First room of a first game

[frission]

Hello! I am working on my first adventure game. I don't have a lot of experience with pixel art, so I wanted to get some feedback early on. This is pretty much the setup of my first room of the game. The game itself is going to be set in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, and has a purposely muted palette.

The goal of the graphics is something that evokes the simplicity of the early Sierra games but with a somewhat enlarged palette and much richer scenes. A direct nod to Trilby's Notes is order too.

Anyway, let me know what you think on any aspect of it. I've been staring at the same scene for about two weeks (not constantly, obviously!) so I'd like a little outside feedback, a fresh viewing.

This particular room is the detective's squad room in the LAPD. That's one of player characters on the right (the game has you switching between player characters at different parts in the game).

[Oliwerko]

Looks ok to me, maybe the perspective is a bit weird, but I can't tell why.

One more thing - I wouldn't know that it is an LAPD, if you wouldn't written it. It just does not look like LAPD office to me. But, you know, I do not even know how it looks in real life...

[frission]

Looks ok to me, maybe the perspective is a bit weird, but I can't tell why.

One more thing - I wouldn't know that it is an LAPD, if you wouldn't written it. It just does not look like LAPD office to me. But, you know, I do not even know how it looks in real life...

I don't think they have/had LAPD written on it in big letters, but in any case, it will be clear in the game itself. (There will be a typewriter overlay that say something like "LAPD, Detective Bullpen, 2:10 am" or whatever.)

[frission]

Looks ok to me, maybe the perspective is a bit weird, but I can't tell why.

Yeah, it doesn't really use a common vanishing point and all that. It's meant to be somewhat isometric though some things use somewhat different vanishing points than others (compare the desks to the table against the wall).

I'm not sure if that's a problem or not, though. Part of me feels like in a game like this keeping perfect perspective is not totally necessary, but another part of me isn't sure if it will turn the player off or not. The question as I see it is whether that will distract from gameplay or not..

[Oliwerko]

Yeeeaaah, the desk, THE DESK.

It is the desk that is disturbing. I like the isometric perspective though. Maybe it will be hard sometimes, but it is definitely interesting. I would suggest correcting the desk against the wall to the isometric perspective.

[Khris]

That's not iso, it's a variation of cavalier perspective, sometimes called "military perspective".

The style works really good, but the desk stands out way too much.
The perspective will work fine as long as you stick to it.

[Darth Mandarb]

Just a warning!  Walk-behinds are a pain in the arse with this type of perspective.  My first game started off in this perspective and the walk-behinds made me switch to a different view.

[voh]

The desk is mostly an issue, to me, because you did use the 'correct' perspective on the table with the coffee machine. There's inconsistency due to it. Also, other than the desk, there's no real issue as far as I can see, but fixing the, well, I guess it's a table rather than a desk, really, but if you fix that, the image is a very, very well-done and stylish background.

Though obviously, going from this, it isn't very LAPD to me either.

What year is this game going to be happening in?

[tube]

What year is this game going to be happening in?

You mean "the mid-1950s" isn't accurate enough for you?

The background looks very interesting, but as most of the preceding comments point out, please do something about the table. Consistency is more important than your choice of style and/or perspective.

[voh]

Heh, I suck. Apologies for skimming over that 

[Khris]

About the walk-behinds:
I couldn't resist testing it and came up with a working setup:


The markers to the left show the positions of the baselines, the yellow outline represents the walkable area.

This works fine as long as objects in the middle of the room are at least twice as wide as the character.
As soon as there's, say, a thin wall drawn like this /, it gets much more complicated (as in the baseline has to be repositioned constantly in relation to the character's position).

[frission]

Thanks for the comments!

Here is the new version with the corrected back table:





I'm not too worried about the overlays in part because the motions of the player are very constrained in my game -- all of the walking directions are given via scripting (not through mouse clicks or arrow keys) so there are a limited number of pre-defined paths. It is a typing and thinking game, not a clicking and walking game.

