Opinions on BG needed ...

[Darth Mandarb]

Okay ... so I'm working on an unannounced project.Ã,  Here is a background from the project.Ã,  The game is mostly all in this style and I realized while working on it that I might have a problem.Ã,  So I thought I'd post and get some feedback ...

NOTE: This is still a WiP as there are a few more things to add (details to the doors, some objects here and there, and some more lighting/shadowing)



1) do you think not scaling the characters will matter as they approach the foreground?Ã,  (I'm afraid it'll look like one of those 'forced perspective' rooms where you look REALLY tall by the time you reach the end of the hall - or in this case REALLY short.)

2) overall c&c - is this an appealing bg style?Ã,  I've been looking at it/working on it so long I can no longer tell.Ã,  I'm definately pleased with the direction, but I guess I could use some encouragement.

(In game this is actually two backgrounds as the game is designed at 320x240)

[Moox]

Very different from Cosmo, but I like it. Clock looks a little thin tho. I dont think that the scaling will be a big deal, you could eliminate that obstacle by making a few lines of the bottom unwalkable.

[pslocum]

In regards to the style, very nice. The amount of detail is great.

Vis a vis scaling, it doesn't seem like it would be much of a problem to me, but I'm unsure.

[SpacePirateCaine]

The room looks great, as one could suspect from having played Cosmo. It has a lot of atmosphere, and in a sense reminds me of Five days a Stranger; it has the same 'Big, old mansion' feel, which in my opinion is a very good thing. The subtle shadows are a good touch, though it's hard to fathom exactly where the light source is.

I don't find the clock to be particularly thin at all, if anything, it almost seems a bit short, though that may be because I haven't seen a grandfather clock since I was a little kid. The only thing I would really suggest, and it's mostly just a matter of personal preference, is a little more foreground. You mentioned it was a WiP, so I'm going to assume that that is part of the deal. As far as perspective is concerned, the table next to the stairway seems sloped for some reason - I imagine that the lack of objects of the same height in the room does that.

A lack of scaling could indeed make things seem a little odd as the character moves in and out of the fore/background, the ground space is a little too wide from front to back for no scaling. Not to mention that when the character arrives at the landing on the stairwell, providing that they are roughly just a little shorter than the doorways to either side of the room, their head will be cut off, and they will look abnormally tall.

One more point, the gray plate at the lower left side of the screen, I'm imagining that this is some sort mat near a doorway, or something of the sort, as inspection of the area below it shows a black break in the brown 'wall'. It's a little hard to notice, at least it was for me, to which reason, I would perhaps suggest adding the wooden flooring a little further down, showing the floor continuing, or something of the sort to make it stand out a little more.

All in all, looks great, and I'll be interested in seeing the finished product.

[Indie Boy]

Very smart. Nice feel to the room. Only problem is that the front door looks smaller then the other doors but that might be because of the perpective and the top panels on the door look funny. Over all very good.

[Daz]

Are the two things to the left going to be doors or book cases, because if they are doors, they are bloody huge.

other wise, all you need now is some kind of light source.

[InCreator]

Ah, I always loved your works, Darth.

Problem is - you're too fond of brown color, 90% of stuff I've seen is colored with tones of brown. This bg suffers under it enough to make it matter, so I...


* Brightened floor by 10%
* Added 2% of noise to floor
* Went overboard with windows above door
But these windows could cast light spots to floor in some cool way -- not sure how
* darkened by 10% beige parts of two opposite walls to reduce amount of ambient lightning

This like ultra-lazy edit, I should have darkened wooden parts of wall too and done all with care, without leaving artifacts... but I'm too tired today.
But this edit was just to check my suggestions, so I won't suggest impossible or bad thing.
There's no doubt that you can do it better.

Floor was actually only critical part to re-color, becasue otherwise everything looks too same-color <> boring and hard to tell apart.

I love this bg.
Good work... again.

[Sektor 13]

background looks great...

[AndersM]

maybee the clock should have hands? and i think most cloks only have two weights (one for the clockwork and one for the ding-dong) and the piece of furniture to the right with the vase on looks very modern and seems a little wrong in such a 'classic' hall...

[Darth Mandarb]

maybee the clock should have hands? and i think most cloks only have two weights (one for the clockwork and one for the ding-dong) and the piece of furniture to the right with the vase on looks very modern and seems a little wrong in such a 'classic' hall...

The clock does have hands ... I just forgot to turn that layer on :)Ã,  Oops!Ã,  The image has about 70 layers, it gets hard to keep track of them all!

the piece of furniture to the right with the vase on looks very modern and seems a little wrong in such a 'classic' hall...

That's funny ... 'cause I searched Google for '1930's decoration' and that was (similar to) one of the images it turned up!Ã,  I will work on it!

Also, the shading on the walls was on my agenda, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet

Problem is - you're too fond of brown color, 90% of stuff I've seen is colored with tones of brown. This bg suffers under it enough to make it matter, so I...

I was feeling it was a little too brown myself ... but the reference material I was using looked like all the wood was the same color, though it was hard to tell as it was in black & white.Ã,  But I think lightening the floor might just take the over done browns down a bit.Ã,  I'll play around with it.

Are the two things to the left going to be doors or book cases, because if they are doors, they are bloody huge.

other wise, all you need now is some kind of light source.

They are doors, and when the character is in front of either they're not quite so huge!Ã,  I'll post a shot with a character in it with the edits.

I'm torn as to how to create the lightsource because I want it to be in the center of the ceiling ... but I'm not sure how to display that?Ã,  I'll try a few things.

