Art feedback

[troflip]

I'm redrawing several of my screens for my SCI0 project, and I'd like to get some feedback on what looks good and what looks bad.

Here's the first one I've redone. It's a dark cave in which you need to find a light switch to turn the lights on (otherwise you have to navigate a twisty path in the dark). I'm probably going to split it up into two screens... the top image is the new version (first screen), and the bottom image is what it looked like before.


If anyone else has any art to share, feel free to use this thread!

[Kawa]

Looks great. The boards just make me wonder about actors walking up and down slopes/stairs -- naively you'd expect standing on the left side and pressing the right arrow key to walk screenspace-diagonally...

Edit: attaching some shit for critiquing.

[CTxCB]

I'm redrawing several of my screens for my SCI0 project, and I'd like to get some feedback on what looks good and what looks bad.

Here's the first one I've redone. It's a dark cave in which you need to find a light switch to turn the lights on (otherwise you have to navigate a twisty path in the dark). I'm probably going to split it up into two screens... the top image is the new version (first screen), and the bottom image is what it looked like before.


If anyone else has any art to share, feel free to use this thread!

Looks great. I'm excited because Cascade Quest is one of the two demo games I've wanted to see made into a full game, the other is Legend of the Lost Jewel.

[OmerMor]

The ego in Cascade Quest looks feminine. Is that on purpose?

[troflip]

Looks great. The boards just make me wonder about actors walking up and down slopes/stairs -- naively you'd expect standing on the left side and pressing the right arrow key to walk screenspace-diagonally...

It doesn't do that now, but maybe it should. I probably should have taken that into account when designing the level... i.e. make the boards either horizontal or vertical.

Still undecided if I want the player to fall off or not. They definitely fall off if they don't find the light switch, but right now I have it so the edges become hard boundaries otherwise. The problem is, I'm inconsistent throughout the game on whether walking off the edge of things kills you or not. I don't really like having to maneuver precisely, but OTOH it makes for some funny death scenes.

Edit: attaching some shit for critiquing.

Those images are super-crisp... are you developing an SCI2 game, or are they going to get downsized to SCI1.1 res?

I don't have much to criticize, it looks good. Shadows look correct, and the art style is "cohesive". I prefer perspective view to isometric though. And in the last photo, it's hard to tell what that is behind the small stools.

I'm excited because Cascade Quest is one of the two demo games I've wanted to see made into a full game, the other is Legend of the Lost Jewel.

It's pretty much a full game now. I think the demo was 4 screens or so, but I expanded it to around 50 or 60 several years ago - but never released. It still needs a few months of polish and fleshing out. And at least 3 more screens to wrap up the story. And also the story doesn't make much sense, so I need to revamp some of that to make it all tie together

[troflip]

The ego in Cascade Quest looks feminine. Is that on purpose?

Nope.... I forget where I got it from, but I think it's a re-colored police quest ego or something. But I gave it bare legs (which is relevant to the story, actually). It's the legs that make it look feminine, right?

Hmm... maybe I should make the main character female... my game certainly fails the Bechdel test currently. The only female character is a goat.

[CTxCB]

On a related thing to SCI0 Art, I can't make it myself, not for my main project or side project. If I even tried you would literally just get stickmen drawings and stuff, when I'm trying to make an authentic SCI0 looking game... How do I find SCI0 Artists to art for me?

[CTxCB]

The ego in Cascade Quest looks feminine. Is that on purpose?

Nope.... I forget where I got it from, but I think it's a re-colored police quest ego or something. But I gave it bare legs (which is relevant to the story, actually). It's the legs that make it look feminine, right?

Hmm... maybe I should make the main character female... my game certainly fails the Bechdel test currently. The only female character is a goat.

It's a collection of things that make Ego look female: Slender curvy legs, short skirt or shorts, Parka / Jacket hiding breasts, black pixie cut and black pumps... But yeah, a female character seems to suit the game better.

