erasing the outlines afterward is a good idea, will try that in the future; the problem though is that my erasers aren't very good so they often leave visible marks even after erasing (will need to draw lighter outlines to fix that probably)

i plan on using different media in the future, not all 1000 will be pencil; i plan on trying charcoal/ink/pastels/color pencils/watercolors/acrylic too as i go through the 1000

i haven't studied art except self-study through a few books and youtube tutorials, although my parents have both studied art (they are artists themselves so i picked up a few things here and there over the years, but i never took a class in it or anything); but this does mean they have a ton of art supplies laying around so that's what i've been using (their old pencils and stuff)

actually at one point my father was going to illustrate these for me, but he doesn't have all that much time (or the knowledge of the game that i have) and it looked like he was never going to get them done (it has been a year and he's done like 2 out of the 150~200 required ones that the game needs (it's a very long game), although those 2 are very nice), so i decided to learn how to do it myself

the illustrations for the game will only be used to illustrate cutscenes, i'm not adding more sprites or anything, so i don't really need to worry that much about consistency with the rest of the game's graphics (though it'd be good to at least have a similar color scheme, etc.) -- basically i want to do something like the phantasy star 4 cutscenes, e.g. something like:





those are sort of low-res manga style, which isn't really what i'm going for, but i want the same type of thing in the sense of small scenes that illustrate what's going on in the text. i was thinking of doing them in watercolor to match the title screen, which was also created in watercolor by a friend of mine:



but that depends on how well i learn the different medias and what i think looks the best for the game; i'll probably decide that after i've tried out the different media. i will probably at least pick one that's in color though (e.g. probably acrylic or watercolor). the learning of drawing with pencil is just sort of preparation for doing those, because i've been told / heard that being able to draw with pencil is the basis of knowledge of the other media too, and useful in creating first drafts for those, so that's why i started there, but the final drawings in the game probably won't be pencil (although color pencil is a possibility if that looks nice enough)

my plan for the remaining 1000 is basically:

marine invertebrates
plants/flowers
landscapes/scenery (including waterscapes, skies, clouds, mountains, forests)
land invertebrates
vertebrates
people (including faces, expressions, anatomy, poses, etc.)
technology (including machines, vehicles, buildings, robots, etc., basically anything people build)

i will focus more on the types of specific types of things that will need to be in the game's illustrations, but will try to do a little bit of everything just for variety (e.g. there are no cats in the game but i'll probably draw a cat or two in the 1000, since indirectly it'd help with being able to draw stuff like fur and so on which would be in the game in some form)

i will also be during this time reading many books and watching various tutorials that people recommend; e.g. i've been going through a book on lighting, and have books on perspective and anatomy and so on prepared for later. at each stage in the list above i may focus more on one than another; e.g. perhaps when i do flowers i'd also focus on learning color, or perhaps when i do landscapes or buildings i'd focus on learning perspective, etc.

alright, here: http://rinkuhero.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=scraps

they aren't numbered there and the order is haphazard currently; trying to look into how to arrange it. but every image on the fb gallery is now also in that gallery, they just aren't in chronological order yet

this may help though, i did the drawings in this order

1) lilypads and other misc stuff
2) seashells
3) starfish
4) coral

Any way to see these without a FB account?   

i'll upload them somewhere else too, maybe deviantart would work -- give me a sec

people would still care if the extreme hyperreal death cam closeups of murder were murders of black civilians and not white ones. it's disgusting either way.

i do not believe this to be true at all, for the reasons mentioned above, and also just thinking about the reactions of the media towards ferguson, the zimmerman/travon thing, and so on. i'd think such a game wouldn't get as much press as "hatred" at all

[While it received little attention from the mainstream media]

i think that as an aside actually *is* why it's controversial; if it were a white guy killing brown people nobody would even get offended by this game, or notice it

You honestly think that? I'm 100% sure it would be much, much worse if the antagonist was of a different race than all the victims. The game is already controversial, how is making it about racial purging helping?