One more point, the gray plate at the lower left side of the screen, I'm imagining that this is some sort mat near a doorway, or something of the sort, as inspection of the area below it shows a black break in the brown 'wall'. It's a little hard to notice, at least it was for me, to which reason, I would perhaps suggest adding the wooden flooring a little further down, showing the floor continuing, or something of the sort to make it stand out a little more.

I was worried about that part as well.Ã,  It's why I didn't mention it in the post, I wanted to see if anybody would notice/comment about it.Ã,  It IS a door, but I wasn't sure it was obvious enough.Ã,  I'm glad you found it hard to see and pointed it out.Ã,  I shall add this to the edit!

Thanks guys, I'll post an update soon!Ã,  I appreciate it.

EDIT - I have been working on it for the last couple of hours.



- added in one of the characters for scaling comparisons
- took out the vase thing, it just wasn't working for me.
- added more shadows/shading
- added a wood grain texture to all wood faces.Ã,  I didn't want to do this at first, but once I tried it, I thought it looked really good.
- lightened the floor
- extended the wood floor into the next room
- extended the wood floor into the door at the bottom to make it more noticable
- added some more details/objects (banner, phone, chair, pictures)
- shortened the desk (with the phone on it)
- took out one weight from the clock

Thanks again, I feel like this is a much improved image now.Ã,  Any more thoughts/improvements?

[SpacePirateCaine]

I was actually quite fond of the vase and its stand, myself - though removing it has helped in balancing out the angles of the room, somehow. The grainier texture on the off-white part of the wall adds a lot of atmosphere to it as well. I find that the overall grittiness of the textures offsets the, in some places, unnaturally smooth feel of the sharp angles and what-have-you. Adding the telephone on the table that I mentioned before has also removed the problem I was seeing with the odd angle.

I would say that the doorknobs seem a little low on the doors, but when comparing with the character, it is no problem. The door in the lower left corner of the room is a lot more noticeable now, though the doormat looks especially metallic, or perhaps plastic, now that much of the rest of the room has become visibly textured.

And on an only vaguely related tangent - with the character in it, it reminds me, for some reason, of the production of Arsenic and Old Lace I preformed in in High School. That or Colonel Sanders. I like the look of the character, he fits very well with the background, and also helps to explain some of the possible oddities in the room's architecture. Putting two of him in the room, one at the top of the stairs and one down near the foreground door would be a good idea to fathom how important scaling may be in the creation of the rooms.

[n3tgraph]

woweee I love it! Make a game in this style and I'll love you in a non sexual way!

[viktor]

Now this should be some game. I think your art is briliant. But something looks odd with the clock. I think it looks realy flat. Why not add a little roof to it (if you know what I mean).  Becouse all the grandfather clocks I hawe seen were like that and this one looks realy boring and dosn't stand out. But maybee that's just me, your art is realy briliant and I hope you'll keep making more.

[Darth Mandarb]

Putting two of him in the room, one at the top of the stairs and one down near the foreground door would be a good idea to fathom how important scaling may be in the creation of the rooms.

I have done this ... it looks pretty obvious when they're both on the screen (top and bottom) at the same time, but I think it's going to be okay.Ã,  In game I'll try to avoid having characters standing at the extremes.Ã,  Of course, in the whole game there's only 2 or 3 backgrounds with this perspective.Ã,  The rest are similar, but smaller rooms.

But something looks odd with the clock. I think it looks realy flat. Why not add a little roof to it (if you know what I mean). Becouse all the grandfather clocks I hawe seen were like that and this one looks realy boring and dosn't stand out. But maybee that's just me, your art is realy briliant and I hope you'll keep making more.

I will make some modifications to the grandfather clock.Ã,  And thanks for the kind words!

Thanks again.

[Anarcho]

Very impressive BG Darth!  I love it.  I also love the character, he looks like Colonel Mustard. 

I def. like the lighter floor color.  You really needed a bit more contrast in terms of colors, but i think that's been achieved.  As for the scaling, I thought originally that it might look wierd without it, but so long as you limit where the character walks, you might be able to get away without doing it.  Plus, your character seems to fit in the BG as is. 

It might look wierd if he goes up the stairs though...maybe you can just have him go to the next room when he gets to the edge...

Logan

[Cluey]

Darth Mandarb, master of pixels!!
Anyways nice BG, lovely detail.  But the bright main chara clashes kinda with that yellow coat, tone the yellow down a bit and just see...

Quick photoshop colour change
Just to match the muted colours of the BG better.

[Chicky]

To start, terrible jpeg compression on this one Darth

Then again it is an awesome background, few things that let it down though. For starters the doors reach much to high towards the ceeling. If you look at any door within your house you'll see there is about a 5th of the wall above the door frame, where as your background has about a 10th, maybe less.

Now i really am nit picking but the wall on right seems to have a little perspective problem. It seems as if the wall bends outwards where it should be perfectly strait.

Unfortunatly there does seem to be a little problem with the amount of dark brown on screen BUT it could be fixed quite easily by simply making the inside colour a bit (more) lighter than the outlines.

Anyway, lovely background. I look forward to seeing it in a game.

[Developer]

Very nice. I love the style. 

[Snarky]

Then again it is an awesome background, few things that let it down though. For starters the doors reach much to high towards the ceeling. If you look at any door within your house you'll see there is about a 5th of the wall above the door frame, where as your background has about a 10th, maybe less.

Not in my apartment, they don't. The doors practically reach the ceiling.

Most doors are roughly the same height, but ceiling height varies considerably. It tends to be lower in more modern houses. Of course, the house in the background looks to be quite old-fashioned, so you might expect high ceilings. Especially if it's a southern mansion. They relied on the heat rising to the ceiling to keep the rooms cool.