Dithering or not, that is the question...

Started by Chomba, Sun 21/03/2021 03:25:31

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Chomba

Hi, I'm polishing what I have of my game so far. It's a comic adventure (kind of like Indy meets MI), and I'm having trouble deciding the final style of the close-ups that will appear from time to time (they have facial animations and such).

On one side I have the dithering style (2,3) and on the other side the more "classic" style (4). (And there's a screenshot in game so you can see the general style, it has some more dithering in other rooms, but nothing exaggerated).

1 - General style Screenshot

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/9gZVat5.png[/imgzoom]

2 - Heavy Ditherign

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/g0J3JcZ.png[/imgzoom]

3 - Dithering

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/OEMPLkb.png[/imgzoom]

4 - The "classic" style

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/pdC5WKp.png[/imgzoom]


¿What do you think about it?

PS: I know I went overboard with the dithering of the capture of the characters tied up in the boat.
PS2: I know that the look of the character is not consistent in the different screenshots, they are placeholders that I plan to do better in this instance.
PS3: the main character had some changes since these captures were taken

PS4: Also, if you can think of any particular style that I can use as inspiration for the GUI of a game like this, any suggestions will be welcome.

deadsuperhero

So! First off, I want to say that these look really great. Figuring out dithering is kind of hard, and not always obvious when starting out with pixel art. I personally tend to use it very sparingly.

For the first screenshot: You could actually benefit from more dithering in your general backgrounds. You have a great use of form and color, but the scene feels like it lacks texture.

For the second picture: this is a really good cutscene shot! It's almost perfect, but it feels like perhaps the shadows have dithering overkill, in addition to being too high in contrast. It might be worth reducing the opacity of those shadows so that they blend in more, and possibly not use dithering on the shadows directly. Something that I do in my pixel editor is that shadows are solid black at about 50% opacity, and the elements underneath the shadow (floorboards, brick, whatever) is what actually has dithering.

Third picture: overall, good, but there's too much dithering. The bit in the sky is a little bit unnecessary; the dithering in the clothing might need to be lower-contrast than, say, dithering in rocks. My opinion: you might benefit at showing different levels of dithering in different textures, to represent visually that they are made of different things. Rougher surfaces might need more dithering, smoother / soft surfaces might need less.

Fourth picture: this is just about perfect, but I think the jacket could actually do with more than three shades of brown. It's tricky to find that right balance and avoid the look of "pillow shading", but a tiny bit of pillow shading is actually useful in cloth textures, especially when representing wrinkles and folds.

Hopefully that helps! Best of luck with your project, it's already looking great!
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Chomba

Thank you DeadSuperHero!

These are very good tips to keep in mind when I do the close ups again (as I was testing, I made a mess with the layers and there are things I can't recover enough to work well. So redoing them is going to be inevitable).

Maybe you are right about the textures in the backgrounds (1), it could be something to keep an eye on (and this is the one that I did the best in that sense hahaha).

Danvzare

Alright first off, this is a biased opinion since I love dithering.
As such, I think number 3 looks the best. But, I know that some people absolutely detest dithering, so... take that with a pinch of salt.

As for the GUI. All I can suggest is looking at other games for inspiration.
You need to know many actions you are planning to have available to the player at any one time, before you can make a decision though.

Chomba

QuoteAlright first off, this is a biased opinion since I love dithering.
As such, I think number 3 looks the best. But, I know that some people absolutely detest dithering, so... take that with a pinch of salt.

hahahah, yeah, I get it. I get the same thing, but it has to be well done to be appreciated. The thing is, I'm not sure if I'm handling it right, I've never used dithering before.

QuoteAs for the GUI. All I can suggest is looking at other games for inspiration.
You need to know many actions you are planning to have available to the player at any one time, before you can make a decision though.

it's a two click system and I'm not trying to revolutionize the genre or anything like that haha, so pretty much it would be to see types of text boxes, colors, shapes and all that. I've been looking at other games but I'm having a hard time locking down the aesthetics:

For now I have is for items/save game/load game/exit game (Which now, having a little more knowledge on how to make a basic gui, I could reduce to an Options button and from there call the save, load and exit menu.



Danvzare

Hmm, that GUI looks pretty nice to me.
If I had to make a suggestion though, I'd suggest to try and give it an ancient stone look. Your game looks like it would have a lot of ancient temples and stuff, so it might be a good idea to make your GUI look like something you'd see in an ancient temple. It's just an idea.

As for how it's setup, with the load and save button like that, I think it's ok. But I can see having only five items displayed at once, getting annoying quite quickly. So if you ever decide to add additional options, such as music and sound volume, I'd highly recommend reducing to an Options button like you said. Perhaps you could make the Options button a book, which when you click on, opens a menu that looks like a journal. It'd give you a nice little aesthetic to work with.

These are just ideas though. I'd recommend getting a second opinion.

Chomba

QuoteYour game looks like it would have a lot of ancient temples and stuff
I don't know if there will be a lot of them, but yes, there will be plenty!

QuotePerhaps you could make the Options button a book, which when you click on, opens a menu that looks like a journal.

Yes! I just wanted to add a book (more precisely a captain's log) to the menu. I tried with the loading and saving sections but I didn't like it, this way maybe it can work (If I can pull it off).

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