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Generally if you can't draw, probably best to stick to 320x2xx resolutions, as it shows more the higher the resolution you choose.

Oh yes they have. By a company who's CEO is only interested in games which have the potential to be exploited each and every year. Sequelmania!!! It all happened last year sometime, which is why the awesome game Brutal Legend had to find a new publisher.

Read this! http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171153

Personally, I do not think I would like to work for them. HI ERIC!!!

I don't think it matters. A lot of people on displays larger than 15.4 inch will play your games in a window instead of full screen, since it allows the easy flippage of windows. Duel-displayers like myself can have porn open on one screen and your game in the other. I knew multitasking in OS's had a reason for its existence.

I like widescreen, but I also like your idea Snake.

Just remember, with most screens you can force windows to have fixed aspect ratios, so 320x240 (4:3) games will maintain square aspect ratios (with black bars at the sides) on 16:10 screens.

Hah! I love how Layabout's Billy the Fiddler is positioned in SpacePirateCaine's group photo. Makes my character ten times better! ^_^

Haha, yes. It totally works for me.

This is similar.

http://www.dafont.com/04b-03.font

Loads of bitmap fonts there. Most with royalty free license too.

I just used a font called smallfont and changed a few things to make it slightly more readable.

It's a raster font, not a TTF or that new format they have now. Think it should come with Windows.

Hey this is fun. I stuck pretty close to the original, maybe a bit too close. All original though.



Billy the Fiddler. Name says it all really. Always walks around with his hands in his pocket, playing a fun game of pocket pool. All the girls are scared of him, all the boys make fun of his problem. Distant, forced nonchalant look to distract people from his secret pleasure.

My thought on it though, is that unless you are REALLY GOOD and have clout in the community (like Dave Gilbert), its really tough to sell a game.

Nope, wouldn't agree. Well not on the having clout in the community part. Of the 4000 registered members of the AGS forums, if Dave sold a copy of one of his games to 10% at $15, he would have made $8000 from them. I very much doubt even 400 of the community bought his games to be honest. Active members of AGS? Maybe 500 at a rough guesstimate. I would estimate maybe 150 members bought his games. The rest of the sales were through various game portals and reviews directing people to his site.

Why?

Because he makes very well written and executed games and he offers trials and/or demos of his games.

As for background artists, it all depends on the money on offer. Well written design document with accurate descriptions of all the backgrounds are a must when you are working with an artist.

Stee, depends on the artist really. Most would expect and advance, maybe 25%, then the rest when the work is done. Some will work for royalties, some won't. It really depends on the quality of your writing, their faith the project will actually be released, and their faith in you delivering on that contract. Programmer art is great, as the artist and programmer can work simultaniously, with the programmer not waiting for the art to come in. But it is a good idea to have a fair amount of work done on the project already, especially when you are embarking on your first commercial outing.

To the OP, reception is everything. Releasing a freeware game is a good way to judge whether you are talented at game design or not. You might think you are good, but there is no way to know until you release a game. Alot of money could be lost on your part if you aren't in fact a storytelling genius. Not saying you aren't, but I don't know. Neither does anyone else.

Looks like you have used a coloured noise filter. You should use greyscale noise filters to add texture.

The reason why characters are usually designed to have a different shape and variation is to the characters and makes them easil recognisable to the player. Outfits are helpful, but so is body shape, proportion etc. Too many a times have I been playing a game and got confused because characters dress in a similar way or their body shapes are 'standard'.

Are you doing more frames for the animation? It's very jumpy, 4 frames will do that, although I understand your reasoning for doing it. A good comprimise would be 6 frames, although with the art style and size of sprites, you might not want to bother with it. Not my cup of tea really. Your little dudes side views don't match the isometric style. Should be looking down on him, but it looks like a direct side on view. This applies to all the sprites. Front views are pretty ok, if not samey.

And Jakerpot, why do you keep doing edits which are really only changes that could easily be dictated. It's a bit pointless really.

You really think MSPain is ideal for sprite creation? It lacks any tools that help with animation. I know it has been done (spooks), but it's a horrible choice of program. Something that allows onion skinning is probably the best choice, but layers are fine as well.

If you are using MSPain, why wouldn't you just download paint.net or the gimp. Both are suitable FREE alternatives to the pile of dogs bollocks that is mspain.I have used pretty much every paint program possible, my favourites remain Photoshop CS4 and Corel Painter xi. I'd recommend the Gimp if you have morals and a tight wallet.

As long as it is obviously a pick-uppable item, ie, has quite a presence on the screen and really can't be missed, then I guess it could work. Make sure you beta the hell out of it to judge if it is working or not. I'd be pissed off if I missed a 2 pixel square object I needed to pick up in the game. Or allow an alternative.

The basics are there, sure, it's an impression of a landscape.

