I think what happens is that developers think, "it's a lot easier to make a 3D game, you model your characters only once instead of painting countless animation frames by hand". Then they start working, and realize that's not the case... and on top of that the programming is a lot harder for 3D. Also what you said: there's this perception that nowadays 3D acceleration is ubiquitous... but that's simply not the case, and even where it is (Android devices for example must have GPUs, it's a basic OS requirement), the performance often just isn't there. Something has to feed data to the GPU...
What happens, in my opinion -- and this really is just a gut feeling -- is that once this double realization sinks in it's easy for developers to remember that a lot of the best games ever, all those classics you can find on GOG.com, were in fact 2D. So they go back to good old sprites and parallax scrolling.
Which is not to say that 3D doesn't have its place. It does. I love 1st-person games for example. But it's just a tool in the toolbox.
@claudeb I think that's the current stigma, actually. Perhaps in the near future, great games from the indie scene will start to debunk that sentiment.
They already have, for most of the public: older gamers, women gamers... AAA titles only cater to kiddies who judge a game by how flashy it is. Which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'll point out though that indie games, as opposed to F/OSS games, are commercial/have budgets, and therefore can afford to be a lot more polished, with art and sound made by pros. Take Frogatto, which has been mentioned in this thread and looks fantastic... until you realize it's not really an open source project, they just release the code from time to time like Id Software. Their assets remain proprietary and the entire thing sells for money. A hobbyist like me just can't compete.
I prefer named palettes as I need a name of some sort inorder to add them as variables
Are you referring to palettes with named colors? Then take a look at the X11 color names, the largest named palette I'm aware of. Or this even longer list of colors, but which doesn't form a palette per se.
I can create palettes like yours on the fly.
Mine, perhaps, since it was created procedurally. But the Gravity palette? Take a look at the actual color codes, they're more subtle than they seem. There's some degree of repeating values in the HSV space, but even there I don't see a rule.
Otherwise, sure, you can make palettes of assorted colors procedurally. Ever heard of Agave?
And just because it has 2D art doesn't mean it isn't professional.
Of course not. In fact I'm a vocal critic of the modern tendency to use 3D for everything. But to a lot of kiddies, a good game means something that draws millions of polygons per frame, with full voice-overs and lip-sync. The mega-shooter they used to praise last year? Now it's utter crap, simply because the explosions aren't quite as pretty as in the latest release...
No wonder FOSS games aren't even considered games in comparison. That's like comparing a hardcover of a Rob Liefeld comic, in glorious full color on glossy paper, to a pulp magazine from 1935 containing a Conan the Barbarian story by Robert E. Howard.
I was left wondering where we are (FOSS games) if you look at from the video game historical perspective. Do you think we are in 1980's, the 1990's or 00's ?
That's hard to say. Open source games are all over the place when it comes to size and quality. The best efforts are every bit as large, polished and fun as their commercial models, but they only got that way after many years of work, so they're inevitably behind the curve. Doubly so as newer technologies are exponentially harder to use.
Think about it: most open source shooters are built on the Quake 3 engine; how much can they raise about that game in the way of looks? (Gameplay-wise is another story, I couldn't say.) SuperTuxKart -- one of my favorites -- is inspired by Mario Kart, a series firmly rooted in the 1990es. FreeCiv and FreeCol can only raise so much above the level of the originals. Battle for Wesnoth as far as I know is original -- but it's also firmly 2D in an age when even 2D games are actually 3D. Incidentally, I think that's a good thing, but there you have it.
Looking back over my examples, I'd say the answer to your question is the 1990es. That's no coincidence: it was the last decade when big, fun, gorgeous games could be made by relatively small teams on reasonable budgets. And frankly, maybe it's best to stay at that level and push the limits in terms of gameplay, story, design, art direction... you name it, rather than waste efforts trying to compete with the mainstream game industry on its terms.
Bart's idea is sound. I used a variant based on a drunken walk, starting from a set of randomly chosen points. Didn't even bother with interconnecting passages -- simply tweaking the length of random walks was enough. I even had a nice function to make water pool in certain places (wall tiles with fewer than five neighbors would become water). Sadly I can't show you the code in action; changes in web browsers have broken it. But yeah, that works.
Remember that colors are perceived differently depending on their neighbors. Also, larger splotches of color appear lighter, because (being larger) they physically emit or reflect more light. And you don't always have to use pure colors; gradients and dithering still count as using the same limited palette. I only know the most basic tricks, but I'm pretty sure a color palette is never as limited as it seems.
That said, your own palette looks very interesting on a second look -- so colorful it seems larger! Will definitely keep it in mind for the future. My collection is growing...
I like this idea. Apart from Dawnbringer's 16-color palette which everyone knows and loves (and which I'm using in my WIP), I'm fond of the Tango Icon Theme color palette, though it's designed for user interfaces, not games. But it's really good. As for my own work, I've only created a single palette so far, not-so-well-named Color Grays. It's made algorithmically from color values of the form #ffeedd, #eeddcc, #ddccbb and so on for all possible combinations. That makes 84 of them; add 16 grays from #000 to #fff and you have exactly 100 colors to play with.Fun!
Now, I'm not so sure what this pallete would be good for. But you never know.
I think what happens is that developers think, "it's a lot easier to make a 3D game, you model your characters only once instead of painting countless animation frames by hand". Then they start working, and realize that's not the case... and on top of that the programming is a lot harder for 3D. Also what you said: there's this perception that nowadays 3D acceleration is ubiquitous... but that's simply not the case, and even where it is (Android devices for example must have GPUs, it's a basic OS requirement), the performance often just isn't there. Something has to feed data to the GPU...
