Quasarius Rush - New game for Amiga (I would like Feedback)

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Steril707

There are some talented gfx guys around here. If you are not really inclined to learn more pixel stuff bevause it' s not that much fun for you, then I'd just ask then.

It is actually fun, I just feel I won't get much better than this. At least not in this lifetime

[Tigerskunk]

You will definitely get better if you spend time on it..

Believe me.

[roondar]

I think it looks pretty good so far. Certainly better artwork than I'd manage.

If I to deliver criticism, I'd say that it seems a bit empty at times and the 'tell' from the boss when he's about to fire might be nicer if it also had a visual element to it (some animation or colour cycle or something).

On a serious note: my lack of art skills is one of the key reasons for me to drag my heels when it comes to making a game. I simply can't make anything look remotely nice and happen to know no one who does. So any game idea I have tends to fail when I start thinking about 'art' and 'music'.

Doing it all yourself is a good idea, but it may not always work.

[gimbal]

I love:

- the speed, perfect!
- the fact that the ground scrolls (smoothly) when you move
- pink wings!
- how the boss seems to hunt you rather than move in a predetermined pattern. If it is a pattern then it is chosen really well.

It's a bit hard to give more feedback right now without being able to play it

I'm not too sure about the colors. The underground is a bit somber in tone and the ships, bullets and pickups are brightly coloured. It creates a clear contrast which is great because it allows you to really track bullets and such, but... I don't know. It's a hard compromise between clarity and style.

[Shatterhand]

If I to deliver criticism, I'd say that it seems a bit empty at times and the 'tell' from the boss when he's about to fire might be nicer if it also had a visual element to it (some animation or colour cycle or something).

There's certainly going to be a sound effect there and maybe some "charging" animation (you known, when small circles get "dragged" to the point where the laser is fired?") which I probably will use on many other spots in the game.

You can see games I made on PC on my site:

https://ralizasoftware.neocities.org/

I dunno if all of them work on Windows 10 though. I tried playing Space Disorder these days (Trying to see my older games to get ideas for the new one) and the game runs slower and has some gfx glitches. Back at the time I had that stupid idea every game should run on enforced resolution at full screen....

I remember when I showed Operation Gaex to my wife, she was like "Why everything looks like green penises?". After that I can take any criticism for my pixelling skills

[Shatterhand]

how the boss seems to hunt you rather than move in a predetermined pattern. If it is a pattern then it is chosen really well.

He hunts you.

It's just a midboss though, level keeps going after him. Every level will have at least one of them

[dodke]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

It is actually fun, I just feel I won't get much better than this. At least not in this lifetime

Oh sure you can. You could try a few simple things to give your sprites a little bit more pop and contrast.

a) add more highlights. try adding some some bright colours or white to one or two corners of different elements in the sprites.
b) add shadows to one side of elements that are over other elements in a sprite.
c) look at the overall sprite in normal size and wherever you see pixels that look rough try adding in between shades to that part. don't add them to every edge but think about where you could add a hint of a slight curve with a few darker or brighter pixels. but remember if you use the same colour in pixels next to each other it might not look like antialiasing anymore.
d) don't worry about mixing different shades. you can totally use a yellow shade for antialiasing between a red shade and white. In shadows you can often use grey or a dark blue-green shades no matter what colour the element is supposed to be.
e) if you have only a few colours like 16 to work with try tinting the whole palette a little bit towards one main shade like cold blue/green or a warm brown / red. When the colours are generally slightly more similar it will be easier to reuse them for shadows / highlights.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by roondar

On a serious note: my lack of art skills is one of the key reasons for me to drag my heels when it comes to making a game. I simply can't make anything look remotely nice and happen to know no one who does. So any game idea I have tends to fail when I start thinking about 'art' and 'music'.

Doing it all yourself is a good idea, but it may not always work.

Ask Invent, JudasEZT, Me or a couple of other guys on this forum.

I am in contact with somebody who has a really awesome game idea and is currently doing gfx for it, but needs a coder...

Just ask. Someone with your skills will certainly find somebody..

[Shatterhand]

Does this look any better? Just some quick tampering with the palette

[DamienD]

Yes, much

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Just ask. Someone with your skills will certainly find somebody..

You know, you're right. Sometimes I do over think stuff. I'll try to get some form of engine going before asking though - otherwise I'm just wasting people's time IMHO.

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Does this look any better? Just some quick tampering with the palette

I like the water & enemies a great deal more with their less-in-your-face colours. Though I do believe I liked the 'moonscape' better when it was still darker.


Overall, much nicer

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I have a 100% completed Amiga sitting on my HD waiting for a friend to finish its graphics for like... 2 years now. (And it's like just 4 animated sprites and a title screen). For a PC game I actually got *paid* to develop (And so people GOT PAID to do the graphics, it was not a hobby project)

This is quite interesting to me. Send me via PM your imagination how the title screen could look like (theme, number of colours, mood, etc) and I will draw something for you for free. Up to you if you use it or not, I just want to force myself make something in DPaint again and I do not have a motivation yet.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Predseda

This is quite interesting to me. Send me via PM your imagination how the title screen could look like (theme, number of colours, mood, etc) and I will draw something for you for free. Up to you if you use it or not, I just want to force myself make something in DPaint again and I do not have a motivation yet.

