Solving a BIG problem (GRAPHICS) ... if it is actually a common problem

So there is this game that is currently mocked and bully around internet, jim sterling is completely unfair to this one.

http://www.dragoon.ca/skylightfreerange.html
It's out on ps4 and vita, everything was made by the same guy, from music to animation, and return of people who took time to play it said the combat system is rather in depth and ask for strategy, while not the best, it's good enough, the story depend to your tolerance to kingdom heart style of complex cast shenanigan, level design is meh of course.

I admire the guy to have pushed this far and complete an actual game ALONE unlike me (yet I hope?). That takes ball, and it's not his first game, it's like a series and he has been making game since 2008.

That might be strange, but I don't find the graphics bad, I think they are not used well, and could have south park style of charm with better flair, ie working on animation, pacing and composition, and when I say animation, I say it south park style of minimalist expression. Of course it's flat out amateur here, but it's not due to what people usually think, ie details.

I want to make a game in this style now, that's how upset by the mockery I am lol!

 

@neoshaman that's great stuff and be nice to see more Indie games like those. I am the opposite of most folks around here in that I don't want to see Indie games modeling themselves after current AAA games. I just don't see the point of it. I'd probably just get the AAA game.

I want Indie games that are as far from current AAA as they can get. That game looks interesting to me because first it seems to have some real depth and second it looks kind of wacky.

The graphics and animation all tell me the developer is saying "ya know this is what I did for graphics.... best I could... and I made them MY way... if you don't like it then don't play it". It's kind of like they are not taking themselves so seriously or at least not taking the whole "you gotta be a pro!" crap so seriously and are "doing their own thing... their way".

I can respect that. The game has a lot more personality as a result. It looks unique. Sure some can say "it looks bad ha ha ha laughing" but what they can't say is it looks like so many other games that all look like the people were taking themselves and what they are doing way too seriously trying to make their games look a "certain" way... "look pro"... which leads them to often look much the same.

Basically the kind of things I want make. Not actually look as "good" quality/detail wise as Skylight Freerange 2. I mean make it MY way. Not strive to make it look like all of the other Indie games out there. Or strive to make it look the way others think it has to or should look. I find that game... refreshing... I guess is the best way to put it.

I think a big part of what puts me off to all of this modern Indie stuff is something has been lost big time. It's like everyone is so worried about their image. And making everything they do look as pro-like as it can be. And again it makes it so the market is flooded with all of these Indie games that more or less look the same & feel the same.

I think a big reason for that is because every time people put out their games for feedback they have people critiquing them on the graphics saying "the legs / feet come back 1/8th inch too much", "the color on the big statue should have a bit more green" and so on. So the people make these changes to make it look "better", more "proper" and at the same time they are just making their games look more and more like all of the others. They're losing the individualism. The uniqueness of the developer.

And I remember always trying out different PD and shareware games and appreciating them because they were the opposite of AAA. They were very unique. They were amateur and they were interesting. They were just different. And that was the appeal.

 

I'm having a lot of fun working on my current game. Probably the most fun I've had in a long time. And this is basically how I think it will end up looking in the end too. Except I think the level scenery looks far too good. So I probably will redraw all of that draw as just rectangles in the end.





It should end up as not only a very interesting looking (as in "different" not something so common) game but also because I am focusing on the gameplay experience instead of achieving "pro graphics" I can put the time in to really make it play and feel very solid & unique too.

Progress is slow is because I've cut back to no more than 5 hours per week spent on game dev to prevent burnout. And that is working very well so far.

Basically I figured I used to always make tiny games and I'd strive to get in 10 hours or maybe more each week so I could complete the games in about 3 weeks. But if I am going to make a bigger scope game then I need to really cut back to a very relaxed development pace. When I work I work and get a lot done but I won't be working very often. Some weeks I may well only get in 2 to 3 hours total.

This is actually the first "mini game". I am splitting the bigger game project into a series of mini games with each focusing on one area of what the full game needs.

