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[happymonster]

A bit more graphics work done today - I think I'm almost at the point where I have enough graphics done to show a screenshot. Although I find myself rather hesitant at the reaction, I hope people don't mind the graphics too much and can see past that to the game I'm making.. 

[Miguelito]

Screw you, you make better graphics than I could ever hope to.
Seriously, from what I've seen (OMG indiscretion treason NDA breakage) your project will look delicious.

Let's see them screenshots, I dare you. _{In due time, whenever you're ready.}

[happymonster]

Thanks for the vote of confidence! But I've never been very happy with the art I do..

[happymonster]

The theme for today

As I've already said, the game (as yet unnamed), will be in a sci-fi setting. However it will not use the kind of post-modern science-fiction setting or art of today, but will be inspired by sci-fi artwork and settings (in novels, TV and stories) from the 1930's to the 1960's. That means a lot of smooth curves, so rockets rather than spaceships, more colourful and less detailed shapes and designs.

Also that era is more of a positive or optimistic kind of science fiction, rather than some of the more dark and intense science driven fiction that is popular today. To some extent X-Com was also using a similar kind of style with the 60's comic book style artwork and colours. But I'd prefer to have an art style closer to that of the 30's with the designs.

[happymonster]

I'm experimenting with adding a bit more shading to the graphics, so they don't look quite so flat. I like it so far, will see how well it works for some of the other artwork.

[Eternal Man]

Can't you please post a screen? 

[happymonster]

Tomorrow.. Still improving the graphics! 

[happymonster]

Fitting in

Last year I did some work with Miguelito on a sadly abandoned project. One of the problems we had with the game was trying to work out the best resolution for the awesome graphics that Miguelito created. We tried looking at the 480 x 320 resolution of the iPhone, but whatever we picked meant that other sizes (Android phones, PC screenmodes) had big borders or cut-off graphics, even when we scaled at x2, x3, etc..

That is one of the problems with pixel-art, unless it's very low in resolution it just doesn't scale cleanly at higher resolutions (or smaller). With fractional scaling, everything looks very ugly. With the large amount of PC / smartphone / tablet resolutions this has caused a real problem for all games using pixel art.

This has in part led to the popularity of low-fi graphics which can scale cleanly to different resolutions, but the problem is it looks very blocky when scaled up. It seems this is an insomountable problem for pixel art games and something every developer has struggled with.

Of course, you could invent a new engine which (albeit with a few restrictions) solves these problems completely.. Now, I wonder which person would come up with something like that? 

[Yodhe]

Being tile based, I simply have a differing number of tiles on the screen according to the resolution, with the screen centered on the current unit. Of course I think that unfortunately 48x48 pixel sized tiles might of been too large, and I probably should of gone with something a bit more divisible like 32x32.

So come on then, lets see your etchings? 

[Miguelito]

48x48 might of been too large
should of gone with 32x32.

INTEDESTING.
(This is meant for happymonster, no need to understand.)

So come on then, lets see your etchings? 

Concur.

[happymonster]

Ok, here we go.. (be kind gentlemen!)
(Also, please add in random title of "Oh no! The Villanous Zog have invaded our Heroes test map!!" to the screenshot)

This is how the game will look if played on a 800 x 480 Android phone:



What's that you say? You only have an old Android phone with a 320 x 240 screen?! Oh well, no problem here you go (shown at x2 so it's not too small to see online here):



Ah, that's still looking good, but I have an old iPhone (480 x 320) instead:



Want to play on a netbook at fullscreen?
http://www.retroidea.com/First_screenshot/First_screenshot_1024x600.png


NO! I have a fancy 1920 x 1080 HD monitor and I want to play in a maximised window so I can still facebook and play as well!! 
http://www.retroidea.com/First_screenshot/First_screenshot_1920x960.png

Hope you like it.

[elisee]

Gorgeous screenshots! I can't believe you've had 7 pages of devlog without an image

[Miguelito]

Note ESPECIALLY how this looks sharp at every resolution, with no fuzz at smaller sizes and no jaggies at larger ones.

Special voodoo magic, if I might divulge as much.

[happymonster]

Ahh.. thanks Guys! 

I wanted to post a screenshot when I actually had a bit of the game engine completed. Now you can scroll around, select and move your men. I'm also always hesitant about posting my graphics, so thanks for the kind words!

[Scut Fabulous]

Yeah, finally!!  It's looking good!
I think for PC's it would be best to allow even more information on screen.  I run at 1680x1050, and a tile size of about 50 pixels is quite easy to read with these clean graphics.

[Eternal Man]

Nice! 
Everything looks so sweet! Like it was carved out from icecream! 

[Franklin's Ghost]

Great job with the screenshots and totally been worth the wait for them, looking good 

[surt]

So this is using one of your snazzy pixel scaling algo's?
Can it scale in real-time (for zooming, good for this type of game methinks) or is it prescaled?
Oh, and it looks sweet.

[Ashkin]

Adorable! :3

[lowpoly]

this looks great, you totally undersold your art abilities in previous posts. Don't do that