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[ismaelsow]

Hello guys!
I am just starting game development and I don't have great art skills. What can I do, I asked myself? Well, I got my answer: http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/12/how-to-bootstrap-your-indie-art-needs.html

Since my little programming knowledge is in web development, I started by a web game: http://typeroulette.com - No animation, no sound, just html tags. But I want to level up.

So, my ambition right now, is to make games with computer generated graphics like Asteroids, Geometry Wars, Flywrench, Vector Tanks and all the Vectrex games. Have you got some experience writing this kind of games? I will be very thankful for you sharing your experience. I will try to gather some resources about vector games and post them there. Books, links, video etc. Thanks for your help!

[speeder]

I am making a vector-style game myself :D

Part of the art is bitmap, and part is vector (originally it was full bitmap, only later I figured how to make vectors), the art is done using Macromedia (not Adobe, those are crap) Fireworks, because it can mix bitmap with vector (thus you draw the vector, and use the bitmap tools and pixelart skills to fix stuff as needed)

[Booger]

I'm curious how non-Flash games can use vector art.  I'm not talking about really-low-level stuff like lighting up some pixels with a certain color, but games that look like they used Flash or some other vector animation program, but the games themselves are not in Flash.

I've read there are some recent games that use embedded swfs for animations (Games packaged in AIR I guess), but generally speaking, even if the animation software used is vector, do people usually still export png spritesheets with alpha?

[PlayMeTape]

I'm not sure this is what you're looking for but I made a simple game in XNA which used linerendering and regular 3d triangles to draw simple 3d models. It made it look a little like old Vectrex games.





You could do the same with OpenGL lines and simple meshes in an engine like Unity for example.

Good luck!

[jotapeh]

I'm curious how non-Flash games can use vector art.  I'm not talking about really-low-level stuff like lighting up some pixels with a certain color, but games that look like they used Flash or some other vector animation program, but the games themselves are not in Flash.

Not sure exactly what you mean? Any 3D game is vector based, as a vector is just a point in 3D space. If you want to emulate the look of Flash graphics, just draw flat polygons in OpenGL or Direct3D.

Except that Flash does bezier curves, compound shapes, etc.. I don't think flat polygons are going to achieve the same thing, and authoring art for that sort of game would be tougher than it is with Flash CS

That said maybe there are some tools/SDKs for that sort of thing that I don't know of.. it does seem like Vector art shouldn't be exclusive to Flash

[XRA]

one important note about any emulated vector games... they don't really match the visual impact that the real machines have when displayed on an actual vector monitor. 
The player shot in Asteroids for example is a bright focused glowing orb of light which looks awesome... but in MAME it is a dull dot and is not awesome. 

[Jad]

Just popping in to second XRA's statement, the laser shot in the original Asteroids cabinet is SO INTENSE, since a single light ray draws all of the graphics, the shot gets the most intense glowing light. It's wonderful.

[gimymblert]

You can try SVG format to handle vector, especially for web base game
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/paths.html#PathData
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/expanded-toc.html
It also handle effect like blur
and have embedded interactivity

[Evan Balster]

My game engine's all (polygon) vector graphics.  Basically I just tessellate groups of loop-contours and render them.  Tesselation can get to having a lot of overhead for complex shapes, though.  :/

Oh, and I programmed my own art tools and such since it's its own system.  Might be more timesink than you're up for.

[Nix]

Look at this: http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?p=441