Art feedback

[Kawa]

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.

According to SCI16/SYSTEM, picAngle is "how far from vertical is our view? 0-89". That's all I got out of it.

Edit: it certainly doesn't seem to affect joystick player movement...

[troflip]

From what I can gather, it is supposed to specify how much you're "looking down" on a scene, as opposed to looking across. It only affects how the y distance is measured.

As the pic angle approaches 90, y the distance between things will approach infinity.

So 0 would be straight down (and dy would be unchanged), and 89 would be nearly straight horizontal. Looking nearly horizontally at something (89 degrees), stuff that is 1 pixel y away from another thing would actually be 57 units away (per GetDistance kernel).

[Kawa]

So the best and/or easiest way I can think of to ensure a character will in fact walk across those boards "properly" would be to detect standing on the edge and handsOff until they reach the other end.

But enough theorizing about angles. Let's review artwork! Here's something I've been mucking with for CTxCB:

[troflip]

But enough theorizing about angles. Let's review artwork! Here's something I've been mucking with for CTxCB:

It looks very professional! Makes me miss a 256-color palette, lol.

Can you export it as an animated gif so we can see the animation?

[Kawa]

It's not even in view format lol but okay here's a gif I whipped up just because I respect you.


But of course it looks professional -- it's view.000 from Codename Iceman with the color depth cranked up. Not unlike how I used view.203 to make my Catdate sprites.

[troflip]

Lol, thank you for the effort! Thought it was already a view...

But of course it looks professional -- it's view.000 from Codename Iceman with the color depth cranked up. Not unlike how I used view.203 to make my Catdate sprites.

Well, you up-colored it quite nicely.

Attached is the second room of the cavern sequence...

Hmm... I think the light bulb should be more transparent instead of grey...

[gumby]

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

That was kinda the plan, heh...

At one time I was working on an SCI game which was an arcade-style 'chase' game where the ego would just be chased from room to room.  It was sorta supposed to be a showcase of a 'view library' that I was building up, views created from existing games.  Wasn't taking existing view resources, but made new ones from the pics of games (a tree here, a bush there).  See screenshot below, those I all pulled from the KQ1 remake.

About to go on vacation, maybe I'll pick that project back up.

[MusicallyInspired]

Here's the last scene I was working on in KQ2SCI before stopping. Unfinished but you can see where it was going.

[troflip]

For some reason the palm tree looks funny, but I can't put my finger on why... The shading and segmentation are nicely done... maybe it's the shadow? It doesn't look quite correct.

The trees look like they have a lot of zigzaggy scratches on them... on one hand it approximates featured bark well, but it still looks funny. I need to do some trees like that in my game, and I haven't found a way to make them look good yet.

I think the low res/palette EGA stuff really benefits from stark contrast and dramatic lighting. I think that's one of the reasons Laura Bow looks so good.

Now I'm looking to improve my bushes.

[MusicallyInspired]

The sun's position is a roughly 1:00 shadow position. Usually light comes from the top left and is longer but in KQ2 the light seems to come from the top right but more centered so shadows are shorter. Not that I'm any great artist with all kinds of insight. I'm just guessing. If it looks wrong it looks wrong lol.

The trees are definitely made up of zig-zag scratchy lines. That's why I depend on dithering because it looks atrocious in undithered mode, as you can imagine. There's probably far too much detail than is necessary but it really looked good at the time. All the other trees I made in the game are made the same way. KQ1SCI has a much cleaner style artwork that I just can't bring myself to emulate. I wish I understood art more.

[Collector]

The main thing wrong with the palm is that light is that the light direction does not match. Look at the shadow from the tree vs the shading on the trunk of the tree itself.

[troflip]

Not that I'm any great artist with all kinds of insight. I'm just guessing. If it looks wrong it looks wrong lol.

Well, this is a feedback thread

The trees are definitely made up of zig-zag scratchy lines. That's why I depend on dithering because it looks atrocious in undithered mode, as you can imagine. There's probably far too much detail than is necessary but it really looked good at the time. All the other trees I made in the game are made the same way. KQ1SCI has a much cleaner style artwork that I just can't bring myself to emulate. I wish I understood art more.

Yeah, your trees look much better dithered. Weird thing is I was looking at some old videos of Sierra games, and you can't even see the dithering. The colors blend nearly into a solid tone (like they were undithered).

 Art is all about practice. Also, I'm pretty sure the KQ1SCI artists are working off reference drawings. It's a lot easier to get the shading right with a pencil and then try to emulate that with vector commands, than it is to do it with vector commands right away.

[Kawa]

Here's a work in progress for Catdate.

[troflip]

She looks skilled with the broom. Only thing that look a little weird is the upper hand motion seems to travel two pixels at once... it could be smoother with an in-between frame halfway between the two positions.

If it's just a one pixel movement (it's hard to tell w/o loading it into Companion), then never mind my feedback.

[Kawa]

I assure you, it's a one-pixel movement. I could go with keeping it there for more than one frame though...

Also, did you really not recognize the character?