The one I got paid to do was the one I write after that sentence(that was 5 years ago )

The one I'm waiting gfx for 2 years.... Let me be at home and I'll pm you with info. I probably won't use, I could already had asked someone else to do, but I didn't want to upset my friend.

In the other hand, the time he's taking got ridiculous, hehe

[Clydos]

I am a total noob at gfx, so I think your work so far is awesome and much better than many could achieve, even in other commercially released games.

And saying as a graphical noob, I *think* it would be nice/good to give your sprites (player ship, enemies, ...) a black-ish outline. Maybe you can alter the screenshot from yesterday, 18:57, with sprite outlines to get an impression?

[Tigerskunk]

Maybe it would be helpful using the dawnbringer16 palette in the beginning, and then later on deviate from it when you feel more secure about your pixel stuff?

https://lospec.com/palette-list/dawnbringer-16

[invent]

Hi Shatterhand, how cool. Great demo, smooth and low spec machine, impressed. Your engine would work very well for a few Arcade conversions

Steril707 makes a good point about palette, danwbringer-16 is pretty handy as a starting point.

What every you do, keep going

[Master484]

I quickly counted the colors in the background, and it seems that there are only 7 colors, although I could be wrong ?

The back playfield graphics don't need any transparent pixels, so you can use the "border color" as a normal color in the background tiles, meaning that you should have black + 7 colors so a total of 8 colors.

But otherwise the game looks quite promising and the action reminds me of the classic NES/MSX shmups, in a good way.

At one point I thought about having one color for the enemy bullets and make everything else with shades of gray. You guys think this could look better? Explosions could work with shades of gray too (I've seen some games doing it like that).

Everything depends on the graphical style that you're aiming for.

The most important thing is to first choose a graphics style for the game, and then stick to it. Do you want the enemies to have a realistic "made from metal" look, or should they be bright and colorful ? Should the feeling of the game be dark and serious or funny and crazy, or something in between ? Should it look more like Katakis or more like Aleste ? Almost any graphics style can work, even in 7+8 dual PF, but first you must have a clear vision of how the final game should look like.

But if you're aiming for that MSX/NES "console shooter" look, then it's good to notice that most of them don't use shades of grays for sprites. Instead they often use a combination of white + black + some third color. Although of course they only have 3 color sprites, which limits the options.

If it helps, you can think of the Amiga Dual Playfield mode as some bizarre arcade system that gives your moving objects only 7 colors. And so all Amiga graphics have to be designed around this limitation, just like the NES graphics have to be designed around the 3 color sprites.

[Shatterhand]

I quickly counted the colors in the background, and it seems that there are only 7 colors, although I could be wrong ?

No, I am using all 8 colors.

That's how grafx count the colors used on the current background tileset:

Everything depends on the graphical style that you're aiming for.

Like I know anything about "Graphic Styles"

No, I really am aiming for the classic 8 bits japanese look. It's more akin to Aleste than Katakis for sure. And yes,

If it helps, you can think of the Amiga Dual Playfield mode as some bizarre arcade system that gives your moving objects only 7 colors. And so all Amiga graphics have to be designed around this limitation,

That's how I see it indeed.

BTW, I already thanked you privately, but I'll thank you here too. The PD gfx sheets you gave at Opengameart gave me a lot of directions to look at

[Master484]

Here are some graphics that I made in the past for an abandoned A500 Dual PF shmup project.

And then I just draw some new stuff inspired by your project, and made this mock-up screenshot to see how the gfx would look like in this "Dual PF arcade" palette that I designed back then:



And if you want help with the graphics, then I have an idea.

For some time now I have been planning to put these old graphics from my abandoned project to OpenGameArt. But when I upload stuff there I like to make bigger sets, that have lots of stuff in them, so that they are more useful in actual game making.

So in other words, before I upload these gfx, I need to draw some more stuff.

And this is my idea: If you give me a list of graphics that you need for your game, then I could draw that stuff as a part of my next OpenGameArt graphics set. I'll use those 8 color palettes, so everything can be easily used on the Amiga. Just give me level themes, enemy types, and so on, and what size everything should be, and what animations they should have.

This way I think I can possibly make everything that you need, for the whole game, as long as it isn't anything too crazy, hehe.

But if you rather want to make your own graphics, then it's totally OK. This is just an idea that came to my mind.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Master484

Here are some graphics that I made in the past for an abandoned A500 Dual PF shmup project.

And then I just draw some new stuff inspired by your project, and made this mock-up screenshot to see how the gfx would look like in this "Dual PF arcade" palette that I designed back then:



And if you want help with the graphics, then I have an idea.

For some time now I have been planning to put these old graphics from my abandoned project to OpenGameArt. But when I upload stuff there I like to make bigger sets, that have lots of stuff in them, so that they are more useful in actual game making.

So in other words, before I upload these gfx, I need to draw some more stuff.

And this is my idea: If you give me a list of graphics that you need for your game, then I could draw that stuff as a part of my next OpenGameArt graphics set. I'll use those 8 color palettes, so everything can be easily used on the Amiga. Just give me level themes, enemy types, and so on, and what size everything should be, and what animations they should have.

This way I think I can possibly make everything that you need, for the whole game, as long as it isn't anything too crazy, hehe.

But if you rather want to make your own graphics, then it's totally OK. This is just an idea that came to my mind.

God damn it, this looks freaking incredible.

Someone else here offered his hand to draw the graphics for the game and I accepted. So it's already happening.

But I am very, very grateful for your offer, mate.