I want this to be a platformer game with more combat, interaction and little more depth than the norm. This piece is all about the combat. So I have been working on the Barbarian control and skills. Next dev session I'll add one enemy type. And just go from there. Am very excited about getting to the actual combat and having some back & forth action in the battles.

All this mini game will be about is the player facing a never ending horde of enemies coming on the non-scrolling screen. First there will be a little delay between them. But the delay decreases more and more as time passes (or maybe as the player kills enemies).

Then next mini game piece will focus on the platformer. That will have no enemies and focus on Barbarian control & skills for interacting with the environment, collectibles and so forth.

Not sure yet how many mini games there will be. Maybe just these two. Maybe 3 to 4. But eventually I will get them all done and when I do I'll have all of the modules needed for the real game.

But yes @neoshaman it would be cool for you to make a great game like the one you posted. And not get hung up on "looks" and "pro" and just be different and make something a little unique.

 

Occasionally you'll stumble upon an indie developer that isn't following the trends but most of them don't seem to use normal distribution methods. Just as an example I stumbled upon a company that is creating games for the Commodore 64.

http://www.knightsofbytes.games/about
https://www.patreon.com/chesterkollschen

 

@GarBenjamin: No offense, but instead of barbarian, I still see a giant door handle that jumps around in a forest.

I think you may need something that ids the character as a humanoid.

Newgrounds has "madness" series that might be worth checking out if you haven't seen them.

Characters look like this:


However, I gotta say that movement looks quite good. Just not the character itself.

 

Oh yeah. There are several developers now focusing on the C64 as well as every other retro machine. I mean these are Indies making new "commercial" games for sale on these machines.

And Protovision I believe also (or maybe primarily) publishes your games for the C64.

Believe me I have thought more than a few times about going back to the C64 with Assembly or Amiga with AMOS or Blitz Basic 2 and developing games. BUT I think for these systems it might be better to focus on top quality because it is almost like a "scene" deal where you're trying to push the machine and get the best from it and show what you can do visually and so on.

Although saying that I do believe nearly all of these people buying new games for these old systems certainly place more value on the game than anything else so maybe that isn't true.

Anyway you're right. There are some who are walking a different path. Always a good thing!

 

See what I was saying? lol

I hear you. But I just have no interest in doing it. The way I see it I could at the very end contract out all of the art work so it ends up looking about like all of the other Indie 2D pixel art games out there. Or I can just go with this and it will be mine and it will be different. Distinct.

For those people who can get past the looks they will find a very solid fun game (or at least that is my intention). A platformer with a bit more (or at least some different forms) of interaction. More emphasis on combat instead of one or two strikes or bouncing on head once or twice to kill an enemy. And a little more depth in the form of some RPG-like aspects. And a big part of it is I wonder just how many such people are out there. And I want to reach those people. Best way to do that is to make such games and gather them up over time.

Basically I've decided if I am going to do this Indie thing I am just going to do it my way. And my strength is programming first & foremost and secondary strength (I think anyway) game design as far as focusing on interaction and so on. If it flops then it flops. But I need to be doing something I enjoy and have an interest in doing. Something I can be passionate about.

 

You could always just use more than one rectangle for the player.

 

Yeah I considered that. Also giving it an eye and so forth. But basically I am trying to focus only on the essence of what it is. The "thing" itself and the weapon. Those are the only important things. That is the essence of this character in the context of the game.

 

Yes. Otherwise you'll probably need to turn the game into a story about cubes or door handles invading a lowres world with trees and forests, which could be fun but may not be what you wanted.

For a good example of programmer's graphics see Darwinia games and Defcon.

Spiderweb games may be also worth checking out. Also Dominion 4: Thrones of Ascension on steam.
-----
Basically, I'm not trying to bash your sprite, I'm just saying that there's a dissonance between the character and background. If this is not a prototype but the way final character should look like, there should probably be some reason or an explanation for the dissonance. For example that character does not belong to the world.

