tank sprite

[JpSoft]

This sprites are for our RTS game, any opinion will be more than welcome

Original size (41x17)


5x



Original size (32x32)


5x zoom


We used some predefined images and modify them to avoid copyright violations 

JpSoft

[Evil]

They just look like scaled down high-res images. Nothing special. Don't know what you're looking for.

[Questionable]

The explosion looks fine original, blown up it has some srtifacts but that doesn't translate to the smaller image.

The tank, however, looks pretty fuzzy in the original size, and while I can tell what it is in the bigger picture, that also looks blurry.

To be honest, I thought it was a frog at first. Maybe in the games setting, with the word "tank" it would be more obvious, but image wise I think you can clean it up a bit.

[ThreeOhFour]

First of all - these look very obviously like images that have been resized - mainly because when you resized them you didn't redefine the image (or didn't do it well enough).

I cannot see these things as being very hard to draw. Have you tried drawing them yourself?

Secondly, these don't look like live sprites on the map to me. A tank at that perspective wouldn't work well in any RTS I've played. If these are for a selection menu or something similar, they work fine at the angle they're on. Mind giving us a screenshot of the game showing exactly how they look ingame?

[Questionable]

Good Point. For an RTS, things are generally going to be from an isometric or a "birds-eye" perspective. having a side view, might mke sense for the tank if there are 8 directions of movement, other wise, looking top down and explosion and a tank are not going to exist perpendicular to the surface they are on.

[ThreeOhFour]

JP, just went into the GIP thread and saw your screenshots. I noticed you have advertised for a background artist, and suggest you continue to pursue this route. My question, however, is whether you've considered tile based terrain. As far as I am aware, this is the norm for all of the old 2d RTS games, such as the Warcraft and the C&C series.

Let's have a look at tiles, shall we? I've never done RTS tile before, but if they can do it, so can I, right? . Because they're tiny, I'll show them at twice normal size.

Here are some tiles I drew up this morning:



There's nothing special here - the grass is 3 different shades of green, the cliff is two of purple, two of browny orange. 7 shades is nothing, really, but it is how we use them. Let's put them together and see if we can do something with them. I've flipped a couple here, but otherwise these are just our same few tiles:



Not too bad, is it? It's not really too repetitive (I used a secondary grass tile here to make sure we had some nice breaking up of the standard pattern) and it has some detail .

To stay on topic, let's put some units on top:



3 shades of blue, 3 shades of black and the 2 orange shades borrowed from the cliff. And hey - that almost looks like a real RTS!

If you build yourself a nice little database of tiles in this manner, you can "build" backgrounds rather than having to draw them, and this doesn't take nearly as long .

I hope I've been clear here - good luck with your game whichever path you choose to take. If I was to critique my own images, I'd make the units stand more out from the grass, perhaps make the grass tile a bit better, cut down the saturation of the grass and put some shadows down the bottom of the cliff, but it is a start at the least.

EDIT: I don't mean to ramble here, but I did mean to mention this before and forgot.

A tank, to me, seems like a bad choice for a unit in an RTS game. The reason is that, unless you're content with it looking stiff, you're going to want the turret moving. What this, in my head, represents is a second "character" on top of the tank base that is the turret and follows the tank everywhere, turning seperately. I cannot imagine this being fun to script at all. You have to take into account turning, different angles, shadows.... blergh. However, if you're happy to have a fixed turret, I guess go for it. Just thought I'd bring it up.

[JpSoft]

Ben304, thanks for your ideas. I will use it to try to improve the map appareance and i will post the results in about two days.

Any idea for water? To include it i must rewrite some code lines, but it could be done.

JpSoft

EDIT Im not thinking  to animate the turret since im still working in the down and up looks  :

[ThreeOhFour]

I have some rough ideas on how I'd do water. But to do this, remember we'd need to include a transition from grass to water - that being sand. Let's give this a shot, shall we?



Four new tiles here. I've used three shades for the sand and 4 shades for the water. Using more shades than this can get you nicer graphics but I like to keep things simple.

Let us have a go at putting these together, hey?



It's kind of repetitive and square, but it is a start. The next step from here would be angled tiles to make things look curvy, but this will do for this example. I like to put a fair bit of beach in, and hey - we can use these sand tiles to make a desert, perhaps! This is the beauty of tiles . Keep in mind that water is animated, so in an ideal situation the two tiles here with water should be animated. This could prove to be a fair bit of extra work, however, so you may wish to give it a miss.

Last of all, if you do plan on putting units on the water, think carefully about how their shadows should look. If you adjust the shadow, you can give the water a nice appearance of depth:



I've used transparency here, which you may wish to consider using in the game. This is probably not the best way of doing it, but I'm a newbie here too .

Hope this helps .

EDIT: Also, Orator's edit is good. My water looks kinda shallow. I was stuck in beach resort mode

[Captain Lexington]

Just quick recoloration of Ben's water.

[JpSoft]

Its a great idea to include water, but transparencys will probably slow down the game too much  Im working in a new map and i will post the results today or tomorrow. Any new idea is more than welcome (maybe ice?i cant imagine how it tiles must look)

JpSoft

[ThreeOhFour]

If you're running version 3.0 of the engine and use Direct 3d I honestly cannot see it slowing the system down much .

[JpSoft]

I updated the post in "games in production", there you can see how i include partially your ideas in the main map. It still requires some more work, but it looks really better, even when actually looks too green yet :

I will try with some transparencys in the game. I do not use direct 3d, but that is not the trouble: the real trouble is "if the final player" do not have it 

Thanks for your ideas and help (also to orator)

JpSoft