What happens, in my opinion -- and this really is just a gut feeling -- is that once this double realization sinks in it's easy for developers to remember that a lot of the best games ever, all those classics you can find on GOG.com, were in fact 2D. So they go back to good old sprites and parallax scrolling.
Which is not to say that 3D doesn't have its place. It does. I love 1st-person games for example. But it's just a tool in the toolbox.
Intriguing palette, Buch. Kind of dark and red-blue oriented, but I can definitely see it having uses. I took the liberty to put it in GPL format:
GIMP Palette
Name: Buch's Palette
Columns: 4
#
47 40 58 Untitled
63 54 86 Untitled
134 93 147 Untitled
58 92 133 Untitled
128 58 70 Untitled
165 88 73 Untitled
65 142 176 Untitled
109 189 184 Untitled
48 85 65 Untitled
57 125 64 Untitled
82 165 72 Untitled
229 255 239 Untitled
232 129 65 Untitled
228 219 81 Untitled
103 145 137 Untitled
145 176 154 Untitled
Hope this helps!
Edit: I can't help but notice the similarities to Dawnbringer's 16-color palette. Are they coincidental?
They already have, for most of the public: older gamers, women gamers... AAA titles only cater to kiddies who judge a game by how flashy it is. Which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'll point out though that indie games, as opposed to F/OSS games, are commercial/have budgets, and therefore can afford to be a lot more polished, with art and sound made by pros. Take Frogatto, which has been mentioned in this thread and looks fantastic... until you realize it's not really an open source project, they just release the code from time to time like Id Software. Their assets remain proprietary and the entire thing sells for money. A hobbyist like me just can't compete.
Are you referring to palettes with named colors? Then take a look at the X11 color names, the largest named palette I'm aware of. Or this even longer list of colors, but which doesn't form a palette per se.
Mine, perhaps, since it was created procedurally. But the Gravity palette? Take a look at the actual color codes, they're more subtle than they seem. There's some degree of repeating values in the HSV space, but even there I don't see a rule.
Otherwise, sure, you can make palettes of assorted colors procedurally. Ever heard of Agave?
Of course not. In fact I'm a vocal critic of the modern tendency to use 3D for everything. But to a lot of kiddies, a good game means something that draws millions of polygons per frame, with full voice-overs and lip-sync. The mega-shooter they used to praise last year? Now it's utter crap, simply because the explosions aren't quite as pretty as in the latest release...
No wonder FOSS games aren't even considered games in comparison. That's like comparing a hardcover of a Rob Liefeld comic, in glorious full color on glossy paper, to a pulp magazine from 1935 containing a Conan the Barbarian story by Robert E. Howard.
Take those opinions accordingly.
That's hard to say. Open source games are all over the place when it comes to size and quality. The best efforts are every bit as large, polished and fun as their commercial models, but they only got that way after many years of work, so they're inevitably behind the curve. Doubly so as newer technologies are exponentially harder to use.
Think about it: most open source shooters are built on the Quake 3 engine; how much can they raise about that game in the way of looks? (Gameplay-wise is another story, I couldn't say.) SuperTuxKart -- one of my favorites -- is inspired by Mario Kart, a series firmly rooted in the 1990es. FreeCiv and FreeCol can only raise so much above the level of the originals. Battle for Wesnoth as far as I know is original -- but it's also firmly 2D in an age when even 2D games are actually 3D. Incidentally, I think that's a good thing, but there you have it.
Looking back over my examples, I'd say the answer to your question is the 1990es. That's no coincidence: it was the last decade when big, fun, gorgeous games could be made by relatively small teams on reasonable budgets. And frankly, maybe it's best to stay at that level and push the limits in terms of gameplay, story, design, art direction... you name it, rather than waste efforts trying to compete with the mainstream game industry on its terms.
This is nice... really nice. I can imagine a few uses for it, such as in a visual novel. Planning to make any more art like this?
Bart's idea is sound. I used a variant based on a drunken walk, starting from a set of randomly chosen points. Didn't even bother with interconnecting passages -- simply tweaking the length of random walks was enough. I even had a nice function to make water pool in certain places (wall tiles with fewer than five neighbors would become water). Sadly I can't show you the code in action; changes in web browsers have broken it. But yeah, that works.
Remember that colors are perceived differently depending on their neighbors. Also, larger splotches of color appear lighter, because (being larger) they physically emit or reflect more light. And you don't always have to use pure colors; gradients and dithering still count as using the same limited palette. I only know the most basic tricks, but I'm pretty sure a color palette is never as limited as it seems.
That said, your own palette looks very interesting on a second look -- so colorful it seems larger! Will definitely keep it in mind for the future. My collection is growing...
I like this idea. Apart from Dawnbringer's 16-color palette which everyone knows and loves (and which I'm using in my WIP), I'm fond of the Tango Icon Theme color palette, though it's designed for user interfaces, not games. But it's really good. As for my own work, I've only created a single palette so far, not-so-well-named Color Grays. It's made algorithmically from color values of the form #ffeedd, #eeddcc, #ddccbb and so on for all possible combinations. That makes 84 of them; add 16 grays from #000 to #fff and you have exactly 100 colors to play with.Fun!
Now, I'm not so sure what this pallete would be good for. But you never know.
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