Its all black and white, but how?

[lo_res_man]

Hey trust-funders! 8)
I am making a game with basically two colours in the background, black and white in fact.(who knew? )
so to do that I must make sure my shadows are uber accurate.
so does any one know any one know any hints and tips on shadows. I want it to look all German expressionism and film noir. with skwewy angles and such. any tips or tutorials, would be welcome.
(PS This, this format is very important for the game, so don't try to convince me other wise )

[ManicMatt]

Only two colours? With SHADOWS on everything?

Are you sure you don't want black and white like in black and white films? Lots of greys? (Like in Spooks!)

[m0ds]

If you're using greys you won't have a problem, if it's specifically two colours - black & white then I think the point Matt is making is that you'll have a hard time!!

[lo_res_man]

MAYBE a few( big MAYBE) but as I said its very important for the FEEL of the game.Think"sin city" and things like that. I know, mod's it  will be tough, but thats the look I want. can you guys help me or not?

[HeirOfNorton]

Like "Sin City" the comic would be EXTREMELY difficult to do in animation. Not impossible, but really hard. Allowing some shades of grey but keeping it high-contrast (like "Sin City" the movies) would make things quite a bit easier.

Otherwise, I don't think there are any real tutorials around. Just study some good artists and movies for examples.

(Cabinet of Dr. Caligari the adventure game... that would be SOOO messed up, but I'd play it.)

HoN

[m0ds]

This may not achieve or prove anything, but here are a few of the minor difficulties you might face.



It does kind of work, but I really haven't gone into any level of detail on the above pic.
- The lamps shadow probably wouldn't exist on the window, or would be better as a lighter shade of gray
- Any thick shadows like that of a house or building might completely destroy any detail on buildings/objects next to it

The more detail you add the more problems I think you'll have with working with 2 colours.

[Chicky]

Take a look at my game kid. http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=25233.0


It's all but three colours. I first started out with just two but you find that your character gets completely lost in the shadows, which takes away from the playing experience.

If you have a good idea of how shadows fall on objects you shouldn't have too much trouble. Good luck!

[lo_res_man]

Well its not meant to be to detaled, its in 320/240 res.
and its not going to be line art, per say. it is going to be blocks of light and, dark. if there's no tutorials on this, can someone help me with realistic shadows. how they fall and such. how light works. I think I can take it from there.

[ManicMatt]

Good point Chicky, and please excuse the lack of comments from me on your game, as I'm narrow minded when it comes to certain graphic styles.

And then there's the font, too!

I guess you'd have to in the same fashion as Ben jordan or mind's eye, with boxes rather than text in-game.

[DanClarke]

I think it's possible, with techniques like dithering and crossing to give the appearance of greys, but as mentioned the trouble you'll have is distinguishing characters from BGs.

[lo_res_man]

don't worry I have a cure for that, but canI have some help with shadows?

[Desmond]

Regarding help with shadows, I believe you have two options:

1)  Find excellent reference material and draw from that, or:

2)  Get a simple 3D package (such as the free Blender software), set up a basic scene using primitives and a simple light, and render the results.  With the right contrast settings, you should be able to get the effect that you're looking for, and can then re-draw the image to your liking.  (Here, you're simply making your own reference material.)

Otherwise, in many cases you can probably paint in your light areas, rather than your shadows.  Think of your image as complete darkness and imagine where the light is reaching, rather than imagining your image as completely lit and then figuring out where light is not reaching -- if that makes sense.

Good luck!

[Trumgottist]

Well its not meant to be to detaled, its in 320/240 res.

I think it's a mistake to use such a low resolution if you want to limit the colour palette that drastically. It'll make things hard to make out and very blocky. I imagine it could be a nice effect in a higher resolution, though.

[lo_res_man]

Here is two of my first tries in this style, I like the first one kind of, but I want to make it more imposing. something that creates a kind of awe and fear.




suprise huh, thought it was going to be a private eye game huh? well its not. its a game set in 12,000,000,000 AD (or CE) and Man is dead but remembered.

[Trumgottist]

Yep, works nicely. I still think it would benefit from, say, 640x480 at least. Since it's in B/W, the images will compress extremely well, so file size shouldn't be an issue. (I don't know anything about the inner workings of AGS, but I assume it compresses the images.)

[Ionias]

... but I want to make it more imposing ...

The background looks a bit cartoonish to me. If you're going for a darker more somber tone I would steer the graphics in a more realistic direction. Just my 2 cents.

[Evil]

Like DC said, you'll probably need to dither. I think that, with some heavy scripting, on white your character could have a black outline and on black your character could have a white outline, making the character stand out more.Ã,  Also, someone here made a dither pattern and I happened to save it.

[lo_res_man]

evil, ok ok, thanx a lot, but I don't want to dither. you see in this game, light and dark have evolved and become alive ,like matter, and light and dark destroy each other on contact, as well there was a big war between light and dark and to destroy dark, the light destroys almost all the matter in the universe, including man, so dark has nothing to cast its shadow, but dark evolved a way to survive this, so now there is an uneasy truce. so having black and white is kind of symbolic.

[Trumgottist]

I agree that dithering would miss the point. Then you could just as well make it grey-scale.

[Creed Malay]

You might find it helpful to check out the graphics of some old zx spectrum games. They often used black and white (or black and yellow, or black and cyan, or whatever) graphics to avoid the horrible colour clash problems the platform had. Later games with more ambitious/detailed graphics will be more helpfull, obv.

Davy