 

Well ya know maybe at the end I will replace all the graphics. That was the original idea. But then over the past week I started thinking why? To what end? To make it look basically like all of the other games out there?

So I don't know. But that is something that is a low priority and can be figured out at the very end after there is an actual game that plays well.

 

Well, the way I see it, when you start making something, you have a rough idea what it is supposed to be.

I usually have a "glimpse" of what it is supposed to be in my mind. What it should look like. What it should feel like. Then I try to make what I saw happen. And this is the difficult part, because bringing things out of your mind into some form in which other people can see them is hard. I also usually have way more images than I can reasonably "make happen" without six figure budget. If the "image" is proving too difficult to create, then I start thinking about it, the image I see start morphing, and turns into a new image I'll try to make happen.

So. Regarding "to what end" part. When you started making it, you saw an image. Does the game you have now match that image? Does the game feel like that image?

I think that you mentioned that your original idea had somethign to do with "Barbarian" game. Something related to barbarians manifested in either forum posts or in text form somewhere. However, I do not see a square with a sword as a barbarian in the world that is portrayed in background. Which brings us back to stylistic dissonances.

 

Yes. It definitely feels like a warrior block when play-testing the little bit that is in there so far. Since the visuals are so basic I've placed much emphasis on the feel which is also very easy because it is just programming.

It doesn't look like a barbarian. I agree and see what you are saying now. But that kind of thing I think is easy. I make a tribe of Block Barbarians. That is just a name to provide context. I show the block minions of hell, etc. Now we have some consistency going on to make this world feel a little more real. Tell a tiny bit of history of the Block Barbarians, etc. Now the player can start to relate to the block. Basically everything remains the same except for a barbarian humanoid it is barbarian block... greatest warrior of the barbarian block people.

 

I would like to say as someone who couldn't draw my way out of a hole (I think that's an expression.) 2D vector art is a fairly easy switch from a 3D background.



I think the benefit comes from the fact that you can fiddle around with shapes as opposed to redrawing them, meaning that if you don't have a heavy art skillset, you don't have to rely on the gestures and strokes of a trained hand.

Also, instead of boring tween animations or skeletal 2D, you get some of the squash and pull of hand-drawn. As well as everything that comes from working with objects rather than pixels.

So creating a basic character and making him pleased about his boot doesn't take long. A sprite sheet using this method would be super quick.

Though I will say that if art skills are near zero, you shouldn't shoot for the stars. I would much rather Thomas Was Alone graphics over the usually confusing and busy artstyles of over ambitious programmers. Game art's primary focus should be giving clear feedback, looking pretty is always secondary to that.

I'm a fan of the barbarian block look for sure.

 

@neginfinity now you know I definitely may update the character graphics. I just threw these together real quick. And I do think it would likely be better to get rid of the dark border around the edge of the block. And I could also just completely get rid of the weapon as well until an attack is performed. And likely just make that a much closer shade to the block body. So I am not against minimizing the look more.

There is some precedent on Steam... some examples would be...

Pixel: ru2

Square Brawl

The Impossible Game

Pretentious Game

Only difference is I plan on my game having more to it than these by quite a lot. I just am sharing these as examples from a purely graphical viewpoint. The actual games will be very different of course. Basically it will be a great game it just won't look like gee whiz.

Also, keep in mind I am not setting out with a goal to make a game that a 100,000 people get. lol

My goals are much smaller than that. If I can get say 1,000 people for the first game that is great.
Heck I'd probably be happy with 500.

Then it is a matter of making another game which ideally will still appeal to a large percentage of these people plus maybe reach another 500 to 1,000 people.

Stepping stones.

In time, if I had a diehard bunch of 10,000 fans willing to spend $3 to $5 on such games I'd be stoked. But I wouldn't expect to reach that right out of the gate. There is always the possibility of course but I would never count on that. I also think as a person creates a catalogue of games it helps to reach that critical mass effect as well. Basically I envision a website with several different games using a simple style but that are unique fun games with more to them than what people had expected. I just need to find the people who, like me, don't judge a book by its cover. And I know they are out there. Someplace. lol

 

Sorry I missed this somehow earlier. Yeah I mentioned that up above that I'll redo the level scenery the background to be squares as well. Originally I was experimenting with very low res pixel art. But it still proved too time consuming for the animation of characters.