i don't only think that, i know that. you can look at other games similar to this that were made in the past about genocide, which didn't get as much attention as this one did

e.g. muslim massacre, as others mentioned in this thread already, made by a friend of mine, sigvatr -- it's a game where you are an american killing random muslim civilians, eventually you kill osama bin ladin and muhammad too. it was intended to make fun of americans and to troll people, sig doesn't actually dislike muslims at all; it got some attention in the muslim press and a little bit of outrage but nothing substantial, it was largely ignored in comparison to the attention given to "hatred"

there was also a game called ethnic cleansing, where you went around killing different races (starting with blacks and ending with jews). again, not much attention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Cleansing_%28video_game%29 -- similarly, it got a little bit of press, almost all negative, but not as much as "hatred", few people have even heard of this game today, even though it was explicitly a game about a nazi killing african americans, latinos, and jews, with the final boss being ariel sharon

from its wikipedia page: "While it received little attention from the mainstream media, the game was immediately controversial among liberal Americans."

so yes, i'm pretty sure that if this game were not about killing white people, nobody would care. it's controversial exactly because the victims "look like you and me" rather than some weird group that you barely know anyone in

one game comparable to this is that super columbine massacre RPG game, where you played as the two shooters shooting white kids in columbine; that one *did* get a bunch of mainstream media press; from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Columbine_Massacre_RPG! -- "Reception of Super Columbine Massacre has been extremely negative amongst the mainstream media and those personally affected by the shootings. [...] Super Columbine Massacre was largely condemned by the press. Betty Nguyen of CNN labeled the game as an example of a subculture that worships terrorists.[23] Newspapers called the game "exploitive" and a "monstrosity".[24][25] PC World declared the game #2 on its list of "The 10 Worst Games of All Time."[26] Even critics who were supportive of Ledonne's intent found the game hard to play; Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica said that he left the game "shaken", but that as an easily-misunderstood game"

did all those news outlets cover muslim massacre and ethnic cleansing? largely nope

i think it's a more honest version of most violent games, where they try to pretend the zombies or whatever that you are killing would kill you if you didn't mow them down violently first, and that they have no feelings and their entire life's purpose is to be shot by the player. if anything i think it's a positive step for the legitimacy of games, i wish more violent games would be as honest about what they are really about

also it's possible the neo-nazi connections were accidental, sure. for instance, on facebook i like a group called "anarcho-fascism". i clicked like on it mainly as a joke, because i liked the idea of a self-contradictory philosophy, the idea that nazis can be anarchists too. someone could one day be like 'why do you like a group about fascism???' and i'd just have to say 'i clicked like as a joke', which is true, but maybe they won't believe it? who knows, i doubt it'd be a problem because i don't make violent games, i tend to make non-violent ones. it's also notable that none of the people killed in that trailer seem to be ethnic minorities, it's a game about a white guy killing other white people

i think that as an aside actually *is* why it's controversial; if it were a white guy killing brown people nobody would even get offended by this game, or notice it

so i decided to do 1000 drawings in order to get good at drawing (to illustrate the cutscenes in my game, which is one of the few things i need to do to finish SD)

the full album is on my facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.eres/media_set?set=a.10152513906456263.1073741826.500426262&type=3

i think i've improved a bit even just over the course of those 42, so if you critique / give advice, try to focus on the newer ones, because i already know what was wrong with the earlier ones

basically tell me what i'm doing wrong, especially in the most recent ones, so that i can improve. don't worry about being too harsh. also helpful would be book / tutorial recommendations

a few examples of the more recent ones if you don't want to click the link:









these were done with pencil and paper and then i took a photo of them with a cheap cell phone

@CA - yeah, i think indenting is generally useful, although indenting standards can vary. someone can invent their own method of indentation rather than using the recommended one

for instance, another thing i often do is:

set_draw_color(c_blue);
   draw_line(123,34,644,7535);
set_draw_color(c_white);

that is *not* how you are supposed to use indentation, because the statement in the middle will always happen regardless and it isn't in a set of braces or dependent on anything, but i feel that type of indentation can make my code more readable (to me, and i'm the only one who will ever read it anyway). the reason i do that is because everything in between the two lines will be drawn in blue, so it's "grouped" logically, even though there is no actual grouping in a braces set

a request for examples is fair though, i'll try to find some examples of what i mean. for now, here is something i do fairly often in my own code, which i believe is readable, but which is unconventional and not recommended:

select(a)
{
   case 0: b = 2; break;
   case 1: b = 6; break;
   case 2: b = 62; break;
   default: b = 0; break;
}

it's unconventional to put multiple statements on one line. most programming style guides recommend separating all that middle stuff into 3 lines each. but to me, the way i wrote it above makes more sense, and is more readable, than stuff like:

case 0:
   b = 2;
break;

case 1:
   b = 6;
break;

to me that type of stuff takes up too much space, and is less readable rather than more

i never copied and modified any code and as a result have huge problems reading other people's code. i literally made up my own level generation algorithm for my roguelike because i didnt understand any of the tutorials i found. so there's that.

