Moonchild

Started by strangeDetective, Fri 24/03/2017 03:27:06

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strangeDetective

Took the preview down will re-post later on in development.

Grok


That looks really great.

The text is a little bit difficult to read, though. Maybe the text should be a bit larger.

Maybe you should make a set of custom cursor images. The once that comes with the editor don't work that well with the art style in your game.


You can put a youtube video in a post with embed tags
(embed=800,600) http://www.youtube.com/..... (/embed)

( = [
) = ]




Andail

Looks really cool! There's a shortage of games of this style and genre, I would say.

However, this
Quote
Game Resolution: 1280x720
probably needs a clarification; surely, the backgrounds are drawn in much lower resolution, but upscaled (judging by the visible pixelation/jaggedness).

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: Andail on Fri 24/03/2017 06:35:01
probably needs a clarification; surely, the backgrounds are drawn in much lower resolution, but upscaled (judging by the visible pixelation/jaggedness).

I guess it is hi-res, because font is very small yet more detailed than it would be at lo-res.

PS. Great gfx, by the way :).

Andail

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Fri 24/03/2017 08:40:33
Quote from: Andail on Fri 24/03/2017 06:35:01
probably needs a clarification; surely, the backgrounds are drawn in much lower resolution, but upscaled (judging by the visible pixelation/jaggedness).

I guess it is hi-res, because font is very small yet more detailed than it would be at lo-res.

PS. Great gfx, by the way :).

Absolutely - my point is that the graphics aren't natively hi-res. It may be misleading to people expecting 1280x720 graphics when they see very pixelated pictures with jagged lines. It's not a big deal, though.

Danvzare

Sounds interesting. I wish you luck in finishing your project.
Although I also want to mention that there's a rather obscure platform game that's also called Moonchild.

strangeDetective

#6
Quote from: Danvzare on Fri 24/03/2017 12:08:49
Sounds interesting. I wish you luck in finishing your project.
Although I also want to mention that there's a rather obscure platform game that's also called Moonchild.

Never heard of it but I'll check it out. Was looking at an old AGS game project called "child of the moon" earlier that was inspired by Loom, and had a mouse gesture feature to draw on screen that I wanted to see. But the occult meaning of a "moonchild" is an elemental being incarnated in human form, which is the central premise of the game.

Quote from: Grok on Fri 24/03/2017 06:11:44

That looks really great.

The text is a little bit difficult to read, though. Maybe the text should be a bit larger.

Maybe you should make a set of custom cursor images. The once that comes with the editor don't work that well with the art style in your game.


You can put a youtube video in a post with embed tags
(embed=800,600) http://www.youtube.com/..... (/embed)

( = [
) = ]

I actually reduced the screenshots to post them and I think I had the hard-edges filter on which sharpened everything. Thanks I haven't begun to design the cursors, fonts, or GUI yet there's lots of little elements I've yet to implement, I'm just using the defaults right now.

Still trying to embed the video so far the embed code you mentioned hasn't worked for me it just displays the URL in text.

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Fri 24/03/2017 08:40:33
Quote from: Andail on Fri 24/03/2017 06:35:01
probably needs a clarification; surely, the backgrounds are drawn in much lower resolution, but upscaled (judging by the visible pixelation/jaggedness).

I guess it is hi-res, because font is very small yet more detailed than it would be at lo-res.

PS. Great gfx, by the way :).

Thanks, the video gives a better representation of the screenshots during gameplay but the embed codes I've tried don't work on the forum here, so I must be doing something wrong. I'll figure it out eventually. Mostly been focusing on the visuals and scripting before I polish the fine details with the fonts and GUI.

edit by Darth - combined triple-post... please keep replies in single topic!

Grok

Quote from: strangeDetective on Fri 24/03/2017 13:01:06
---

Still trying to embed the video so far the embed code you mentioned hasn't worked for me it just displays the URL in text.

change https:  to   http:
and it will work


[embed=800,600]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X4jMYwGV1U[/embed]


Two Tales

I like the look of this. I watched the video and,  well,  you have my attention. Intriguing  :smiley:

Snarky

I feel like we maybe discussed this for your other game, but I can't find any reference to it now... Is there some reason why you're downsampling and then upscaling the graphics for the game, instead of either using graphics in the game's 1280x720 resolution, or making the game in low-res if that's the look you want? It looks a little odd this way...

strangeDetective

#10
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 28/03/2017 15:08:17
I feel like we maybe discussed this for your other game, but I can't find any reference to it now... Is there some reason why you're downsampling and then upscaling the graphics for the game, instead of either using graphics in the game's 1280x720 resolution, or making the game in low-res if that's the look you want? It looks a little odd this way...

Snarky

#11
I'm not sure you're understanding me, or maybe it's vice versa.

