next »

[meek]

Dying Sun is a game about taking 8 men, a small piece of land for settling, and trying to build them into a strong and self-sufficient clan. The game features systems for emotions, meaning a man is less likely to execute a task if he's feeling low or idle (boredom), a fully fledged weather and temperature system (Men will huddle around campfires if the temperature reaches a certain level), a combat system when fighting intruders and trying to wipe out rival clans, expedition system with a randomly generated gigantic map, with lakes and peaks, resource gathering, building and much, much more.


I'm co-designer and artist for the game. We'll be posting updates here regularly, so keep your eyes peeled.

[Schrompf]

I really like that "boxes with character" art style you showed in the very first image. Unfortunately, all the other images use standard "plain-coloured boxes". I really think you're missing an opportunity to stand out here.

Other than that: good luck!. The project looks promising. I just hope you don't overdo it with the computer-generated content.

[siskavard]

Looks interesting

[meek]

Schromf, this is something that we've been discussing at length. We still haven't concluded as to if the men will be coloured in or not. It'll mean a lot more artwork for me to do in the long run, but ultimately something we may add into the game eventually. For now we're trying to hammer out the main systems of the game, and using the basic 16X16 art style for the men, using plain pixels is a lot more viable, given our limited amount of time (trying to focus on this with a job and studying is pretty difficult at times!)

Thanks for your opinions though, this is what we need to improve the game.

[ANtY]

the game looks good but the first image is awful, sorry

[meek]

No need to apologize for criticism. Can I ask why exactly it's awful though? I'm just getting into photoshop, so I'm trying to improve.

[eesau]

IMO, first image looks awesome! Rest look great too, looking forward to playing this.

[meek]

Thanks, eesau! What aspect do you like the most?

[jO]

Nice.
Really curious to see how this one turns out. 

[Forstride]

Not to sound rude, but that "thin" character style is getting really old.  It was cool in Superbrothers, but it's just being overused now IMO.

Also, the last image looks, well, awful.  You have a mix of "real" art (The background with the "realistic" clouds), small pixel style (With a lot of added noise), and big pixel style (With gradients), and it just looks bad.

Now, if you did something like the very first image, it would be a bit better.  Mixing two styles isn't really a problem, and it works well there, but when you just have 3 completely different art styles on one screen, without mixing them at all, it's bad.  The UI looks pretty good though, especially the map thing.

[ANtY]

No need to apologize for criticism. Can I ask why exactly it's awful though? I'm just getting into photoshop, so I'm trying to improve.

It looks really messy, values used for shades and highlights and also their hues. Too big contrast on grass + messy. Characters are shaded yet don't look three-dimensional at all.
 
On top of all I don't like the idea of trying to make HD version of 8(?)-bit pixel-art, but that's subjective matter.

[meek]

'Awful' has been used twice on the first page of this devlog. Pretty disheartening haha!

We're still in experimental stages with the art style. Trying to find our ground. I'll get carried away one minute doing pixel art only, very strictly. Then get sucked into photoshop for a while with painting, and it sometimes gets out of hand.

The superbrothers thing, this 'thin' style, I understand it completely. I didn't think like that when I first started this project about a year ago (it was a completely different game, but the sprites were essentially the same). It was just trying to convey as much information as possible in a 16x16 sprite.

[meek]

No need to apologize for criticism. Can I ask why exactly it's awful though? I'm just getting into photoshop, so I'm trying to improve.

It looks really messy, values used for shades and highlights and also their hues. Too big contrast on grass + messy. Characters are shaded yet don't look three-dimensional at all.
 
On top of all I don't like the idea of trying to make HD version of 8(?)-bit pixel-art, but that's subjective matter.

I wasn't trying to make them three-dimensional. That definitely wasn't my intention. They just looked ultra flat and out of place without something compared with the painted background. Again, it was the second image I made in photoshop.

Thanks for the criticisms though. All noted. I'll probably clean this up when we're nearer a playable alpha or something.

[Fresh Mozzarella]

Not to sound rude, but that "thin" character style is getting really old.  It was cool in Superbrothers, but it's just being overused now IMO.

This is better, right?

[Forstride]

I didn't mean skinny/fat of course.  But the 1-pixel arms/legs, and how the legs are so far apart (Like in Superbrothers).  It's a style of its own now, but it's not one that I want to see more and more developers adopting TBH.

[Fresh Mozzarella]

This is an example of the men idling about camp as well as the camera system from an early build. (obviously not as choppy in non-GIF format)

We'll post information on our weather system soon!

[ANtY]

superb!

[Fresh Mozzarella]

Not exactly the most engaging thing to show but this is the basic framework of the day/night and weather system (brightness and graphics are placeholder) working on some randomly generated terrain, we'll have more updates in the next week or so that will be a bit more engaging

[eigenbom]

Looks cool.

[jO]

Don't feel the pressure to listen too much to the opinion of other people (including mine).
Just because someone does not like or is fed up with graphical style A or style B it does not mean that you cannot do that.
Seriously, #+öä# that. 
Do what feels right for you and do whats the most fun.
I think your stuff looks awesome; sure you can improve, but don't allow criticism on your basic art style to take you down or even switch gears to something that you actually don't want to do.