[Sparky]

The desk fits in much better now. I have a bit of a grievance with the left wall, though. The top of the wall doesn't bother my eye, but the bottom is actually slanted away from the common vanishing point. It sort of feels like the floor is mysteriously getting larger instead of smaller with distance. I understand that you deliberately used multiple vanishing points and types of perspective, but I don't see that this particular instance of it contributes to the picture.

Overall I like the level of detail and colors. I think my favorite bits are the brown writing surfaces, the beige desks, and the wall portrait's face. A couple of little stylistic issues caught my eye, however. Some objects are antialiased (like the flag) while others are completely hard edged. Also a couple of objects look like they have soft shadows around them, like the clock and the coffee pots, while most of the scene has no shadowing at all. Another microscopic suggestion is that the tables along the wall could benefit from a bit of framing just beneath the tabletops.

Looks good so far, keep up the good work!

[Erwin_Br]

I like all the little details! I'm wondering, though, why you don't use the entire screen. Why that black border around everything?

--Erwin

[Khris]

Sparky: there aren't different perspectives in the pic anymore and there's no vanishing point.
The left wall is a bit off though; the top isn't drawn at a 45° angle and most of the bottom was shifted down a pixel, probably unintentionally.

I've noticed this just yet: the blue part of the flag should take up about one quarter. It's as high as the top seven stripes (of 13) and half as wide as the flag.

[frission]

Sparky: there aren't different perspectives in the pic anymore and there's no vanishing point.
The left wall is a bit off though; the top isn't drawn at a 45° angle and most of the bottom was shifted down a pixel, probably unintentionally.

Hmm, yeah, maybe I'll play with that.

I've noticed this just yet: the blue part of the flag should take up about one quarter. It's as high as the top seven stripes (of 13) and half as wide as the flag.

It's actually not quite as wide as half the flag (if you Google Image it you'll see it is a little over a third). In any case the flag is, other than the portrait of Ike, the only thing I "traced" in this scene (I couldn't manage drawing either from scratch and having it look semi-realistic), so that's actually how it was in the original (compared with this, which is what it was based on).

[frission]

I like all the little details! I'm wondering, though, why you don't use the entire screen. Why that black border around everything?

It's meant to be something of a letterbox effect. I might try enlarging in on the horizontal axis, though. In any case, the GUI is a Sierra-AGI style text parser (bottom of screen at all times), so it needs to be up a little bit on that border so that the text parsing is always at a comfortable place for the eyes (e.g. not at the very bottom of the monitor).

[vertigoaddict]

Looks ok to me, maybe the perspective is a bit weird, but I can't tell why.

One more thing - I wouldn't know that it is an LAPD, if you wouldn't written it. It just does not look like LAPD office to me. But, you know, I do not even know how it looks in real life...

Tell you the truth the room looks just like the staff room in my old school (the teachers would all be so busy walking around, grading papers, etc)

In fact, the guy in the scene looks like a teacher, I'd think this was a story about supernatural phenomenon happening at school or something.

[frission]

Tell you the truth the room looks just like the staff room in my old school (the teachers would all be so busy walking around, grading papers, etc)

In fact, the guy in the scene looks like a teacher, I'd think this was a story about supernatural phenomenon happening at school or something.

Haha, well that's fine. He's supposed to look like that. In the game you actually play as two different characters -- one a relatively weak and unimpressive detective, the other a rather imposing and dangerous seeming mob heavy. And as you can probably guess, in the end the question of who is really tougher, meaner, more moral, becomes a little confusing -- it's a narrative about deceptive apperances, in a sense. So looking like a schoolteacher is really IDEAL in this case!

I'm trying to think of details that would make it more clear it was a room in the LAPD. I just doubt they'd be putting up signs that say, "Hey, this is the LAPD!" From what I can tell most squad rooms are pretty straightforward and uninteresting looking. Which again is fine narrative-wise.

[Darth Mandarb]

Don't add anything obnoxious to indicate LAPD.

It looks like a police station to me (like I've seen in movies such as LA Confidential).  Another reason it does is because you said it was.  Also, in game, it's not like you're going to enter a police station and then enter this room and think, "whoa!  Did I just transport to a school?"

In the context of the game, this would never enter into a players mind.