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[SolS]

Testing this area a bit.

[oahda]

Mockups for an astral like scene.



…

These are beautiful. What's the circle around the player in the last posts? Something magic?

[SolS]

Thank you! Oh that's supposed to be water ripples from the player being half submerged. I'll likely touch them up a bit to make that more clear, and maybe add some other waves of some kind.

[oahda]

Oh! The game is so colourful and has so many palettes that I didn't automatically assume blue was water.

[SolS]

Oh I see ok! It can be hard to know what to add or take away at times with this art style, many times it can be the balance between the less readable details and how they work with the more readable stuff leaving things feeling unfinished or unclear.

Overall though I know it still needs NPC's, animated details, more story elements and text, enemy interactions, items/weapons, puzzles etc to feel more full, all the rest of the video game type stuff! But I'm slowly getting there! The text with the astral scene mockup being a starting point for more of that type of stuff, just need to finish the font and test other text box ideas.

Here's some unfinished enemy tests,



I'll better be able to tell what needs what and where when I start connecting areas and testing the flow in an in game context.

[SolS]

Another old building interior. Still want to mix in some other colors.

[SolS]

Did some tests with a CRT filter by @Mattias_G https://mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/crtview

























Here's some "Ecco 3" potential fan game mockups with altered Ecco the Dolphin sprites. Off topic but just wanted to share these too along with the other crt tests.

[oahda]

 

[Alain]

This CRT filter really complements your style in my eyes!

[SolS]

Thanks, glad you both like it!

There's support for animated gifs too but it ran a bit slow on my laptop, maybe I had too many tabs open. If I can get something like this working in game I will but for now it just works on images and gifs.



The heatwave has been pretty bad on my health but we're past the 115 degree days so I'm just trying to catch up on rest and then I'd like to get back to the prototype itself!

[SolS]

Here's another cave mockup.

[oahda]

Whew, sorry about that heat… That's a lot. In-game movement looks good!

[muki]

ugh, those CRT shots look so so good. good fit for the game's style too

[bayersglassey]

I love how the graphics are blocky, yet it's super hard to actually see where the grid is.
Those are obviously tiles, but they're individually so abstract, you can only see the trees/rivers/rocks/columns/doors/etc by looking at groups of tiles together.

Just awesome.

[SolS]

Thanks everyone!

Yeah I usually just take chunks of graphics and collage it together, bits overlapping and tiles of different sizes. Preferably I'd make it a bit more of an organized tile set but that would slow down the process for me.

I'd love to port the game to an NES or a Gameboy color some day. At that point I'd have to make it into a limited tile set, which could be a challenge but I'd really like to see how that would look!

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So lately I've been getting some grassy mockups together to test some palette swaps, mostly to help me figure out what could connect where location wise.

[oahda]

Beautiful! It's interesting how they seem to look more defined when they're smaller, perhaps because any outlines that are a bit dithered at full res bleed together into solid lines when downscaled? I like how saturated the first one of the small ones seems!

[SolS]

Thanks! Yeah I really like the way they look in their original sizes, when I first did 2x I hated it but then I realized I had to just sit back a bit further away from the screen and let my eyes readjust to take it all in. But It's still hard to ignore how pixelated it can look at 2x and up, a big reason why CRT can help so much. Some games on emulators I'd play at 1x size for the same reasons.

I could never decide on uniform saturation levels, some areas I felt should be bolder and I'm hoping it will make the overall experience more refreshing and varied. That flexibility at least keeps things fresh for me as I work on the games art. Still trying to figure out how to make it all flow together with how areas connect and which border colors to use where.

Here's some unfinished ideas.

[SolS]

More unfinished ideas.

[SolS]

Some recent stuff. These stairs will connect the beach to another area.

[SolS]

More unfinished ideas.