First Background & Gui Critic

[FrancoFranchi]

Hi,

I'm currently in the very early stages of planning my first proper game - the first two chapters are written out, so I thought I'd try and work on the graphical style of the game (in the Gabriel Knight/Broken Sword tradition).Ã,  As a newbie, I know it'd be hard to get someone to help out with backgrounds so I've tried to soldier on anyway and started with this:



As should be pretty obvious, I have little to no artistic abilities.Ã,  The background image was rendered with a fairly old copy of 3D Studio Max (and still struggling to figure out how to use it) - the tent was a prebuilt SketchUp circus model free from Google.Ã,  The trees and character were added in Photoshop.

Graphically, here's two things I'm definitely planning on doing in the final version will be:
- Improving/personalising the mobile phone
- Adding a table or something inside the tent

Any other suggestions on how to improve the scene?Ã,  (whether or not I'm competent enough to do it is another thing!)

THE GUI

At the bottom of the screen is the early draft of one of the main characters' GUIs.Ã, 

As you've probably guessed, the four commands are taken from wedding vows -
- "I" is a basic look icon
- "Take" is, you guessed it, picking something up (when applied on a character, it interacts with him or her physically)
- "Better" is a positive action: used to start friendly conversations and use any object in its intended function
- "Worse" is an aggressive action: use this if you want to mess up something or begin a conversation aggressively

Clicking on the mobile phone brings that up, while clicking on the bag brings up the inventory (or it will, once I figure out the coding)

Any comments on the useability/aesthetics?Ã,  Any suggestions to change it?

Thanks for any comments

[ace monkey]

i really think you should have a go at drawing this background yourself using a paint programme rather than ripping graphics from various places and using quick draw programmes or rendering programmes such as 3d max. you could get a better effect drawing backgrounds yourself. Of course this only my opinion.

[El Drey]

I like your idea for the command buttons... It's (as far as I know) something new.

As for the background:
- I think the ground is overtextured. Too detailed. Probably because you used some presets from 3DSMax (I have no idea whatsoever of how it works...) considering you have not yet mastered the program. I agree with Ace_Monkey about doing your own thing, wether it would be in 3DSMax, Lightwave, Photoshop, M$Paint, whatever.

- It seems like the background is on a hill: the edge is still very sharp and the trees seem to stand behind it. Put the trees more on the foreground, to suggest depth. Also, the closer objects or surfaces tend to get to the horizon, the more they tend to blur and take over the color values of the sky. When objects are at a long distance, the contrast decreases... Depth of field and such... (I'm sure there are some great tutorials for this in the tutorial section.
It's possible to render DOF in 3DStudio, but it takes a lot of time.
A lot of words, I know, but since I'm not fluent in English, I have to help myself... With a lot of words.

- The opacity of the tent is to low, it looks like a giant mosquito net...

- If you have to see through it, fill it up. A matress, backpack,... would do wonders.

- Try to equalise the level of detail from your BG's and your characters. There's a lot of difference.


That's all I can think of, for now.

As for the GUI, it looks very nice, I like the drawing on the left very much, although it reminds me of a coffee brand here. The only thing I would suggest is to avoid brandnames, like Nokia... Make it Rockia, I don't care, but there are copyright laws and people have their own opinions about the brand. They don't have those about something you made up.

Hope this helps you a little. It's late, I'll check back in tomorrow.

Keep up the good work!

D.

[Postmodern_Boy]

your grass texture is stretched.Ã,  Make it repeat more instead of stretching so that it looks more like grass.

[Snarky]

I really love the concept of the GUI. Especially the "better" and "worse" verbs. The concept of having an action that encompasses using an object for its intended purpose and an action that encompasses breaking or abusing it in some way strikes me as very original and with a lot of potential.

I don't so much mind the collaged graphics, either. If it's your first game, the most important thing is just to get it done whatever way you can. People will play it anyway (not everybody, but some), and if the other parts are good you'll have a much easier time recruiting help for your next one. And the style reminds me a bit of the white chamber, which I thought was very good-looking. You might want to have a look at that to see how you can improve within the same style.

[FrancoFranchi]

Thanks for the comments.

I noticed the grass thing myself and since other people are commenting on it, I'll try to make an improvement.Ã,  I like the idea of adding depth but the trees are two-dimensional (Photoshop filter) and they're supposed to be an orchard in the distance but I'll try adding one nearer the front as a walk-around area.

I'm glad people like the GUI!Ã,  I'm definitely planning on 'customising' the phone to make it more suited to the main character (probably a 'Hokier' phone or a bad pun like that )

I should point out that I didn't use presets or 'rips' in making this (except the GUI, of course, which is very much 'work in progress'), though I downloaded the grass texture and used a SketchUp model for the tent.Ã,  The characters have been made in Poser made but toon-rendered and adjusted in Photoshop so they look a little nicer

I thought I'd test this one first as I'm having the most trouble with outdoor scenes and this one is pretty sparse by default - these suggestions should help me figure out how to fill it up

Will check out the White Chamber too!

[ace monkey]

just curious but what is 'Poser'? and where can i download it