You'll see this devlog, huehue.
Looking good! Also curious how the monsters are gonna look!
(No pressure
)
Keep up the good work!
Thanks, We'll be sure to keep up the work :D
Waouw. This pixel art looks pretty awesome.
Still, I'm wondering... why did you choose pixel art and not another kind of graphics? To be honest, I first got hooked because of the low-fi/quirky style of the monsters. I mean... I realise this were prototype graphics, but I really liked how abstract looked the flying tentacles creeps. I think you gonna loose that.
I'm not saying pixel art is a bad thing, but I just wish sometimes we could get more original graphics graphcis that emphasized the tone of the game. What's your feeling about it? Do you want the game to be cute, dark, weird or whatever? I truly think it's very important to give a "soul" to your game.
Alright, I think this requires a bit of a longer response, explaining my thoughts.
why did you choose pixel art and not another kind of graphics? To be honest, I first got hooked because of the low-fi/quirky style of the monsters. I mean... I realise this were prototype graphics, but I really liked how abstract looked the flying tentacles creeps. I think you gonna loose that.I actually have a few reasons for using pixel art, to put it simply:
1. I like pixel art and I'm also way better at myself than traditional or higher res art, so this way I can also still add small bits to the art. For example, Matthew is mainly an environmental artist, so I still do the player and animations. I couldn't have done that in traditional or higher res art.
2. I'm using Game Maker Studio, and most of my code isn't very optimized and tentacles+tons of particles can become quite heavy quite quickly, Pixel art helps keep that heavyness a bit lower, unlike higher resolution graphics
3. Matthew was the person whose work I liked the most and he had some wonderful ideas. I might've gone for another art style if there was somebody I felt was more fitting for the project and if that person was better at something different than pixel art.
I liked the abstract style myself too, but there was only so much I could do with it to make it visually interesting and tell the story I want to tell, so I think in the end I made the right decision going away from that. Also, people never like change, but sometimes it's for the best(I think kerfuffle is a way better example than this case).
I'm not saying pixel art is a bad thing, but I just wish sometimes we could get more original graphics graphcis that emphasized the tone of the game. What's your feeling about it? Do you want the game to be cute, dark, weird or whatever? I truly think it's very important to give a "soul" to your game.I disagree a bit with this statement from an artist perspective. I get pixel art gets used a lot, but so do lots of other art styles really, and within pixel art there are lots of different styles too, saying all things making use of low res pixels are the same is the same like saying all vector art is the same or all traditional art is the same(I'm not saying you said that though, more of a general statement too).
Also, setting the tone of the game or giving a game a "soul" and pixel art are not mutually exclusive, It's actually quite easy to still give your game a soul. I think momodora(especially reverie under the moonlight) is a great example of setting the tone with pixel art. All the art is quite obviously pixel art, and even each individual area has such an amazing atmosphere and the game definitely is full of soul in my opinion.
Example:
This is quite obviously not my game, it's momodora:Reverie under the moonlight. This simple screenshot of it already sets quite an awesome atmosphere and tone, and it's pixel art.Another example is superbrothers:swords and sorcery. Again, pixel art and a vastly different art style within pixel art than momodora, and it's full of atmosphere and soul.
Example:
I could go on for a while, but I think this conveys my thoughts well enough
Anyway, this turned into quite a rant, but I think it's helpful to have it on the internet or whatever. Maybe you can understand my point of view a bit better
Also, I hope you don't see this as me defensively or aggressively reacting to your post
It was more of a general thing that was dwelling in my mind for a while and your response felt like a proper time to express this.
NOW ON TO THE DEVLOG! WHOOOOOSH
Update 16:So, Matthew has been working a bit and we have a base behemoth in the new art style ready :D In my opinion he looks quite awesome and thanks to Matt's ideas I could give the behemoth quite a bit of life, and this way it's easier to make better-looking modular enemies:
The behemoth is still made of segments, influenced by mods, this time it has different mouths(that will represent head genes), two shells of armor(that will represent body genes along with the base body) and the base body, plus the tentacles of course.
Right now you can't see the different genes the behemoth in this gif has, but we're working on the individual genes so they'll be visible again later.
The geometry for the demo map is also done, I'll start working on adding the npcs and fleshing it out a bit more soon, and after that I can get to the cool simulation stuff for encounters(although adding in the planned npcs will take a while :p)
Also, since the tileset is now 32x32, I've remade the 24x24 player to fit that size:
Now I'll just need to animate her...again... ;-;
It'll be worth it though!
Any thoughts about the new behemoth and player would be appreciated ^^
See you next time o/