Space Station - Test room

[WHAM]

The idea of the room is to test everything out (scaling, how the doors fit their places and so on) and then use it as a base to build all of the games room on. With small modifications, adding items and so on, this one room can be modified to act as dozens of rooms. I made the image first in Google ScetchUp to be sure my perspective is correct, but it still seems a bit wrong to me. Any ideas?

Also, what the heck should I do with the floor here? I'd love to make it out of metallic tiles, but I just cant do that with my skill level! The perspective would go all wrong...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

What looks wrong with the room is that it slopes outward as it moves up, rather than maintaining a square shape, and this skews all the doors and angles strangely.  I made an edit to correct this as well as to add some variation to the floor to make it pop up a bit and look like it had some bars at different depths.  I've placed the vanishing point based on your image to just above the center door.

[Evil]

I always felt weird about using this type of vanishing point, the kind where the tops of the doors are all flat. It gives it sort of a dark feeling. With this background, it definitely makes it more sinister.

The vent on the airlock stands out too much to my eye. Maybe make it a dark gray outline rather than black?

Also, everything Progz said. I like his floor, but metallic tiles would be cool. They're a plugin (or maybe it's incorporated in AGS, I have no idea) to do reflections. With a character, you could easily make a basic black tile look reflective.

[WHAM]

What looks wrong with the room is that it slopes outward as it moves up, rather than maintaining a square shape, and this skews all the doors and angles strangely.  I made an edit to correct this as well as to add some variation to the floor to make it pop up a bit and look like it had some bars at different depths.  I've placed the vanishing point based on your image to just above the center door.

This does look much better, actually. I also like the pipes under the floor. With a little shading and adding of details they will look GREAT!. Will post more soon...

[paolo]

What looks wrong with the room is that it slopes outward as it moves up, rather than maintaining a square shape, and this skews all the doors and angles strangely.

Nothing wrong with that - it's just two-point perspective (with one vanishing point in the centre and one far below the image). This is geometrically correct as the eye level is closer to the ceiling than to the floor. I agree, though, that it looks odd in an adventure game, where one-point perspective is pretty much standard.

[Brad Newsom]

What looks wrong with the room is that it slopes outward as it moves up, rather than maintaining a square shape, and this skews all the doors and angles strangely.

Nothing wrong with that - it's just two-point perspective (with one vanishing point in the centre and one far below the image). This is geometrically correct as the eye level is closer to the ceiling than to the floor. I agree, though, that it looks odd in an adventure game, where one-point perspective is pretty much standard.

Also I prefer that look. It gives it a Three Dimensional Look to it, which is always welcomed. Now it looks boring.

[spc1208]

this looks good, great job Wham

[WHAM]

Lets have a small vote:

Which one do you people think would be nicer to play. The original more 3D-like version, or the straightened out version proposed by ProgZmax? I'm still trying to make up my mind on which one I should go with.

[Tuomas]

The edited. Because if you look at the whole room from way bak, the original looks nicer. But when you're close to your screen and following the character around, a solid perpective would be better. If you slowly let your eyes slide from the other wall to the other, you'll notice the walls both look like they were falling back. It's the same thing like with scrolling backgrounds. You'll have to take into consideration wherther the player is going to be looking at the whole iamge at the same tome, or just the sopt where the player stand. imagine a 600x200 image with correct perfective and one vanishing point in the middle. The walls wouldn't look very good. But the other wall doesn't matter when ti scrolls off the screen. This one won't scroll, but your eyes do.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Well, since you posted your image here because you didn't like how the original version looked, I'd say that you should go with the version you personally like more.  It's your work, not ours, and neither version is 'wrong'.  All my edit does is remove the 'jagged' look of the left and right doors, really.

[WHAM]

Here's another test I made with the room. The idea with the station is to have every piece of it standardized, so that everything is the same and everything fits together. This kind of floor would be built of standard sized pieces and welded together. Also added a drain for the water that might be created as ice crystals melt off the suits of astronauts coming back from EVA and a small electrical maintenance panel.

What I want to know now is: would you play a game with this level of room graphics? Is there something that sticks to the eye as being wrong? Something to improve?

I decided to go with the "straightened" look, as it will also make animating the doors much simpler in the end.

[Brad Newsom]

Awesome. If that's how you like it, then cool. Glad you found the look that when in your favor. I personally like it. It doesn't feel busy nor confused your eyes.

[WHAM]

I just realized, again, that I am the biggest idiot in the world!

I spent quite a bit of time making this (it takes me a while, as I'm a beginner with Paint Shop Pro) and just realized that I can't use it. AT ALL! I accidentally made the rooms and doors too low, and now my character sprites aren't going to fit in there!

I guess I'll draw the whole thing all over again, with some all new ideas and tricks. Will return then, with some better material.

Sorry folks!

[DazJ]

All you need to do is drag the top half of the picture (from about halfway through the doors) up. Then fill in the missing pieces in the middle of the picture.

[WHAM]

All you need to do is drag the top half of the picture (from about halfway through the doors) up. Then fill in the missing pieces in the middle of the picture.

Won't I get complaints about the perspective going bad if I do that?
It would look something like this. Personally I dont think this is out of the question, but what about you?

[DazJ]

Perspective doesn't have to be 100% spot on. I think it looks pretty good!

[Ryan Timothy B]

I've got no problems with that either.

[Matti]

Me neither, but I wonder why you make your characters so extremely large. It seems their height is about 1/3 of the room. That is much..

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You could also scale them down for that room, or perhaps make them smaller to save you time on animation.  If you prefer the characters be large, though, go for it.

[WHAM]

Here's my character sprite (version 0.5, not final) to show you the scale.




EDIT: Here's an animation example of the airlock on the right in action. (Sorry, it wont loop as I saved it wrong in gimp)
http://www.whamgames.com/images/Forumsht/airlock_right.gif