Pixelated games

Am I the only one that doesn't get it?

There's been a surge in popularity for them, but I don't understand why. Can someone that does explain what you like about it? Is it because it looks old skool?

(if you tell me its about gameplay, I may shoot you - good/bad graphics does not control good/bad gameplay)

 

opps, was supposed to create this in Gossip. Please move.

 

A lot of people love them. If you don't get it, then you don't get it. It's like music taste. Do you really need it explained to you?

 

I guess it just doesnt make sense to me because if I wanted to play a good pixelated game, I would load up something old.

 

What if you've already played all old games that you know??
I don't like this kind of game, but it is as he said, matter of taste.

 

its an art form of a different kind. Modern sprite artists challenges are much different then artists who worked with 32x32 sheets for each character "or less". I think its sad that so many people judge good/bad art by how many polys or how many pixels you can possibly cram onto a screen while keeping 50 fps. Pixel art is an outstandingly intricate art form, as an artist I totally respect it.

 

exactly , loads of people like them for many reasons, i like them because it keeps things simple and there isn't to much detail which can detract from other aspects.

I also like low poly and 128x128 textures, and would like more games like that.

 

I like them because of their simplicity and because i like snes and nes game a lot.

 

I'm sorry but why do people keep relating pixelated games like the ones we have today to the NES and SNES?

They used as much power as was possible to them. And I remember a lot of them actually looking pretty damn good compared to the "pixel" games we are getting based on the "nes" styles.

 

most nes games used sprites roughly 16x16 and most snes were closer to 32x32, although some were much larger. A lot of small indies go with 4x4 or even 8x8 sprites, which aren't retro, but are just lazy. Unless the context calls for it, oversized, under-res sprites are not cool imo.

 

You are clearly not an artist, the smaller they get the harder it is, to say it lazy is just ridiculous.

 

Unless we look at this from a mathematics point of view. If for example we had 256 possible colors(because we all know that programmers love the number 256).
16x16 = 16777216 possibilities.
8x8 = 4149304 possibilities.
Hopefully my maths isn't wrong, it's late and I literally am in bed.

 

It is smaller so that means we need to push more detail on a small thing to make it visible, eg: on a 4k texture one can esily draw a bow tie but on a 8x8 sprite it is very hard.

 

I think you may have meant the other way around?

And I know it's not lazy, I was just making a factual statement xD

 

I dont think i meant it around the other way(unless we read it in a different way )
I meant it is harder to add detail to sprite then to a texture.

 

It's all about designing the look and feel of your game. My kids love Peppa Pig and Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom - the animation style is in many ways very primitive, but it's executed in a highly polished manner. It's an intentional choice of visual style, which that animation company executes exceptionally well. I much prefer that to the 3D renders in some other kids TV programmes - Underground Ernie springs to mind, yuck.

 

Because that is how pixel art started.

 

I love pixelated games... they're abstract, interesting, make me nostalgic and give me fuzzy feelings.

As a kid, I was obsessed with pixels even before owning my first console ever!

Doesn't mean everyone must like them! Especially people who weren't around in the 90s!

 

G

+1


Also, as someone who makes pixelart for clients on a regular basis, i will tell you myself how hard it is! Its one of te most difficult design aspects to get right. 'pixel perfect' is not a term to be taken lightly

 

I think there is something youthful, innocent and `artistic` about pixelated or low-resolution imagery. It's kind of the counter-culture to super high definition photorealism. Your brain can fill in the blanks with meaning and doesn't need to have every single pixel `spelled out` for it in order for it to use its imagination to make something meaningful. It's also symbolic as I said of a sense of innocence, purity, simplicity and youthfulness, which can be attractive in its own right.

Besides that I think there is just a lot of copy-cat stuff happening (as usual) across the board so people are jumping on the `ooh did you see the art in that game, lets do a game like that` bandwagon. Plus for indie developers who have little resources it often covers up and becomes an excuse for their terrible art ability or lack of time and resources. ie go abstract/chunky so that bad drawing seems normal.

 

I think it's more about making a game look good. If you're going for the pixelated look, you won't need to put a ton of polish on the game. If you make it smooth 2D or 3D, there's aliasing to worry about and a lot more polish to be done. I think the pixel games are often (not always) an easy way out of polish.

 

Depending on what res pixel art you have to antialiase your work. Alao getting the perfect colour and shading is hard. i think its ony judgable if you are an artist yourself. For example i wouldnt gocaround sayig java is better than c++ the hardest part is probably the outlines. There are 'rules' you have to follow

 

I know the art is hard, but once you get it you don't have to deal with lighting and such (like you would in 3D). Pixel art can take a while, but it doesn't take as long to animate and it generally doesn't take as long to create as nice hand-painted 2D art or a detailed 3D model.

Also, pixel art doesn't always need outlines; it can have just shadows and highlights.

 

Who cares about if it's hard or not to accomplish, the only thing that matters is if it's beautiful or not.

 

+1

 

I guess nobody mentioned minecraft yet. Pixel art has evolved into a modern style now, just like anything else.

A lot of styles originate from limitations such as pixel art and also things like the limit print colours of early comics. New comics have an unlimited range of colour but a vast amount still use limited colours because its now a genuine style.

Film noir was a limitation of black and white medium, but it didn't stop Sin City from being cool.

And there is nothing "backwards" about The Other Brothers, we use several unity pro features such as render to texture to pull of an emulated Snes graphics processor in order to deliver visuals which also animate in a sexy almost-retro way with mosaic effects and more.

It's all just style now, not limitations.

Btw have you tried to do pixel art? it is very hard to get it to look right and animate well. It is a ton of work, often more work than detailed art due to the limitations of the imposed style.

 

I guess it really depends on the artist's oeuvre. I have done quite a bit of pixel art and didn't find it as tedious as 3D or animating hand-painted 2D. It really depends on the pixel resolution and amount of detail, I guess, as I didn't find it too hard to animate in 16*16.

 

Yes although if the viewer can appreciate something that's evidently a lot of hard work, they'll respect it and value it accordingly!

Kind of like that guy who makes art with sand, telling a story in real time, just with some sand and his hands! Make the same sand picture in photoshop? nothing special... do it with sand in real time, you're a true artist! :-D

Maybe in a way that can be applied to pixel art, we all know it's a lot of hard work to do frame by frame pixel animation, and get something that looks like... something! And we can appreciate that!

 

This.

I started out in the late 1980s doing pixel art and animations. The only (published) example of my ZX Spectrum pixel art is, unfortunately(!), available online. (Both Jon and I were still in school at the time. The lack of a credit for me is due to the project being released unfinished; I moved to another school, exams were looming and we simply lost interest in the project.)

I remember whiling away one weekend recreating the entire "Luxo Jnr." (PIXAR) short animation as a 64 x 64 pixel sprite in OCP's Art Studio for the Atari ST. Worked very well too. If only my brother hadn't decided to store his strongly magnetic, and extremely unshielded, Wharfedale loudspeakers in our parents' attic right next to my boxes of floppy disks, I would still have copies of all those years of work today. Alas!

I also did an Atari ST/STE/Falcon game, which I'm going to remake this year too, although I doubt pixel art will cut it for that. The rise of high-dpi displays is making me lean more towards something like RageSpline, so it probably won't use pixel art at all.

Time to get in more practice with iDraw.

 

Its just a style. Its the same with "Chiptune" (also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers and video game consoles). Some people seems to like it, while other people don't.

 

Completely agree. It also allows me to tap into that creative spirit 'back as a child' and fill art with imagination! It's kind of difficult for me to do that with 3D models or the like.