Basically all it comes down to I don't want to spend most of my time just creating graphics. Although I do that for fun maybe once per week or so that is not where my main interest is. I want to actually be making games. Designing, programming, building the game world and bringing it all to life through the interactions and telling a little story along the way.

Anyway I agree with that. The background needs to be downgraded.

 

the block man is invading reality

 

You know.... that's a solid idea. This way the levels could be more detailed (well compared to the block characters) and makes sense.

I guess I see games differently than many because to me they are GAMES... we can do basically whatever in hell we want, modify the story as needed to support it and make sense. Again make sense for a GAME.

Barbarian humanoids become barbarian blocks. Have more detailed almost "realistic" looking background scenery as compared to the characters... we're no longer in the block people world as you just said The evil has taken the woman through a portal to a different realm. Some weird place called Earth.

I think people just make this stuff way harder than it is. lol

 

Speaking of no animation how about prison architect



The hand (circle) only appear when needed and are very basic programmable animation.

It also takes no time to do and is expressive enough while keeping it minimalisticallissimo

 

In this case check out Tron 2.0 and Terraria. Both games feature "corruption" that spreads through the world, changing it.

In the "block conflict" version, you(meaning your character) could start as a character with the mission to make the world right - blockier and straighter with only few colors, the way it is meant to be. Level after level you'll see surroundings being converted to square/rectangle structure, and then, maybe, in the end character may change their mind and ever switch sides or revert the world back (also see Prince of Persia 2008), and then stop being the brick and become a humanoid shape in the final screen.

 

This. Rayman Origins comes to mind. You can really get away with subtly implying certain characteristics and motions while exaggerating others.

It can be freeing to realize symbols sometimes work better than realistic depictions.

 

It is probably used some times even when the devs make no mention of it. I don't know for sure if both of these games used it.

It's a great technique to achieve better quality 2D art & animation. That's the problem I was running into. I've done the 3D renders for 2D. And digitizing... taking photos of myself and others performing animations and then using those either as is (with clean up of course) or drawing over them in a sort of paint-by-number style. And that also is a way to get better quality graphics & animation.

Definitely great things for non-artists to try and see how they like. Unfortunately for my case such techniques don't help. Most things seem focused on improving graphics / animation quality where I want the focus on minimizing the amount of time required to create the graphics / animation.

I think basically just using stylistic rectangles or plain solid color rectangles and other very simple shapes is the best path.

For example enemies can be more triangular or at least have some triangle form to them. Good things can be ovals. "Female" could be a bit oval. Meaning rounded corners on those blocks.

I think it is more just consistency. Defining some rules and sticking with them. Then players should be able to better read and connect with this visual style.

 

The main reason I thought so about these 2 games is that the contours of the characters look a bit "wobbly" like they were downsampled from 3d object. And the number of animation frames is unusual for the pixel graphics.

While I havent tried it myself, I think there is a certain threshold of animation/project complexity when pre-rendered 3d starts having its benefits. In your case you're probably right with sticking with drawn sprites, since you have limited amount of animations. But if the game had a combo system + ability to equip visually different weapons and armor, then it'd saved a lot of time to make those items as 3d objects linked to character skeleton, instead of re-drawing all animations for each equipment piece.

 

More or less. For my case there actually will be combos. That is one of the things I want to have for the combat. Just haven't done them yet because now that I have a solid base of moves in I want to get an enemy out there to fight.

In my mind I envision the barbarian block attacking normally as he does now. However when hit connects the next attack will then be different maybe a sideway swipe and finally perhaps followed by a slight jump and overhead blow on the enemy.