[troflip]

On a related thing to SCI0 Art, I can't make it myself, not for my main project or side project. If I even tried you would literally just get stickmen drawings and stuff, when I'm trying to make an authentic SCI0 looking game... How do I find SCI0 Artists to art for me?

Given how few SCI programmers there are, you likely won't find any SCI artists.

The biggest help for me as been finding scenes in games that are similar to what I wanted, and then trying to emulate that. Open those pics in SCI Companion and see how they drew them. I took a lot of inspiration from QFG1 and SQ3. LB1 is also really nice when it comes to dramatic lighting. KQ4 kinda sucks IMO.

I think (from what I recall when I worked on this before) I usually sketched them out first on paper, then drew them using that paper image as a tracing image. Although for this last one, I just drew it freehand from paper sketches (i.e. didn't trace) and then did a lot of adjustments.

As for character animations, those are really difficult. I have no idea.

[CTxCB]

On a related thing to SCI0 Art, I can't make it myself, not for my main project or side project. If I even tried you would literally just get stickmen drawings and stuff, when I'm trying to make an authentic SCI0 looking game... How do I find SCI0 Artists to art for me?

Given how few SCI programmers there are, you likely won't find any SCI artists.

The biggest help for me as been finding scenes in games that are similar to what I wanted, and then trying to emulate that. Open those pics in SCI Companion and see how they drew them. I took a lot of inspiration from QFG1 and SQ3. LB1 is also really nice when it comes to dramatic lighting. KQ4 kinda sucks IMO.

I think (from what I recall when I worked on this before) I usually sketched them out first on paper, then drew them using that paper image as a tracing image. Although for this last one, I just drew it freehand from paper sketches (i.e. didn't trace) and then did a lot of adjustments.

As for character animations, those are really difficult. I have no idea.

I may just sketch and employ you.
What's your price?

[lskovlun]

Looks great. The boards just make me wonder about actors walking up and down slopes/stairs -- naively you'd expect standing on the left side and pressing the right arrow key to walk screenspace-diagonally...

Kawa, do you set the picAngle in these rooms? might make them a bit easier to navigate.

[troflip]

Kawa, do you set the picAngle in these rooms? might make them a bit easier to navigate.

What does picAngle do anyway? That seems like something that's not documented anywhere. It appears to only be used for determining the distance between points and the visibility from one point to another.

Also, the SCI0 template game calls GetDistance and passes gPicAngle as the 5th parameter, but ScummVM looks at the 6th parameter for the angle (and never touches the 5th parameter). Bug in ScummVM? Or am I not reading it right.

[Kawa]

Those images are super-crisp... are you developing an SCI2 game, or are they going to get downsized to SCI1.1 res?

I basically just rendered them, because I misplaced the earlier copies. They're meant to be downscaled like the garage pic.

I don't have much to criticize, it looks good. Shadows look correct, and the art style is "cohesive". I prefer perspective view to isometric though. And in the last photo, it's hard to tell what that is behind the small stools.

It's a little restaurant/bar thingy. Needs more props in there.

Kawa, do you set the picAngle in these rooms? might make them a bit easier to navigate.

They're not even in the game proper yet, but perhaps I should. These and the player character's living room are after all equally isometric in nature...

[Collector]

Doesn't look particularly feminine to me. The ego looks like the SCI0 template ego with bare legs. The jacket just looks like a hoodie.

As to sprites it would be nice to have a repository of different SCI0 and SCI1.1 views. Might not be completely kosher, but we could take ones from existing games as templates. We could have community competitions to add to the repository. It could help attract potential game designers if we had enough stock resources that they could use to not have that obstetrical to game creation. Gumby did a sound FX pack a while back that could be added to the repository. I could also mirror it on the Wiki.

[Kawa]

As to sprites it would be nice to have a repository of different SCI0 and SCI1.1 views.

That was kinda the plan, heh...