It's clearly too soon for me to be part of this post's audience, but I think i've learned plenty of this. Probably won't notice WHAT I've learned until I make some related mistakes (thats me), but I'll probably remember this post then.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share this stuff, it's really appreciated.

I'm working on a blog called Forever WIP, where I'm making a (rough) Unity game step by step. It's in spanish though, as there's almost nothing available to my fellow spaniards, and I wanted to share the few things I know.

I hope its helpful for someone: Forever WIP

@joshua: that looks really professional. The book and fonts are gorgeous.

A quick little tidbit from me: I think you are drawing the hakama with what you see with your mind, not your eyes. You know there are two legs, and draw it as such. Most of the references I found look like a single piece with several pleats.

Not quite right, but thank you for the advice.

There are lots of types of hakamas, but they use to be like a tubular, long single piece(as you said) or as wide pants. Both of them have 5 pleads on the frontside and 2 pleads on the backside (because of the seven virtues of the bushido).

The tubular one, nandom bakama, was probably the origin of the hakama, as in ancient times before the samurais rich and noble people used to wear them.
The one Ukyo Tachibana wears is a tubular one:



On the other hand, the one that warriors and martial arts pratitioners used to wear was called umanori, and featured divided legs. I have one of them as I used to practise haikido. They also use them in kendo.

Kenshin Himura, from Rurouni Kenshin, wore this kind of hakama, as they were popular on the Edo age.


I'm sorry if my english is difficult to understand, I'm pretty tired right now xD

Well, long story short, my samurai will feature a divided hakama. I'll draw some characters this afternoon.

@green: I changed the palette and contrast as you did.

The legs were too short so I made him a bit taller.
Also shifted the weight so he leans on his right leg and applied shades to show the knee, fixed his hair and shoulderpad and tried to make his left hand (the one holding the katana) easier to read.

And changed the light position. I hope it's better



@failrate: Thanks! It's hard to find iaijutsu-related stuff ^^

I don't really like the palette right now, I don't think the colors really fit him. But I took it almost enterely from Soma Cruz on Dawn of Sorrow, just to see if the lights and shades matched well.

It still lacks detail but I like the look of his hakama (the samurai pants).





Okay, first try done! Unchain the hounds! 

@green: Thanks for your advice! Don't worry about sounding harsh and that stuff, I'm here to learn and need to be conscious of every mistake. Learning what I do badly is the first step to improve :D

Ok, so I will try to make better use of light sources, I'll stop using dithering by now and I'll look for a proper palette.

About the poses, you're totally right. I tried to make some nice poses for a Iaijutsu user, but it was kind of hard. I'm no artist and turning my silly stances on the mirror to a pixel character was really hard for me. Now I've got some nice references, most of then from Ukyo Tachibana from Samurai Spirits and Johnny from GG.

And I need to step down. These are so hi-res for me xD I analyzed them and came to the conclusion that I need to start with something easier.

I'll try something right now :D

A few day's ago I decided to give GameMaker a try.
Yesterday I tried it and I liked it.
Today there's a 66% sale of GM Professional.


 

[me]

Well, here I am!

A few years ago I started a project of a game, and tried to teach myself some pixel art. I tried, but I then started to work on a bunch of projects with other people, and kinda stopped drawing, pixelling...

Now I want to make a game for me, something I want to play. That means Castlevania tribute with samurais, ninjas and stuff like that, but it also means nice pixels. So I better learn some :D

Ok, here's the stuff I made back on 2010. There's also the last build of the game I started in flashpunk, so you can see some clunky-and-ugly-as-shit animations inside.

For now, criticise this stuff. Be hard, gotta learn 





The last build


I'll be posting my new work soon. I hope it will be better than the stuff up there.

Start a workshop thread and work on getting better! 

Ok! Now I have my New Year's objective!

The belly-breath fits him betterm but now it seems that the fps are too fast. Or maybe it's just my eyes

Well, happy new year to everyone! Gotta eat my grapes (spanish tradition :D)

Darksiders.

Never played it before because I thought it was some hack'n slash in the vein of GoW, Devil May Cry and stuff. And its a Zelda. Damn, it's way a better zelda that most new-gen Zeldas!

I'm having a great time playing it, is lots of fun and I totally recommend it.

Reworked the character from the above mockup. I'm liking the proportions more, not too excited about the bland jump suit he's wearing though. Trying to make the animations  fluid and 'juicy.'

The suit looks like a baby body-suit to me. Maybe adding two buttons or shortening the white zone would help. Also shoes.

Your animation skills are really good, I love these walk-cycles. Do you have some reference for the feet/leg critical poses? I'm starting to draw sprites again and I'd really like something like that (my cycles are the ugliest thing ever).

My priority right now is to have something playable quickly, so I can worry more about the game that about the code or the engine. Gmaker seems like the way to go, but I still dont know which version choose.

So which version of GameMaker should I buy?
Gamemaker 8.1or Game Maker Studio?

I'm not sure about their differences, or if GM8.1 is just an old version.

Also, thanks for the engine, it'll be really useful

Code:

Game.ply.moving = !(!(l ^ r) & !(u ^ d));

I made this crazy little thing that only moves you when you... idk how to explain it

You won't need an obfuscator it seems

Well, I worked with sprites on Unity in a game and it was a real pain in the ass. Maybe I was doing it wrong xD, but it felt like most of Unity potential was lost.
I built a pretty weird script just to animate the sprites, and the file size would also skyrocket.

I'm pretty curious about GameMaker though. Never tried it, and as a fan of Locomalito's works it looks promising.

Will check out PyGame and Love2D though.

Programming Goals:

1) Finish this cursed flash game already. It's christmas themed. Yep.
 

2) Start working on the game I really want to make.

3) Finish it. FINISH IT DAMN FUTURE ME!!

And yes, I'm happy, maybe I don't sound happy but I am.

Also learning Git should be on this list. Somewhere. 0) I guess, but i'm lazy.

Hi!

A few years ago I started building a metroidvania using Flashpunk. Now I'm thinking on something similar, but I'm not sure of what should be my development platform. I'm sure I don't want to make a flash game, so I'm not using AS3. I've worked with unity before, but I can't animate anything and I've only modeled weapons before.
Also, I know C/C++ and Java but I've never actually coded a game with these languages. I never tried GameMaker or any game developing tool.

The game would be similar to "new-gen" Castlevanias, as SotN and the GBA/NDS ones. With a nice twist, but that would come later :D So you can expect a 2d Map-based exploration, lot's of rooms, combat and platforming action.

So here's my question: What would be your "weapon/s of choice"?
I'm not afraid of learning something new :D

I've recently got really addicted to Infected Mushroom. With rock, metal music I start singing and kinda lose my concentration. "Saeed" or "Becoming Insane" help me get into programmer-super-saiyan-mode.

As long as were talking tiny details, I feel like the big eye deserves at least as much anti-aliasing as the little ones. It has half as many greys. Or maybe there's a technical reason for that?

In my mind, the absence of a-a and the grey bar that reads upon the big eye reads as if its coming out from the shade.