Not moves the player has to do or time perfectly or hit sequence of keys or such nonsense but just automated as hits are tallied up. If enemy breaks attack by scoring hit first or dodging then chain resets to normal attack. Because I want killing enemies to involve some actual battles not swing weapon hit poof it is dead. Bounce on its head poof it is dead.

OOPs I rambled again. I really have some very clear goals for this game in my mind so thinking of a tiny tidbit of it just leads to another. lol

But yeah the thing is using this very simple graphics style I can easily make animations. For gear again very simple and I have considered that because i want some rpg aspects. But see pants for example well that is just a solid color on the lower half of the block. Upper armor just solid color on upper half of blocks. IF I do that I will just split it into two blocks stuck together solid white. Can color them programmatically as new equipment is acquired. Easy. Fast. Flexible.

It is really about quality. All of those techniques are just for making it easier to produce high quality graphics and animation easier. But the time required is still huge. So I am going for ultra simplistic that can support depth of gameplay easily.

 

Well, it is true that a certain quality of graphics takes time, regardless of whether it is pixel, 2d HD(hand-drawn, vector, whatever), 3d models, or 3d models pre-rendered sprites. The catch though is that depending on the exact game and other things, one technique may be better either as far as results or time taken. For example, as Dimitri mentioned, if you have a bunch of different animation or weapons/armor/etc... then drawing all those sprites and animations suddenly ends up taking much longer than if you had started with 3d or pre-rendered 3d. Another factor is the "redo" factor. If your graphics are subject to change, some changes take much longer than others. If you are doing things manually, those changes can really hurt. If you are doing things in 3d, many changes may not hurt that much, especially material colors and simple model edits. In 3d, you may simply be able to scale the part and re-render everything, but in 2d if the part is too big, it will be too big in every animation frame.....

 

Oh yeah I am not disagreeing. Just saying that using the approach I decided on gets around these things for the most part already. With the obvious trade-off being the game will look closer to this



instead of this


But I find that an acceptable trade-off to actually be able to make a game of a larger scope than I have been able up to this point.

Also I do have some ideas for jazzing up the display but again primarily programmatically. Not raw artistic quality achieved through tons of time spent iterating on graphics.

I do agree with you about the 3D being easier in many ways. Especially I think 3D suits the minimalistic graphics style even better. Truly a person could make a hell of a cool RPG game using nothing but cubes, lighting, some shader FX and programming other FX. Would keep the visuals dead easy & fast to create allowing them to focus on making a very rich game.

It's been a great discussion overall. I've enjoyed it. I think I might do 90-minute dev session now and bring an enemy to life. Get some combat going on. If I have time left at the end of getting the enemy out and fighting I might play around a bit with some of things I was thinking of for giving the presentation more 'kick". But I just get tired of all of this focus on the dang graphics. That's the big reason why I am striving to make gfx as dead easy & simple as possible. There is far more to a game than just the graphics and those are the things I am most interested in exploring.

BUT... a little bit of FX here and there I am fine with that. As long as it is not ridiculously time consuming. So maybe 15 to 20 minutes on it and call it good. I definitely am not going to waste dozens or hundreds of my dev sessions just working on graphics. That just seems crazy to me.

 

Well I knew that was an aggressive goal and I did not complete it.

Made some great progress though. Have the enemy graphics knocked out (recolored versions of the player so that was quick). Then the EnemyManager to handle overall control and coordination of the enemies. Then the first enemy type specific manager but only made it to the Idle and Advance (to engage player in combat) states.

So yeah after a bit of time an enemy appears, idles a bit then advances but no combat yet. But I technically still have 30 minutes left for tonight so maybe I'll do a little more later.

The point of all of this is I definitely won't have time tonight to do the updates just for jazzing up the display a bit. Maybe in my next dev session (should be Sunday or Monday) I will get to it. I want to finish the gameplay part first. Then mess around with the visuals a bit.

 

Haven't had a chance to focus solely on the presentation to add some fx to make things look more interesting.