well, i think that people should be familiar with conventional code, and able to read it, even if they don't create it themselves. being able to read the conventions is an important skill for indies/hobbyists to have, but i don't think it requires copying code to be able to do that; you can learn to read conventional code without writing in that style yourself

Well there's good reasons why stuff like that is taught in classes. Saying you won't use it simply because it's taught in classes doesn't make much sense. Of course, if you would like to prove me wrong, I would love to see a snippet of code as well.

and those reasons are...? besides the standard "shared conventions allow people to read each others' code" idea, i haven't seen any reasons in this thread to use conventional code. if there are reasons other than that, i'd like to see them. and, as mentioned, that reason isn't sufficient for indies, because indies tend to work alone, not in programming teams. if you just make small games on your own for fun, why are conventions needed?

(also i don't think you read my posts correctly; i wasn't saying that i personally don't use conventional code, i said that i, unfortunately, do. i'd like to shed the habit one day though)

i think the above post is an example of how convention poisons minds; it just repeats what is taught in programming classes without any kind of argument or even any type of rationalization. statements like "If the conventions that are set make your code worse, they're bad conventions. Conventions are set to improve the overall quality of code." just remind me of 1984's type of thinking, it's very orwellian. it's basically the equivalent of saying "conventions are good because they make code good. good code is code that uses conventions". recursive code can be elegant but circular logic usually isn't

to illustrate what i mean, look at cactus's code sometime -- i'm not sure it's publicly available, but i've seen some of it in bits and pieces (mr. podunkian has worked with him and he sent me some snippets to look at) and it's amazingly good despite being totally unconventionally written

i'm sure there are more available examples too, though i can't think of any offhand; if i come across or recall some i'll try to link them in this thread

(as an aside it seems totally hypocritical to me that programmers are often like "coding is a form of art!" and then they tend to hate any deviance from coding standards and conventions, any type of individuality or idiosyncrasy in coding styles)

Formatting, style, naming conventions, indentation and brackets are in my opinion the absolute basics a code base has to establish, but only because it's easy to do. It doesn't take much effort and gives you more consistent (and often more readable) code. I don't however see how this in any way can define how good code is.

How good code is, is in my opinion defined by how maintainable it is, how well it handles problems and how flexible it is where it's used. This is indeed more important than naming conventions and style, but it's also a lot harder to do.

i agree with the second of those, but strongly disagree with the first. conventions are exactly that: conventional. code that doesn't use common conventions is superior, not inferior, to code that does. i wish my code were less conventional than it is, i do some unconventional stuff but unfortunately i've been poisoned by convention over the years; i have the highest respect for code that is unconventionally written and still is good code

i think code should be maintainable. but that isn't the same as what people mean when they say "good code". when they say good code they tend to mean particular formatting, a particular style of indentation and brackets, a particular style of commenting, particular name conventions, and so on. that is the stuff that i feel is unnecessary. of course code should be maintainable. but code can be maintainable without being good

basically, as long as someone's code is consistent, and they can read it 10 years later and still understand it, it doesn't matter whether it's good code or not

(i should note however that maintainable code isn't as important to indie game developers as to other types of programmers, because the chance of going back and actually using code you wrote 10 years ago is much lower for someone who writes game jam games or small games than it is for someone in the AAA industry or someone who writes operating systems; especially because indie game devs tend to shift between languages and engines regularly. for indies and hobbyists, maintainability is nice, but not essential)

i'm unsure why you'd group modding with copying code? modding is nothing at all like copying code; i've modded tons of games and never had to copy code to mod

in any case i disagree that it teaches someone how to write "good" code, or even that such a thing as "good" code exists. the purpose of programming isn't to write "good" code, it's to code stuff that works. if code is bad, but works, that's more than sufficient (in fact it may be preferable to code that is good and works, even, because it's more individual and interesting). i think the obsession with good code is a major problem in programming