Firstly, please explore using layers. Layers are one of the most powerful and useful features in Photoshop. Think of what you see in this world as layers. Anything overlapping should be on a new layer. Some may disagree with me, but I also find it more effective to shade in layers as well.

Layer masks. In my experience the most underused tool by amateur photoshop users. Hell, I didn't discover them until a few years ago and I've been using photoshop since ever.Masking off each layer ensures you do not break your 'outlines' so to speak, even if you don't use lineart.

Get colour reference from high quality profession photos. Directly colour pick (alt-click when on the pain brush) from these sources. http://www.sxc.hu/ is a great site for stock images.

Got background details? Hell, use stock photos as well. As long as the lighting is correct and the foreground art matches, it's okay to cheat. It's how they do it for matte paintings, it's ok for you, me, everyone.

Find custom brushes. The stock brushes in photoshop are ok, but you can do so much better. That grass brush is very noticeable. Also brush size and hardness!

Clouds have volume too. Don't leave them out! Darker desaturated blue's are nice. Best look at references.

And references! Reference reference reference. It's the basis of all art!

Did I mention reference?

Hah, I notice Red Press has said alot of what I have said. It's because it's all important!

And if you need to play a game fullscreen, I've never had a problem with either of my laptops or my 23" screen. Just make sure you set the graphics settings to adjust aspect ratio, should come up with black bars at the side in 4:3 ratio.

I'd say alot of the posts in OYS would be pretty useless if they are over 3 months old. Your best bet is just to look at the last 2 pages, or better yet, the Recruit a Team. People actively wanting to help out other people will most likely be checking the thread regularly.

Wow, this stuff is great. Thanks Loominous and Misj. Someone really needs to compile all their art help posts into a single thread to make it easy to find their increadibly useful tips and tricks and tidbits. That would be awesome.

Anyone driving from Brisbane?

I mean, look at games. 3D games.
I cannot bear to play games that were made in 1996-2002. They look so disgusting, with ancient 3D technology, no shadows or dynamic lights, muddy textures... Like Quake. It feels really like a virtual trip through colon, with everything brown/red. Few days ago, I tried to take up Blood. Really old and fun game. I remember how I loved it. Sadly, it feels unplayable and really bad now...  :'(

Wow, I totally disagree with this statement. Well, somewhat.

When you first loaded Quake or Tomb Raider, it really was an amazing experience. You could explore your world in a way that never was possible. Yeah, the textures were 128x128 pixels or something stupid, but compared to 3d games of past, which either used simple flat shaded polygons, or were faux 3d like Doom. Yes, the light map system it used was ugly, textures were stuck to a very limited brown/baby poo green palette, but they were still an awesome display of what was possible at the time.

This stuff had to be done as the current graphics tech used in games are just an extension of these basic methods.

Uhh..
But I love pixel art as well. I think you can be creative in both forms of video game graphics, there is no method that is better.

Caeldera would not be a very good choice for reading. It is very stylised and more useful for using as a title font or decoration font.

Most consider Serif font's easiest to read in large volumes of text. Size 8-10 is the most common as it is easiest for our eyes to read in a paragraph.

Baskerville is quite nice. http://fonts.appliedlanguage.com/fonts/BLTBSK.TTF here seems to be a free downloadable version. I had a quick look, all characters you might need to use seem to be included except perhaps the @ symbol.

Unfortunatly, companies like Adobe and other font makers have taken it upon themselves to create digital versions of classic font's and sell them for money. Utter bastards.

If you've got Garamond, I'd use it, since it is much nicer than Times. Just personal opinion though. Seems everyone hates Times, suppose since it's been included with every windows release since ever.

For all those who may be interested in a little fact, most typefaces are very old, with most dating back over 50 years. It is very rare to see a new typeface developed nowadays, since all the good ones have been made!

Did a little lookup, found an elegant looking public domain serif font. http://www.dafont.com/liberation-serif.font

Luckily, Australia isn't THAT badly affected by the recession.

In the UK, I worked as a Real Estate salesman in 2007, and pretty much a week after Northern Rock thing happened, about half of us were let go in the company. I went back to work in a pub, and about 9 months later, that place shut down. Bugger.

I'm back in Australia, and have been since November last year. Job hunting was tough, but from what I've seen, this year the job section of the paper has reduced in size by about half. I decided to pass the recession by and study, which is what I'm doing now.

Australia is lucky. The government building projects keep building firms in business. The Australian mindset of having to own property, along with the first home buyers grant, keeps the property market afloat. Our glorious leader gives us free $950, which possibly more to come. Mining is suffering, but they had it lucky for quite a few years. New car sales are suffering, but smart people don't buy new cars.

Tim, the stimulus package is just a clever way of making us feel okay about the increases in tax. The large majority of it will filter straight back into the tax system. You get a nice place on the coast? I know a few areas are a bit iffy.