Continued to focus on the essence of what's going on and relying solely on programming for control, movement, etc to bring things to life... and try to make it interesting visually. Basically the combat is sort of like "dancing with the enemies".

No actual combat yet but I have the first enemy control complete except for reacting to being hit and dying and player receiving hits, etc.

Just figured I'd post these because it will be a good way to see how much difference if any) the little things I have in mind for jazzing up the display make.





Of course, the point of this is I am making a platformer game with more emphasis on battles. That's a key design goal here. Also wanted larger characters because I get tired of see such tiny characters in 2D pixel art games. Although admittedly I may have went a little overboard on that for a platformer game. lol

Anyway, next dev session I will focus on some FX purely for the presentation and then post and we can compare and see how it went.

 

That last gif is making me claustrophobic. There's something deeply unsettling about enemies that won't give you any personal space! xD

 

I blame their swords being so close to their bodies that they have to glomp you to attack you.

 

They actually do give you some personal space... in that clip it is me who is not giving the enemies any personal space. Jumping in the middle of them, etc. There is no reaction to that. There might be at some point not sure.

Basically I don't want the player and enemies to collide and the player gets injured. I know it is a very common thing in games but... I want to explore something else. Still just a game so I am thinking enemies and player can walk past each other. No collision. Neither enemy or player gets hurt from that. Only from actual combat strikes.

 

Yeah I've been considering increasing that. Because it really doesn't take into account arm reach. Will do that update at some point.

 

Actually, if the sword will start moving relative to the cube and not just rotate, the thing will stop looking like a door handle and may start resembling Krinkel's madness characters or prison architect characters.

So I think it is definitely a good idea.

Also, you could turn it into floating sprite instead of having it as a part of the character sprite, but this would significantly affect overall art style.

 

I think I'll just make the update for the weapon reach because that is needed. As far as spending time on graphics touches just for the sake of graphics as I was thinking of doing... I am skipping that. I just can't bring myself to waste a whole night's dev session or two on that.

Yeah man I have been thinking about separating the weapon from the characters. Originally that was the idea so new weapons could be easily equipped but I started dabbling and one thing led to another and I figured ah I'll just make it work as a single sprite for character with weapon. But kind of thinking it may be best to do that.

And it's gameplay-focused not just a visual embellishment yet it does make it easier to make things look a tiny bit more interesting as well. So... I might do that.

Not sure because I could just add an "arm" piece coming out of blocks with weapon handle at the end of the arm.

I think I've prototyped enough now to identify the need to nail down some game design details. Do I want collectible armor such as lower body armor and upper body armor? If so then each character needs 2 half-height sprites. Do I want collectible weapons? If so then I need an additional sprite just for weapon.

I'm away in a hotel for a business trip for my job tonight but maybe in the morning I'll sit with a notebook for 30 minutes and nail down these specifics. Then next dev session perhaps Thursday or Friday will work on whatever I decided on.

Time for sleep now. Exhausted. Only slept 4 hours last night and been up since 5:15.

 

So, I spent 1 hour tonight updating the reach of the weapons and adding the basics for the combat collisions as well as the foundation for the 4 possible outcomes of a hit landing. The weapons have nearly double the reach now. which means player & enemies don't need to move so close to each other.

1 hour is all I am doing tonight simply because I just don't feel like doing any more.

Does anyone have any examples of minimal graphics styles they have used (or are currently using) for their games to allow them to quickly complete the graphics & animation in 2D or 3D?

If so, please feel free to share with screenshots/gifs/videos. Don't worry it is unlikely your approach will be any more basic than what I am currently using. lol

 

Well, you saw my ldjam entry.

However, this is 3 or 4 hours per character, because I still need to setup a "puppet" - rig model, configure ik chains, etc.


You could do something similar restricted to 2d - a skeletal animation of basic shapes. Basically, in case your "barbarian" only has body and a sword, it means you have smaller number of parameters to control compared to a full 3d humanoid rig. This will be somewhat similar to prison architect or anotherworld


Basically - mostly vector animation. It may be also possible to make the animation procedural (and sink a lot of time into writing a procedural controller).

