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[Ishi]

Exactly; that's the main reason for the low-res simple style. Similarly I'll try and put variety in the environment even if each individual tile is pretty simplistic.

[ptoing]

Sounds like a good idea

A few crits on your digital paintings.

The colours are very dull, looks like you shade with black and white more or less.
Also all the colours are seperate. Like here is pink, here is brown, here is skintone. No mixing at all.
This gives stuff a very seperated look.

Quick fix I did, not optimal but better imo.


What I did was just editing curves in Photoshop, making darks darker and lights lighter overall, and then adding more blue to the shadows and some more red to the highlights.

[Ishi]

Yeah I must admit I don't often put too much thought into the colours. Most of the time I sketch late at night, and as I like to get them done in an evening I end up throwing some colours on at 1am. My colours tend to be pretty literal anyway, I never had much of an eye for ambitious palettes like yours

I should probably put more effort into colours in the future though. Here's a quick thing. Ended up messing with the levels as it turned out pretty grey again, but I tried to share some of the shading colours between materials. (Not the best sketch, was mainly interested in having something to colour).



None of these drawings and things are strictly related to the devlog so I'll try and post something more game-related next time.

[ptoing]

What you can do is value studies. Just use your paint tool and try to copy black and white photos. Try to work from a middle grey.

Also for your other images, do not work from white. While white paper is OK, on a monitor we are looking at a lightsource, so painting on white messes with your perception and stuff looks darker than it is and in the end stuff comes out dull. I usually make a browny/red glaze layer over the lineart before I start colouring.



My palettes are really not that elaborate usually. I just try to not choose lots of colours from the colourwheel all the time, but stick to a bunch of well selected colours and then blend from those. You can see that in that video as well.

[Ishi]

Maybe in the future - don't want to get too bogged down in technical art stuff at the moment. Will bear the advice in mind though, cheers! (Oh yeah and did you post a video? Nothing's showing.)

Made a start on tile collision and suchlike. The tiles are used to create vector lines to collide against, so in the future if I want to collide against non-tile stuff it should be easy enough to slot in. Also, slopes should just magically work when I put them in (usually my platformer slopes are totally hacked in).



Currently I don't have a run button; Trixie just runs after walking for a short period of time. It feels pretty clunky though, and doesn't make much sense, as running from a standstill is something anyone can do. I'll probably put one in. (Or maybe a double-tap to run).

[Thomas Finch]

This looks really good!
If you're using WASD for movement, then could have holding shift and walking make her run.

[Ishi]

Don't think I've ever played a platformer with WASD. Is that something people do now? I was always more of an arrow keys guy (or preferably joypad of course). I might put optional WASD in.

[Relix]

(Or maybe a double-tap to run).

Don't do this, I beg you. It's usually clunky because of the timing needed to double-tap, even in the "best" commercial games.  You can make it optional, but also offer and button to activate the run.

Just dropped in to whine about that, carry on.

[Thomas Finch]

Don't think I've ever played a platformer with WASD. Is that something people do now? I was always more of an arrow keys guy (or preferably joypad of course). I might put optional WASD in.

I suppose I don't play a large amount of platformers and it definitely depends on the player's preference, but I personally hate using the arrow keys. WASD just feels so convenient to me. I mean, you can easily reach space for jump, shift for run, etc. I suppose the arrow keys have other keys for that too though.

[Ishi]

I suppose I don't play a large amount of platformers and it definitely depends on the player's preference, but I personally hate using the arrow keys. WASD just feels so convenient to me. I mean, you can easily reach space for jump, shift for run, etc. I suppose the arrow keys have other keys for that too though.

I suppose it depends if you want to play with one hand or not, typically I use arrow keys + ZXC (however many buttons the game needs). I add loads of keys to the input detection so people can pretty much do what they want.

(Or maybe a double-tap to run).

Don't do this, I beg you. It's usually clunky because of the timing needed to double-tap, even in the "best" commercial games.  You can make it optional, but also offer and button to activate the run.

Well I don't want to make things clunky, but I'm not sure if I want to reduce the run down to simply holding a button. Currently, the run is initiated by walking for 1.5 seconds (definitely clunky). But it encourages you to get around the environment smoothly in order to maintain momentum (don't hit walls, don't fall too far, etc). The main thing about double-tap is it's a one-off action that begins the running, rather than a run button that just involves holding it, which fits in better with that momentum stuff.

I think I could make the double-tap detection good enough, so I might try it. I'll bear your objection in mind though, I agree I've never particularly enjoyed any double-tapping in games I've played previously.

[ptoing]

I wanted to link this video, must have fudged it somehow.

[Ishi]

Nice video, makes me want to paint.

Today I started ledge climbing. Seems to work pretty solidly, so I'm happy with it. I haven't done the 'lean away from ledge and jump' thing yet, just climbing up and dropping down.

   

I'm adding transition animations and stuff as I go; for example when you grab a ledge she kind of bobs and her hair falls back into place. It ties the movements together fairly naturally and adds to the weighty feeling. I need to avoid the feeling of the animations actually getting in the way of the gameplay though (which I felt in the Wii Wario Land).

Let me know if my updates get too small or too often. I'm finding it pretty motivating to talk about the game with people, and cheers for all the nice comments and stuff so far that I haven't responded to.

The current short term plan is to get all of the core player movements in (crawling, wall jumping, etc etc), and maybe a decent test environment, and then show it to some people at the September Midlands Indies meetup (a UK Midlands monthly pub session I go to).

[SolarLune]

Nice animations, and the ledge climbing is fine.

I don't mind double-tapping to run, either - it's a lot easier on keyboard than on a gamepad.

My only slightest complaint is that she looks like a little girl in the sprites, but she's a woman in the stills. Perhaps you should give her more womanly features on the sprites?

[Thomas Finch]

My only slightest complaint is that she looks like a little girl in the sprites, but she's a woman in the stills. Perhaps you should give her more womanly features on the sprites?

Just making her slightly taller would probably fix that.

[BomberTREE]

I only had time to skim through and check out the images, but I LOVE the look of this 

[Ishi]

A fun exercise:



I actually quite like that last one, but the game's going to be fairly lighthearted I think, and it comes across as pretty serious. The details would be a bit of a pain to animate too.

The second one is ok, but I think I'm pretty happy just with the first one (which is the current in-game sprite). Having in-game sprites look a bit childish has been fine in tons of games before . Admittedly not wanting to redo animations is also a factor. Any thoughts?

[The Monster King]

the only change that would be "worth it" is the last one and you said it wasn't the direction you want to take your game in. dont redo all your animations just so that your character is 1-2 pixels higher, the game looks already pretty nice especially considering the animations. thats a real nice walkcycle.

[Hangedman]

You've got a good little style going, don't worry about changing it, keep at it 

[SolarLune]

Yeah, I guess I agree. I like the style you have, too. Continue with the game!

[Ishi]

Cheers guys, thanks for the encouragement