300 euros is no money.

For some of us, that is heaps of money.

Sell those sonic cartridges

How could you suggest such a thing? D=

If he lost his right arm, why is it the left arm that has been replaced with some kind of giant blade thing...?

[Dugan]

Dugan- Thanks for your encouragement and analysis, but that still loses the mood of the image...

Ishi- That looks really great! I don't know why I wasn't ever able to get it looking like that, but that's pretty much exactly what I need. I'll be using that for reference... Or even robbing the colors from it directly, if you don't mind.

1982- Yeah, unless it's a complete clone/fangame (and I have to admit that I am generally not a fan of those) of Contra, that first one looks way too much like the original character design.

Squirrelsquid- That looks excellent!
On the one with the vehicle, though... That's a wheel, right? Assuming the motorized unicycle or whatever is supposed to be moving in that picture, I would think you'd want to do something with the wheel so it looks like it's turning.
Unless you were already planning on doing that and it just wasn't finished yet... Or that's an idle animation...

This is so great 
It seems like you may have removed a few of the characters from before... did you? I think you should try to put in as many as possible. I like having a lot of characters in games, heh...
Also, you should make it possible to set the character back on random (unless it already is possible, and I just didn't figure that out).


I actually like the laser rifle. It might need a little bit of adjustment, but you should leave it in.

I definitely prefer the old version... The new one just seems to have too much detail.
Could you try something intermediate, though?
You could close up the mouth a little more (remove the teeth and tongue) and make the nose more subtle (less obvious nostrils, or none at all?)... but leave all the creases in the face.

I removed the shadow on the bottom of the head so you could see the eyes more. I also made the body one shade instead of the stray pixel in there. Finally, I changed the palette to the GB palette.

Thanks, but... That really changes the feel of the whole sprite. It's a lot less round, and it makes me uncomfortable, because it doesn't seem like my style anymore. It's a pretty significant change; it turns it into something that isn't at all what I had in mind. I guess that means it just isn't a good sprite, since I can't improve it without turning it into something substantially different.

I hadn't really anticipated that this would turn into such a headache. I was OK with how everything looked, so I animated all of my characters. Now it seems that nobody else likes it, and that may not actually have anything to do with my screen settings at all...

I think I'm going to take a break from pixel art for a while. My pencils probably miss me anyway.

Interesting... OK, that's an idea.
It's odd, though, because I was thinking my screen was impractically bright, but according to that test, it was actually far too dark...?

This looks and sounds amazing...
Too bad I will never play it because I don't have a PS3 and can't afford to buy one.

...Somebody called me crazy once, too; are they going to kick me out of the country if I ever tell anyone I'm not?

I hate our government.

That's totally beyond my programming skill, I'm afraid.

Bleh, I don't know... I think I'm still losing a lot of the effect. The darkness is an important part of the game... But I don't want it to be too difficult to read.

Really? I don't think I ever doubted the guy. It seemed like it would have been a really stupid thing to joke about, and he was constantly giving verifiable details. He just struck me as a very real, honest person.

I seem to have a lot of problems with darkness because of my computer screen... Can you guys help me out? Look it this thread.

EDIT:
Or is this good?


It's visible, but now it seems a little bright...

I work on a Dell Studio laptop, and it seems to have an extremely bright screen by default. I've already turned down the brightness once (to -20) in the ATI control center thing, but that still might not be enough.

I'm currently working on a project that involves a lot of dark, grayscale pixel art... And it's possible that it looks OK on my computer, but is hard for other people to see. Later I might be able to borrow some other computers to see how my stuff looks on them... But for now, could I have some examples so I can adjust my monitor until they look right?
I would prefer to have something similar to what I'm trying to produce... So slightly scaled-up pixel art would be good, and it should be dark, but definitely visible... I think limited colors (grayscale especially) would be the most helpful.

Also, if anybody has a similar computer, it would be nice to know how you have it set up currently.

I feel genuinely sympathetic toward Vasily; he's had to deal with a lot of trouble. I wish people would start taking him more seriously. He posts in a lot of places on the Internet, and seems to get a lot of "Haha, this guy's so crazy!"
I think he really does have at least a few psychological issues... In fact, it'd almost be insulting to say that he's fine after what he went through. That said, though, it's nothing to laugh about, and from what I can tell, he is absolutely harmless. I don't think he belongs in a mental hospital at all.

This sounds pretty nice. I love the characters. Their descriptions sound pretty interesting, they have fun names, and they look cool.
As I alluded to in the pixel art thread, though, I hope that's not the largest robot's idle stance, because it looks very plain and out of place.

Also, I love the title of the game. "Automaton" is one of my favorite words ever, and it, coupled with the word "fisticuffs", makes it sound very Victorian and gentlemanly. 
...Even though it's clearly brightly colored, futuristic, and about beating people up, so it probably is neither Victorian nor gentlemanly at all. 

Most of those are really cool, Jackspers!
The robot looks kind of dull and static at the moment, though.


Also:

I hope I'm not frowned upon for reposting that, but I want to hear people's thoughts on it, and it ended up at the bottom of a page, so I don't think anyone really saw it... 

After I finish what I am currently working on, I have a longer-term project I want to start on. The graphics are going to be drawn in pencil, but I will color and animate everything on the computer. It will be interesting to see what happens with backgrounds, because I have a lot more experience drawing characters and objects...

In the end, it may not end up looking noticeably different than something drawn with a tablet... But I don't have a tablet, so this is all I can do.
I'd be curious to hear some of the differences between working digitally with a tablet and working on paper with ink, graphite, charcoal, etc... I've never used a tablet, so I don't really know what it's like.

On the whole "skeleton" matter:
I already have the main characters for the game drawn. I just drew them completely on paper... On the computer, I'll do some quick edits to turn my pencil lines into harder black lines and remove everything else. After that, I'll fill it all in with color.

...I have no idea what that is, but it's pretty cool.

[DESTROY AMERICA FROM THE INSIDE]

maybe we need to have a huckleberry finn video game competition

No we don't. He's right. Huckleberry Finn is racist propaganda disguised as classic literature. DISGUISED. Because it's NOT a classic, guys. It's a WEAPON.
A WEAPON DESIGNED TO DESTROY AMERICA FROM THE INSIDE.



...That was sarcasm, by the way.

Roger Ebert is, at best, clueless and hopelessly out of touch with reality... Assuming that it's important for me not to overstate things.
Otherwise:
He's an idiot.


...Just in case any of that actually needed to be clarified...