i don't think i ever copied code, even when first learning. programming is a language. copying large stretches of code is basically like trying to learn to read and write english by copying large sections of novels other people wrote rather than learning to speak your own sentences

that said you don't need to master programming to make good games. but you do need to know how to program, not just how to copy and paste code. if you try to create a game by copying and pasting code from tutorials and examples and modifying it, you won't be able to finish a game at all, it'll actually be *harder* that way than writing code yourself

i mean, try to imagine writing a novel by copying and pasting sentences and paragraphs from other novels and from how to write exercises. do you really think that'd work? it'd create a monstrosity, not a novel. it'd also be about 1000x harder to write a decent novel that way than the normal way, even though it may seem like it'd save you time

if you think of what you are doing as harder rather than easier, maybe it'd reduce some of the fear of just coding stuff yourself? i dunno, as i said i never had this problem, so i'm just guessing about how to fix it. but it's definitely a problem that will stand in your way, a habit worth getting rid of as soon as possible

note that i'm not against copying code for specialized functions of course -- e.g. if you want to copy someone's self-contained code to find out if two triangles intersect, that's fine, because maybe writing that yourself isn't easy for everyone, it's specialized knowledge. but trying to copy very major parts of code for your game, like 'how to code character movement' or 'how to code changing weapons' or 'how to code using items' and then copy some 'how to code jumping' code from somewhere else and then some 'how to code a title screen' code from somewhere else, rather than coding that stuff yourself, will lead to problems

an important distinction to make though is that demographics don't equal time spent since people buy variable amounts of games per year. e.g. if a 15 year old spends more time playing games than a 35 year old, they also buy more games. so most games will tend to be bought by younger people even though the average age of a gamer is higher. i mean look at the indie games that have been successful, e.g. minecraft. minecraft's audience is largely 12-17

i'm not saying to make long games if you don't want to though, just that the justifications for making really short games (like that gamers are older and tend to prefer shorter games) tend to ring hollow to me. i can't think of very many indie games that were short that sold in large numbers; most of the successes i can think of offhand (the aforementioned minecraft, fez, super meat boy, aquaria, rogue legacy, etc.) tend to be at least 15 hours long, and often have 30+ hours if you try to do everything in them

another thing is that the time spent making a game isn't like x hours of work for x hours of gameplay; a 30 minute long game can take almost as long to make as a 3 hour long game, since you have to create the controls, mechanics, art, music, etc., for both, the only major difference is that the 3 hour long game has more levels and perhaps more variety in some game elements. but a 30 min game could easily take 80% of the effort of a 3 hour long game. that's one thing to consider too: that turning a short game into a long one doesn't take all that much effort, relatively. and if that extra content that makes a game longer remains optional i don't see how it's a bad thing to do that

i almost never replay games in general, but i've replayed long games, typically about 10 or 15 years after i originally played them. when that long of a time has passed, you forget the details of a long story, and playing it again is like re-reading a novel you liked as a kid

e.g. i suspect most of the people who bought the recent final fantasy X/X2 HD re-release for the ps3 *already* played and beat the games on the ps2 a long time ago, and just want to re-experience them a decade or so later. i agree that after you beat a 100 hour game you don't want to immediately replay it, but replay it after 10 years? sure

another thing not to forget that is pretty important is that adults have less time to play games than kids and teens do, and if you make games, a lot of your audience is going to be kids and teens. so like just because you may not have time to play a 100 hour game doesn't mean your players won't. try not to judge what your audience likes only by what you like (though i mean if you just want to make games that people like you yourself would enjoy playing that's fine too). generally the people who play your games will be much younger than you are, and have more time to play games

i think you should be able to complete any game quickly if you know what you are doing, but that if you want to keep playing there should be a lot of content to keep you entertained

e.g. my ideal would be something like: 10 hours for the main quest, 200 hours for optional content and side quests

there are a number of games that come close to this actually, primarily western RPGs like baldur's gate 2

(this is also what i'm going for with saturated dreamers; the main game can be completed in about 5 hours if you know what you're doing, but there's about 50 hours of optional exploration if you want to take your time and see everything)