However, it may not fit your style well, as I mentioned previously.

Going lower than that would require ascii graphics.

 

hmmm we had that before in terms of what "quickly" means I was doing this very quickly as example:

(it's a stylized circus arena from top)

practically though I simply used primitive shapes (in photoshop) and filled it with colors and used layer styles to make borders etc. the lamplights are made by creating an ellipse with a white to transparent gradient and then setting the layer mode to blend differently (i think it might have been screen)

and....although it's quite many years ago I worked on this and also not alone, but when planning ahead for what you need in graphics, it might make the whole process easier...

here is also a video of some background on how we did the characters in the actual episodes:

but this is far from simple....although the process on how we made the characters is what can be used for less complex characters aswell I think.

I wished I had a screenshots from the other games I made at university, we had one that was practically just rectangles with gradients on them.

 

Man, "quickly" is such an arbitrary word.

For me it's important to to just have something, I mean anything at all.
And amount of time is spent increasing the number of iterations.

Graphics is not a binary choice, of "exist" or "not exist", at all.
The graph from being; "complete crap","unacceptable", "okay'ish" to "good" graphics is just about the number of iterations one has time to do.

Here my very first attempt at creating anything in Unity. Where I spent only a few hours on the graphics.
It's not something I would exactly tout as showcase material, or generally show off, but given what this thread is about...

 

Absolutely agree. It is the iterative process of either completely redoing graphics work numerous times or refining / touching up graphics work numerous times that is the time-sink. With each iteration (hopefully) improving one or more aspects of the quality.

However, the style of / goal for the graphics also makes a big difference. Imagine the characters as ultra low poly 3D block people, ultra low res pixel art characters, HD 2D characters with a lot of detail and a lot of animation using a Spriter/Smooth Moves system or HD 3D near photo realistic models.

Each of these has a different minimum amount of time & work required for the first iteration. One may take an average person 1 hour and another may take 20 hours.

The character graphics you are showing in your video are very good IMO. The characters are highly readable, seem like they will be expressive and the characters seem to "have character" as far as their look is concerned. Yet they also are simplistic which should keep time down to some degree.

I think this excellent work. How much time did it take to do these characters?

 

I'd like to add few screens to put it into perspective.

This is professional grade character for a visual-novel-type game:

Spoiler

Game for the first screen features 3d scene in background with simplified characters which are animated (simply) to indicate what is going on.

In second one characters have blinking animation.

Unfortunately, number of hours is unknown.

I think the video works well, though. Kinda reminded me of "Magical Diary" on steam.

Spoiler

 

I think about 15 minutes per character or something like that, i remember I spent more time on the book covers.
But I guess one could argue that in many cases one could get away with ludicrously simple (and modular) graphic style that would take a very short time to do if one knows the boundaries of the scope beforehand.

Though, I absolutely agree with @neginfinity , there is so much more room for fidelity that takes a game from being passable to interesting.

And I don't always agree that a simple (read; timeless), be it 8bit or 3D cubes with GI, art style is the final solution to everything.
It's just a simple hack to make "suspension of disbelief" bar so low that you can make things really good within a really small boundary.
Timeless for me is something like Broken Sword : Shadow of the Templars, and that is not ether easy nor simple to do.

 

@neginfinity and @Kemonono I definitely agree. We all know there is always a higher level when it comes to the graphics. A person could spend one year on each character if they wanted to. There is basically no limit to it. Colors can always be adjusted. Shapes modified. Details added. Outfits, hairstyles and so on completely changed a near endless number of times.

I just don't think that is the way to do the work in a production environment. That is the way to do the work when you solely enjoy creating graphics for the sake of creating the graphics and have an unlimited budget of time available. OR have a huge team of artists such as AAA studios allocate to their games.

I think there is a lot of value in identifying the simplest, quickest way of producing an acceptable level of graphics for an Indie game (not a AAA game). Something like Limbo seems like a good choice for this reason.

