Hello! For my current project I want to use black and white style graphics, reminiscent of old comics. This isn't a new concept, so what I'd like to know is if you could play a game with such visuals. Cutscenes would be comic strips with highlighted panels or closeups with dialog bubbles. Animations are kept to a minimum. The game is pretty text-heavy, a lot of reading is required. Also: Spaaaaaace!! :=
My personal reasons for using this style are: a. To get myself to draw a lot, b. To get things done faster on the visual side and c. because I really like black and white comics.
I tried to keep the GUI very simple so it's basically like a Sierra VGA game with less icons. I want all GUI parts to always be on screen at all times for technical reasons.
Would such a style bother you or take you out of the game? What would you change? Is it too hard on the eyes?
Issues I've noticed myself: I've been really lax with proper perspective, sometimes not using a vanishing point. Gotta pay more attention here. There are visual differences in the character portraits and other close-ups - it's a problem for me to draw them correctly all the time. Also, when the characters are too big even the anti-aliasing won't help smoothing it out. I'm still trying to get better at actual drawing, but time restraints only allow so much of excercise. Any ideas what I should focus on?
Any input is appreciated.
(http://www.origamihero.com/ex1.png) (http://www.origamihero.com/ex2.png)
(http://www.origamihero.com/ex3.png) (http://www.origamihero.com/ex5.png)
(http://www.origamihero.com/ex6.png)
Aside from the minor perspective issues you mentioned I really like it. The style doesn't bother me at all, quite the contrary. It looks really unique and very polished, you use the two (or three) colours effectively. I'd love to play a game in that style.
Very nice, it has that Flash anti-alising though that makes it look a little too blurry at such a small resolution. Also his face is flipped. The GUI is a little too chunky IMO for the resolution too.
Looks like a fun game, keep it up.
Thanks for the comments so far! I'm using the grey to make certain scenes cleaner, so some elements can be focused on or be 'backgrounded'.
The anti-aliasing is not real, that's me drawing the sprites at an offset with transparency to get that effect. The original sprites are actually pixelled without any anti aliasing, but they clash quite a bit with the backgrounds. My, er, anti-aliasing 'algorithm' can be made sharper by fiddling with the transparency levels. I'll play with that some more. :)
The dialog portraits alternate from left to right, that's why the face is flipped. I need to think of a solution here - maybe no left/right flipping or a second portrait drawn right. My left/right animations are basically always flipped, too. Might have to make seperate left/right views.
The reason this game has a big GUI is because it's meant to be playable on touch devices as well. I'm afraid it would get too fiddly with smaller icons. I'm also using my own adventure engine. That limits me a bit in some spots, but means easier multi-platform releases. Do you think this GUI can be made 'slimmer' but still have it work well enough on mobiles?
Rather than pure black and white, why not shake it up with a color combination that's more visually striking, like gunmetal blue or orange or something like that? There's no requirement that you make your two colors 'standard' and you have a good history of coming up with some striking color hues so why not give it a try here?
I did a quick example to illustrate (I know you are colorblind but I'm not sure exactly which colors so you may or may not notice a difference):
[imgzoom]http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr218/ProgZmax/ex1ex_zpsdf7e3192.png[/imgzoom]
The main thing I did here was reduce the colors to 8 and made them a gradient from yellow-white to bluish-red with the last color higher than black so it actually contributes to the image. Other color ranges that would give interesting results would be something from orange to black/dark red/dark blue. The only thing I would watch out for are bright colors that hurt the eyes, which is what I was working to avoid by making the brightest color something off-white below the rgb maximums.
Excellent idea, thanks! :) I've played around with the colors a bit. Here's ther result:
(http://www.origamihero.com/ex7.png)
I'm thinking of making an option in the menu to cylce through two or three color modes like that.
What I'm not sure about is how to implement the color reduction. I could do this for backgrounds only, but I can't do it for the sprites.
I think it looks absolutely terrific, and I'm delighted that you seem to be making more adventure games!
My only observation regarding the latest draft is that it doesn't pop as much as ProgZ's version. I think it's because the 'white' tone is that bit more muted. That might be preferable for full screen playing. But for windowed playing, I think a brighter white would keep the attention better.
Thanks! Adventure games are awesome and I will keep making them.
The color settings are a bit of a nightmare to deal with. I can't quite get the range of colors photoshop offers at runtime. I'm planning to include a few color modes with different contrasts, maybe even RGB and contrast sliders, if I can get that to work. It would make fiddling with colors so much easier! :)