guide and upgrade the creatures to ensure the survival of the super organism.

More, more, more!

[Destral]

Tried something a little different and tried putting character portraits where the character sprites were:



Although I had to shrink them down to half their original size to fit and they lost a lot of detail. Also they don't have the right palette as the program I use for pixel art is pretty restricted palette-wise (and with the slightly off palette, the portrait on the right looks startlingly jesus-like).

Oh, and that portrait on the right is the wrong character, I don't have portrait art done for the character sprite which was there in the previous mockup. Just a note so as not to confuse.

Visually, I think still prefer the full character sprites compared to this look, but I'm not entirely sure. Kind of a tricky situation as I'd really like to keep the large amount of screen space this sort of layout offers.

~Josiah

You could always move the enemies up slightly from their current position. As it is, you have a lot of empty space in the top half of the screen. Granted, it will give you more space for bigger monsters if you leave it as is, but you don't want to cramp your menus too much.

Another possibility is what Sundown Kid suggested, have the essential character info in small panels at the bottom during the action sequences of combat, and then have the character portraits pop up when it's time to enter commands.

Either way, it's looking good, and the monster sprites look crsip and delicious.

[CK]

that's awesome

[Zest]

Pretty sneaky, sis. It looks purdy~

[Josiah Tobin]

You could always move the enemies up slightly from their current position. As it is, you have a lot of empty space in the top half of the screen. Granted, it will give you more space for bigger monsters if you leave it as is, but you don't want to cramp your menus too much.

Another possibility is what Sundown Kid suggested, have the essential character info in small panels at the bottom during the action sequences of combat, and then have the character portraits pop up when it's time to enter commands.

Either way, it's looking good, and the monster sprites look crsip and delicious.

Thanks for the comment on the monsters

Hmm, well re: moving them up, there are some larger monster and boss sprites which take up most of the vertical space between the top and bottom sections of the character panels... and regarding making them larger horizontally to accommodate more space within them, towards the end of the game there are five characters in total which can join combat, which would make the panel layout look something like this:



...so very little room to expand them horizontally. I personally don't mind having them look so small, but I've been looking at the design for quite a long time now so I don't really have an objective view on what others might think of it. Do you find it very distracting/odd, looking at it? (addressing both you and SundownKid/anyone else who doesn't mind taking a look at the previously-posted mockup) If it's a fairly big issue with most people then I would say I definitely need to do a re-design... though if it's only a small problem I may just look for a way to make it look the best it can with this layout.

~Josiah