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[speeder]

Probably I am already derailing the new section by posting a screenshot instead of specific art...

Anyway, that:



Specific things I need help: I don't want to change much the hues of objects, and I want them to remain neon, but too much bright saturated objects is tiring to the eyes (or not, dunno).

The white blocks are actually gray, but I made then gray because when they are white they drew more attention than the actual game area.





Bash away (if you are right, don't troll over internet, it is harder to detect sarcast, and I am even worse to detect sarcasm in internet or not), I want the game to be the best game of that style EVER, and by EVER I mean really EVER.

[J. R. Hill]

I'd recommend using any other color scheme than red, blue, and yellow.  The white/gray is a little bland, it'd be nice if you gave it some kind of color tint.

[speeder]

I forgot to explain the color scheme...

Blue = Top.
Red = Bottom.
Yellow = Bonus (everything related to bonuses and score, yellow blocks you don't have to kill, but if you do you get bonus... all objects drop yellow items, that if you grab you get bonus, and so on...)

Other colors on the hud: Some power (the items that fill those bars have the same color as the bars themselves, and the special effect when you use those bars also have the same color).

White = Non-interactive objects.

The player is white because... dunno O.o The art of the player is a mistery even to me (that actually made it).

[J. R. Hill]

Um, I know you say you don't want to change the hues, but that's what you have to do to make it look awesome.  (Trust me, I am a scientist.)

Also, it will look best if there is either hue variation in the actual objects or if they scale to white in concentrated areas. (like real neon tubes)  Not necessarily all the way to white, but towards it.  You can make them get brighter in the center or at the edges, but scaling colors towards alpha isn't going to achieve the effect you want alone.

Mostly I'm just talking about the central pieces, the HUD elements on the left are fine, the right is okay, but the gradient is too concentrated in the middle so it draws the eye to the center, and the icon in the middle of that thing just seems out of place.  The "neon effect" on the numbers at the top isn't working that well either, it just looks like they're blurry.

Also, the current best application of this art style is probably the SYNSO games.

[speeder]

I wonder if that toward-white thing is possible without "glow"

Except for the score (that I know it is crap, it was the same font used in the title, that I changed 4 days ago), you will notice that stuff on the game don't glow...

I have two reasons (dunno if they are good), the first is that originally my intention was to imitate Vectrex but with color. The second is that if I make the blocks glow for example, I fear the glow of all them summed will make a mess instead.

[SundownKid]

It doesn't seem "neon" because the boxes are pure color and fade into black, without the white of the neon.



The left box is how it looks in the screenshot, but it blends into the black too much. The middle box is a more visible-looking version, and the right is my attempt at imitating a neon light with the glow. I think if you don't make the glow too powerful, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Jrsquee]

If you're going to be doing a neon-style thing, the colors become extremely important. That's all there is! You've got to have some really strong color choices, and red-blue-yellow is kinda lazy/predictable. take a look at other neon games. Geometry wars, pacman ce, capitain forever, etc.




If you're worried about glow - you just have to approach it the right way. don't put so much glow on that everything's a mess! geometry wars 2 has the glow-explosions be a complementary color to what's happing onscreen.

Don't forget to look at where this neon style stuff came from:

[speeder]

The colors in my game are tied to gameplay effects.

Blue is up.
Red is down.
Yellow is bonus.

Magenta, Orange, Cyan and Green are "powerups".

Adding white to blue, make the blue lighter, more interesting and still blue.


But I don't found how to make a red that still looks like red, my attempts result into pink, or orange.



Also, what color I should paint that big lifebar?

[SundownKid]

I believe that the red color you are using now works just fine. Unlike the dark blue, it does not blend into the black background.

Also, in general, the various bars and the score should, in my opinion, be separated from the actual gameplay screen in order to reduce confusion. Right now, it practically seems like the numbers are part of the game somehow.

I mocked up what I think would make it easier to read since there is no grid or gameplay in the way of reading the score. (Just used the same blue color since it was easier - sorry the life bar is backwards  )

[iffi]

To me, the background grid is quite distracting. Unless it plays a specific role in gameplay, I would suggest darkening it (especially the minor lines) a bit so it's less shiny compared to the gameplay objects, or brightening the game blocks. Right now it looks a little messy with all the lines overlapping everywhere, especially when they cross with the game objects. Maybe lessening the density of the grid would help as well.

[speeder]

That grid got changed a while ago already.

Now the grid defaults to black, except when something is distorting it (the grid is to give feedback on some stuff), for example the red ball make the grid distorted and slighly red, the green power (that manipulates space, and the reason why the grid was invented) heavily distorts the grid and paint it green...

Explosions also do the same.


This way it does not make the screen confusing, the grid only shows up when it is really important, also it makes the grid more "glowly" since it go from black to some bright color then back to black, with the contrast showing "brightness" more than actual brightness all the time.


The more sparse grid is a crap background, I have to change it, but I am without ideas for new backgrounds.

[increpare]

The more sparse grid is a crap background, I have to change it, but I am without ideas for new backgrounds.

particle effects, cellular automata, colour gradients shifting, 3d objects rotating slowly maybe - can you think of 10 more possible things, now that I've listed a couple?

[speeder]

Here the new grid how it work.




Maybe I need to tone down a bit the green... (notice how around the ball is orange too...).



@incprepare my idea was make the background fitting to the theme, and make them not really intrusive, for the game itself is not much a problem for some levels (like, retro levels I tought of putting a cellular automata that looks like atari pixels), but for the menu I have no idea... (I need a background so you can see that the menu is actually sliding, and also to you see that the semi-transparent hexes)

I got inspired for that grid background from the Kenta Cho games (specifically rRootage...) actually, the entire original interface came from Kenta Cho games, reason why there are "floating" stuff, I designed those for the alpha version, then I changed the resolution and had no idea on where to put them without making the game area too small, if you look at the multiplier bar on the button it is actually a floating number and some bars, originally it had a background drawing, but I removed it and never made a new one and kinda forgot it there).

[namre]

I agree with the ones pointed by the other posters. The colors lacked the glow that comes off from neon lights.

[speeder]

You people seemly got attached to the word neon...

I don't especifically want to look neon if it does not look good (and from my tests so far, it does not look good).

I want suggestions on how to make the overall game more appealing without changing the art style too much...

[J. R. Hill]

I think it would be more appealing if it were more neon-like lol.

[namre]

I don't especifically want to look neon if it does not look good (and from my tests so far, it does not look good).

Well, you did ask for suggestions and comments and the first thing that we noticed is that it lacked a little vibrancy that a neon style has. Most of us noticed this immediately, so it is a good idea to consider our suggestion. If you have already done tests as you have said, then post the results here so we could further improve it.

In line with this, I would really recommend looking at the examples posted by jr. You could try and get the feel from those examples and give it your twist.

Aside from that, I can't offer anything else visually.

Goodluck with that!

[Renton]

You people seemly got attached to the word neon...

Might be the title of the thread.

Or the fact that you said "I want them to remain neon".

So...

[speeder]

Yep...

Anyway, what spurred the thread was that some people said the games does not look fun when looking at screenshots, and that is what I want specifically to fix, and the colors.

To make the things "neon" with that white-glow I would need to significantly change the art, the "bricks" for example would become just rectangles, but when next to each other it look strange, Geometry Wars neon work because the objects are never next to each other, they are away, or overlapping.

If you look at the neon tetris example, there are some space between the pieces, but I don't want to do that.