My overall point is that the graphics seem (for the most part) to be in roughly 320x200 resolution, or even lower, even though you're making the game in 1280x720. So why not just make the game in 320x200? Or if what you're aiming for is a 1280x720 look, what the hell are you doing to the graphics to make them so blocky?

For example, here's your first screenshot scaled down to 320x180 (and then scaled up again to 640x360 using nearest-neighbor, just for the sake of displaying in the browser):

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/cdi4ikZ.png[/imgzoom]

Apart from the blurry text (which is just from resizing), this is more or less the "look" of your 1280x720 game. So if you're worried about the game size, memory and all that, you could just make it in 320x200 (or 320x180), cutting it down to a quarter sixteenth [I forgot to square the fraction] of the size, and still have it look the same.

Here's one small part of your version of the same screenshot (where the moon meets the rock on the left), examined at very high magnification with a pixel grid:



You can see that the moon is made out of "blocks" of pixels. Typically 4x4, but sometimes 3x3, 3x4 or 4x3. The variation could be from when you shrank the image down from 1280x720 to 960x540; in any case the blocks are about 3.75 pixels on average in this picture. Which means that the moon part of the background really only uses a 256x192 pixel resolution (960x540 /3.75).

The blocks on the rock seem to be a bit smaller (2x2 pixels in some places, more in others), but it's hard to work out the exact ratio. Anyway, the effective resolution is certainly not 1280x720!

But then on top of that you have dither, which seems to be at 960x540 resolution. I'm not sure where it comes from, and whether it's part of the in-game graphics.

All of these inconsistencies and the weirdness makes it look IMO worse than the 320x180 version; it's like you're "faking" low resolution and getting it wrong.

SilverSpook

Looks fantastic!  I like the whole concept of setting during the Inquisition. One of my favorite movies takes place there in part (The Fountain) and there needs to be more games that play with that era!

strangeDetective

#13
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 28/03/2017 18:47:06
I'm not sure you're understanding me, or maybe it's vice versa.

My overall point is that the graphics seem (for the most part) to be in roughly 320x200 resolution, or even lower, even though you're making the game in 1280x720. So why not just make the game in 320x200? Or if what you're aiming for is a 1280x720 look, what the hell are you doing to the graphics to make them so blocky?

For example, here's your first screenshot scaled down to 320x180 (and then scaled up again to 640x360 using nearest-neighbor, just for the sake of displaying in the browser):

All of these inconsistencies and the weirdness makes it look IMO worse than the 320x180 version; it's like you're "faking" low resolution and getting it wrong.

Snarky

It's not that I don't like the visuals. They're fine for the most part. But there are some odd things about them that (along with the fact that you're not understanding what I'm talking about) makes me think you may have misunderstood a few things about graphics, rather than doing it for a good reason.

Simple version: You're making a high-resolution game (1280x720) using low-resolution graphics, or using some sort of filter or Photoshop process to give it a low-resolution "look". Instead, why not just make a low-resolution game? That way, your 2GB game would be more like 150 MB (assuming graphics are the bulk of the game size), among other benefits.

Quote from: strangeDetective on Tue 28/03/2017 21:10:42
Your dissecting a screenshot which was scaled down from its original size just for posting, I think I scaled it down 75% with "preserve hard edges" setting so the text wouldn't blur.

This doesn't affect the point I'm making.

Quote from: strangeDetective on Tue 28/03/2017 21:10:42
People can see what the game-in-progress looks like in the video, running in a window at it's native resolution of 1280x720 on my desktop.

Given that the video is only available in 720p and it's showing the game running in a window, you realize that it's still scaled down in the video, right? (Actually even smaller than in the images.)

Matti

Looking good, but Snarky made a point there.

My suggestion would be to post thumbnails with links to original sized screenshots. That way we could see what the game "really" looks like. Not sure what your browser or the forum did with your large images, but it's quite unsatisfying to look at (arbitrarily) downscaled screenshots.

shaun9991

I like this look of this! Cool concept :)
Support Cloak and Dagger Games on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=460039

strangeDetective

#17
Quote from: Matti on Wed 29/03/2017 12:03:21
Looking good, but Snarky made a point there.

My suggestion would be to post thumbnails with links to original sized screenshots. That way we could see what the game "really" looks like. Not sure what your browser or the forum did with your large images, but it's quite unsatisfying to look at (arbitrarily) downscaled screenshots.

strangeDetective

#18
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 28/03/2017 22:06:28
Simple version: You're making a high-resolution game (1280x720) using low-resolution graphics, or using some sort of filter or Photoshop process to give it a low-resolution "look". Instead, why not just make a low-resolution game? That way, your 2GB game would be more like 150 MB (assuming graphics are the bulk of the game size), among other benefits.

Darth Mandarb

Okay... this has gone one long enough!

Let's take any future graphical discussions into the Critics Lounge (if strangeDetective wants to) where they belong and get this game thread back on track!

Thanks!

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