Concept art to execution so far...

Important things:
"Feel" - Sound effects, hitsparks, hitstop and hitstun. These are probably the 4 most important things to make the game's attack have meaningful impact.

Sound is important, the "crunch" of getting hit has to sound right. Bad examples: Melty Blood, Arcana Heart. Good examples: Any Street Fighter game.

Hitsparks can't be intrusive yet give you a clear indicated you hit someone, block sparks are important (different color and shape) to help separate the feeling that something is blocked. Good example: Guilty Gear XX series, SF3: 3rd Strike.

Hitstop if you don't know what this is, this is the amount of time the game stops when a hit (and only a hit, not a block) connects, this also helps separate the feeling of a guarded move and a move that hits. Also it adds a bit of "feeling" to the hit, as a small dramatic pause. On top of this, hitstop ONLY affects the two things that are touching.

Hitstun this sort of falls into hitstop, but generally the more powerful the move, the longer the move stops time, the key difference is generally hitstun takes the same amount of time as blockstun. Bad examples of hitstun/stop are the Mortal Kombat series, any good tournament fighting game has examples of hitstun/stop.

Also it should be noted that at high levels, hitstun is actually something that changes the way the game is played. If hitstop/stun amount to a number greater than 15 frames, most humans can confirm this into a fast followup. If you give something TOO much hitstun/stop, then it may adversely affect the balance of your game.

Otherwise, the most important thing is character variety + depth, then character balance. I can forgive mediocre balance if the first two things are excellent. I play fighting games in tournaments so I hope this gives you some perspective on fighters without inciting a flame war.

If you have any specific questions about fighting games I can answer a lot of indepth things about Street Fighter 4, 3, Guilty Gear and BlazBlue as I've played all of those games at tournament level at some point in my life.

Hey, I'm a pixel artist looking for a programmer to collaborate with me on a pretty basic platform game. Lack of experience is fine (This would be my first major project), and I'm not picky as to how the game is programmed (game maker, XNA, whatever), as long as you can A) Finish the game B) Have enough expertise to finish it. Then that would be great.

I'd like to design it but if you have a good amount of experienced, I'd be willing to just do the graphics.

Alternatively, if anyone is doing a project that's already in development and needs someone to help on graphics, I'd be willing to help

Basically I just want to do and finish a small scale project so I have a very solid understanding of the process and gain experience in game development. Seeking anyone who is looking to do/for the same.

Contact -
AIM: alotofeffs
Mail: [email protected]

The top hat bothers me.

Mind to tell me what exactly bothers you?

the hat actually doesnt look like it fits around his head. actions speak louder than words so:



modified on left, original on right.

edit: oh i dont want to sound like a nitpicky bastard, it's actually quite nice minus that minor detail.

Mostly messing with colors/contrast here. Background was done in like 2 minutes.

haven't posted in a while!

heres some fun stuff i made in the past couple months.



street fighter characters done in a mother style, i wasn't too concerned with color limits or anything.


aaaaaaaaaaaaand jax from league of legends. this guy was a nightmare because he actually has a lot going on for him in terms of detail and color, it was quite a challenge fitting him in under 16 colors.

I'm not asking you to show, not tell, obviously, when it comes to red crystals.  They're going from purple to red (not a very friendly color), and the light they give off is extremely dim when they turn red, and you have to stand next to them to survive (and you are often shrouded in darkness anyway). It just seems a little harder to grasp than it needs to be, is all. Even if you designed it the way you did, not all people will recognize that.  Making them give off a hint of more 'positive' color would probably make it more intuitive (and fix that last jump).  I thought the crystals being red was simply so I could identify they were there for when their light came back, not that you could survive them, at first anyway.

Also one minor problem was I got stuck on a ledge that led directly into a spike (no ground to move onto). Only happened once though.

Sorry if I'm being overly critical

My only major problem with the game were some parts of the levels you could survive in a lot of darkness for extended periods of time, and in others you died if you wandered off by like a single pixel (mostly going inbetween red crystals). The last set of red crystals were a huge problem (the one with the lone bat sitting on a platform) because you pretty much have absolutely no idea that there's a lack of ground around there, and when you wander into it, it feels like you died because of a lack of light, not that there were twp holes there, there's pretty much no indication telling you you have to jump after that bat especially.  A little less deadly darkness or whatever inbetween red crystals and a little more light on that jump would be really helpful.  I think it took me 25 tries through simple trial and error to realize there was just a lack of ground there.

The atmosphere was superb though, and the ending was awesome.

Edit: Oh and a minor nitpick, but I don't recall the game telling me that Z jumps, or showing the player you can survive next to a red crystal for extended periods of time.

Finished this the other day. Just more experimentation with a 15 color limit (typical of most CPS2 board games).

Work in progress of a non-playable, overworld character for a GameBoy Colour-Styled RPG.

That's got a lot of character for 3 colors, I like it.

It's Mega Man.

This makes me tight in the pants.

Random lurker here, I do stuff, here's something I whipped up today:

Tried to make a "grappler" character in a standard fighting game format without making him huge and steroid-y.  He turned out kind of generic.  Used 13 colors total.