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So Mods, are we talking a bit of "this game brought to you by Bubba Lou's home style Moonshine" across the screen every time you load the game, or something more along the lines of an "ask me about Loom" in-game plug?

So... if I made the game entirely about the product would I be drinking champagne in a penthouse by Sunday? I mean, would a company be willing to pay for me to make a game about their product?

This has been going on since way back

Is the darker area at the top the roof? If so, then you've got some major issues with perspective.

Take a look at the road, this is what you have defined as the horizontal plane, and the roof sits clearly at a differen angle (granted this should be true to some extent, because the roof is higher, but the perspectives here are way too different not to be noticed.

Also, if you look through the windows, you can see more of the floor in the upper level than the lower level, and this just wouldn't happen (remember the planes!).

Furthermore the water in the corner doesn't look like water mainly for these two reasons:
     

• It has no texture
       
• It has no effect on the grass around it, and looks like it has been painted on
  
  In short, one colour is not enough to make water look like water on what appears to be four shades of grass.
  
  Also, the horizon is a bit plain, perhaps a skyline, the ocean or some mountains could help break up the monotony.
  
  Peace,
  Scarab
  
  p.s. The grass looks great!

Happy Birthday Babs!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Well when I was writing my (since aborted) adventure* game I had a file with all the info on it; sketches of the whole setting (a cruise ship) and each room, with outlines of the hotspot observation responses, and a stapled wad of paper for all the little stuff i.e. possible character names, character personalities, plot outline, all my brainstorming, etc.

*Since I have only been working on non-adventure games

I think I should have a birthday for each variant in the pronunciation of my name

But there's only 365 days in a year... 

User ratings could have half-cups or even smaller fractions.

Well the cups are 10 pixels wide each leaving you with a 50 pixel 'status bar' to play with. You could have one column of pixels coloured for every 2% in the user ratings. This way we can have a nice visual representation of the cups without losing the accuracy of a percentage (for what is 1% among friends  )

A bit late, But a Happy birthday to the oh-so unpronounceable Miiiiiiiisj' 

Wow that's really small.

The biggest issue is the midpoint frame.  It's especially worse on full speed.  The legs look like they cross, and there is even a slight skip in the walk.

Also, he really shouldn't have glare on the front of his boot if his boot is back.  Start removing the glare when his boot starts angling backward, and perhaps have a spec of glare on his heal in the final cycle (perhaps).

Also his skin seems purple, is he an alien by any chance?

I know he's holding a gun and all, but his torso seems pretty straight.  Usually when you run your upper body is pushed forward.  I'm just not sure how you'd look while running with a gun.

It's not the size of your sprites that counts my friend

I'm not sure what you mean by 'his legs cross', should I add an extra frame in here?

The shine on the boot is there to help define the shape of the boot a bit, but I see what you mean...I'll experiment with the feet a bit.

Well the skin (which you can't really see at that magnification, and is more of a pink) is the result of the Atari 2600 palette, which was the original inspiration for the sprite:

Pitfall Harry, My first "double pixel" sprite and the final standing image

True,  didn't really animate the upper body at all, because I'm planning to make the upper body animate separately (for the shooting animation), although I'm not sure how I'll implement that yet.

Peace
Scar

Hey all, I've been working on a platformer recently and I'm not sure about the running walkcycle of the player character.

Any suggestions/paintovers welcome 


Run cycle at full speed


Half speed



Stills

Peace
Scarab

You play as Trigger, a robot revolver with legs created by eccentric toy designer Gustave Monroe.  Unfortunately, Monroe has just been murdered.  You take it upon yourself to find the killer and bring him to justice. 

I think I see a fairly obvious twist there waiting for you

Spoiler

It was You!!!11!!1ONE!

[close]

I put up my first game.

I think if you believe the game to be fairly fun to play and you believe there to be some narrative interest then you should upload it. The comments about not uploading your first game are really for people who were just playing around with the engine and didnt really have a clue what they were doing.

But i'd like to see your game so that we can help you become a better developer. I learnt alot by posting my game.

Well Calin, I think we can safely say that you put in a fair bit more effort into your first game than most (I seem to remember a certain two weeks you took off work to devote to McCarthy.. ).

But the 'unpublished first game' principle can just apply to small test games and such (make man walk across room and look at door... Oh yeah baby )

You should add a pixel or two of bounce to his upper body (down when his legs are furthest apart). This should help it look a bit more natural.. and perhaps a bit more movements in the arms (even his left arm should be moving a bit).
Apart from that the animation looks quite solid. You could even keep the walk at that speed if you smoothed it out with a few 'tween' frames.

Are you going to have a player character?

It seems like a cute little game and I'd play it, however, instead of having a massive font have you considered just making a function that magnifies a normal sized font?

There is a module by Monkey05_06 which you could probably use as a base (although I must admit, I haven't lookes at the code myself).

I'd also suggest a better cursor; you mentioned that you would have no limits for colour, I would choose a dull red or perhaps a darkish yellow-orange myself, and just have the three pixel pointer that currently appears in black.

Also, at such a low res, how do you plan to handle puzzles? There doesn't seem to be enough space for an inventory screen or any kind of dialogue puzzles.

I love the concept of 'Super Low Res' but the puzzles would be the major hurdle you would have to overcome to make the game playable.

Oh, and I'd also suggest pixel perfect click detection, because pixel hunts don't really become an issue with 8x8 pixels  

Peace
Scar

There's also some good battle axe animation here which could be useful for further inspiration, especially if you have the program that can download streaming video. As for blocking, I think holding the axe diagonally across the body and blocking with the handle should be sufficient.

...graphics don't make a game, they [just] pimp the hell out of it...

...Having beautiful artwork doesn't necessarily mean that the game is going to be good...

I think the point Ben was making was not that nice graphics make a game better, but they are likely to persuade people to download it, more than a game with lesser graphics.

You know what gents... I think we're all arguing the same point...  8)

I made something similar for a Sprite Jam back in March. Pretty tiny compared to what you're doing, but very similar in concept.

I think I remember these... but wasn't there a tree or something with them?

Back OT:

Coming along nicely Jimbo, although these are going to be a bitch to animate.
The last one seems to be a bit confused on her left side though; the arm struck me first as a bicep flex before a 'looking at fingernails' although I don't know how one would differentiate at this low-res. Her left

Spoiler

boobie

[close]

seems to be a bit pointy as well.

re. backgrounds:
If it was good enough for them back then, then it's damn well good enough for you, get to work 

My game currently out-rates practically every 4 cup game but its obviously inferior to those.

Cult fame baby! 

Really? In my opinion, it is [...] a screenshot that shows a game that makes you say "I want to play that" (I know it's probably controversial to suggest that graphics are such an important factor, but having a good screenshot is very important when I look for games to play, I am sure I'm not in the minority here).

I don't think it's going too far at all to suggest that graphics are a major factor to do with downloads. I mean, let's face it, while graphics don't make a game, they pimp the hell out of it. If someone has beautiful artwork in their game, people are going to want to download it, because the effort put into the game is in plain sight and it looks more professional as a whole.
Eye-candy is the only element displayed in a screenshot, not the music or gameplay, so when you look at the synopsis of the game, you might say "That sounds like an interesting story" and a good screenshot will suggest that it is told well also.

Have you tried adding a motion blur to the final frame? This is a common technique used for animating weapons to make the path of motion more obvious and the frame count look higher.