 

To be honest, I do not think this is true or possible when there's an idea behind a character.

If there's an idea of what the character should be, then there's a limit to what you can do with a character. With a first you'll start homing onto good implementation of the idea, and in a few iterations that'll be it -> A point where you can't realistically "adjust shapes or colors", because this is close enough to what you want.

 

If it is just being made for you sure that may be the case. When you reach the point where you are happy with the look simply start showing others... put out a demo, screenshots etc and you'll have feedback on what should be improved including possibly completely redrawing / remodeling the character, changing the outfit, etc. And probably the same for the animations on the character. Make this transition smoother, replace this animation entirely, there should be a few more animations for this, this and this.

Maybe 1 year is unrealistic but I really don't think so. And I wouldn't be surprised if a few people around here have spent that much time on a single character just redoing, tweaking, etc.

Obviously the style the aesthetic you're going for makes a big difference. I am not talking about ultra low poly or ultra low res pixel art for the 1 year.

 

btw. did you ver look into games like equilinnox?

sure it's not 2D, but I think it gives a good idea on how much you can reduce graphics and then as example compensate with animations etc. for readability.

 

I'm sitting at Denny's trying their new Gouda chicken skillet. Will watch video when I return home later. Thanks for posting it.

I haven't seen this particular game but I have checked out (and continually do) both 2D and 3D games that look great while being minimalist. 2D or 3D doesn't matter really. Ultra low poly is equivalent of ultra low res pixel. Same concept and is definitely a solid one.

I think both @Arowx and @neginfinity do some awesome work in ultra low poly. It is very stylistic and just looks awesome I think. But it also seems to still take a significant amount of time as far as I have read.

Still I think that is a great way to go. Ultimately many of us have ideas in our heads for games we want to make. We want to take those concepts and turn them into a playable game and managing the project scope by reduction of graphic fidelity is just an extremely powerful tool to support that.

Most of the time the actual visuals as far as high def or low def doesn't matter at all. Not as far as bringing that concept to life in the form of a completed playable game. EXCEPT it may just be the one thing that makes it possible.

 

yep, what I like bout his videos, is that he actually shows some of the process and how fast he is doing it so I think it's very informative.

 

Finally watched the video and in fact many of his other dev log videos.

This is really fantastic stuff. This is basically exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. Very cool how for animation on the objects he is not rigging and animating and instead is using motion and rotation of the object as a whole. The frogs, wolves, etc.

Not sure if he intends to keep it that way for the release version or spend the time rigging & animating. I hope he just keeps what he has. Because it looks unique. And that is a big plus I think.

The motion reminds me much of like what I am doing for my block dudes


When I said I had some ideas to jack up the display somewhat programmatically it's basically the kind of things he is doing. Some slight rotation to make for a slight lean forward when moving forward, etc. Also considering some scale adjustment when landing from a jump to expand ever so slightly horizontally while shrinking ever so slightly vertically. Not so much to make the characters seem like rubber but just to add a little something to the visuals. That kind of thing.

I didn't see any of the actual modeling work in the videos I watched. But I think obviously he is making an awesome looking game in a very minimal way. Well minimal as far as time spent specifically on graphics content creation. He is relying basically on programming to make it all look as interesting as he can.

 

there is one , (copied it at the time he shows it), bleh copying it at current time didnt work....
5:05

and here 6:18

 

Be very cool if folks showed the modeling and other graphics work in realtime instead of almost always speeding it up by 8x or so. I have seen some vids on YouTube of creating graphics content in realtime but they are rare.

Anyway, great stuff and I can relate very much to this. Loved the part in the second video "I try to make a bear. I give up on making the bear. I decide to make a frog instead". Ha ha! I can relate so much to that. Sometimes what ends up in one of my games is not exactly what I had planned but due to simply not wanting to waste a crazy amount of time creating that specific object I replace it with a different one.

I think most of us know this is normal. This is the reality of game dev for Indies. Still it is great to see it being done by others in the same way.