* No apparent staff - Can't tell who staff is except by the blog posts, where we can assume bart runs the place. If he posts in the forum we can only infer from context that he's staff, it doesn't say it anywhere. There is no staff page with activity indicators or descriptions of their roles so we know who best to get ahold of if there's an issue. Not even the staff themsevles know their exact roles.
* No helpdesk /ticket system - Best we can do is post in the cluttered "Feedback" forums, with a poor search function and hope it doesn't take weeks to be resolved.
* No "contact" link anywhere. It should at least be in the footer, if there was one.
You need to show the users that staff exist and are doing things, and they need to be accessable. I was going to post a tileset I've been working on, but I noticed my account still hasn't been approved, and was annoyed that no one could find my website after I put up something new. Knowing how how things run here I got really demotivated to TRY to contact someone, as I still remember waiting weeks to get a forum post approved after finishing my game. I figured I'd just think about not posting anything here anymore, and look for alternatives. Then I stumbled on this post. It gives me a little hope, but not much. capbros was absolutely right when he said artists are going to turn away. It's fine if bart has no time; I sympathize with that as I don't have much time either, but someone needs to be running the place. Not just minding the store, but running it.
He reminds me of Attila the Hun more than a monk or humble warrior. For that look, I think he could use some armor, and more hair. A ponytail on top or maybe a larger beard that isn't trimmed (all the way up to the ears) would look good. How about giving him some scars?
Using this in a WIP shmup project. I rotated the image for horizontal, and layered some extra stars for a depth/paralax effect. It works really well this way. Random ships (master484 made them), with random sizes, weapons, palettes, etc. Random sector, hueshifted the nebula for variety.
The objects themselves can be improved, but i'll focus on some ideas I have about the use of color and space.
Basically, I think it's too "matchy".
Everything is scattered a bit too evenly and there aren't enough little localized zones of interest. Here's some specific things I see, and changed:
Too many rocks. It doesn't really add variety if they're everywhere. Having them spaced somewhat evenly adds to this problem.
Too many dots. The pixels in the grass are too high contrast to have them all over, and they don't imply any kind of texture to it; just a bit noisy.
Here's how I've changed a few things:
I changed the pixels in the grass to be less frequent and made some look like blades of grass. Note that I never place them near the tops of trees; it breaks the illusion of perspective, as it'd be strange to see grass with the same detail from the top of the treeline as at the base (we aren't going for any mind-blowing real perspective thing here, and I don't address shadows, etc either). I also clustered the grass highlights a bit more around the rocks, giving the impression that the rocks are displacing the grass a bit. I also changed the grass colors above the road. The road makes it easy to avoid any kind of dithered transition or something fancy, and it looks nicer.
@capbros: It's my own program, but basically I just throw code at it until something good comes out. The algorithm basically makes a bunch of layered shaded rectangles with various size configurations and other special tweaks (like adding rivets to larger ones).
@Clint Bellanger: I've got the start of a level generator for Mega Man 1. It'd be neat if I end up having it generate the graphics too.
Btw, here's a mockup I made when doodling some ideas for the graphics generation:
Suggestion: add little doors or something to warp to other spots on the map, like in pac-man where you go through the side, and come out on the other side. They could open and close randomly.
Just a note about the new mushrooms - Wild mushrooms can have long stems so feel free to extend them for even more variety:
This could also work for some of the other items.
This site has:
* No apparent staff - Can't tell who staff is except by the blog posts, where we can assume bart runs the place. If he posts in the forum we can only infer from context that he's staff, it doesn't say it anywhere. There is no staff page with activity indicators or descriptions of their roles so we know who best to get ahold of if there's an issue. Not even the staff themsevles know their exact roles.
* No helpdesk /ticket system - Best we can do is post in the cluttered "Feedback" forums, with a poor search function and hope it doesn't take weeks to be resolved.
* No "contact" link anywhere. It should at least be in the footer, if there was one.
You need to show the users that staff exist and are doing things, and they need to be accessable. I was going to post a tileset I've been working on, but I noticed my account still hasn't been approved, and was annoyed that no one could find my website after I put up something new. Knowing how how things run here I got really demotivated to TRY to contact someone, as I still remember waiting weeks to get a forum post approved after finishing my game. I figured I'd just think about not posting anything here anymore, and look for alternatives. Then I stumbled on this post. It gives me a little hope, but not much. capbros was absolutely right when he said artists are going to turn away. It's fine if bart has no time; I sympathize with that as I don't have much time either, but someone needs to be running the place. Not just minding the store, but running it.
He reminds me of Attila the Hun more than a monk or humble warrior. For that look, I think he could use some armor, and more hair. A ponytail on top or maybe a larger beard that isn't trimmed (all the way up to the ears) would look good. How about giving him some scars?
Using this in a WIP shmup project. I rotated the image for horizontal, and layered some extra stars for a depth/paralax effect. It works really well this way. Random ships (master484 made them), with random sizes, weapons, palettes, etc. Random sector, hueshifted the nebula for variety.
http://i.imgur.com/s9cVMc2.gifv
http://i.imgur.com/GB30bRi.gifv
Btw you don't have to redraw the tree tops, just make the trunks much much shorter. They look pretty good small.
The objects themselves can be improved, but i'll focus on some ideas I have about the use of color and space.
Basically, I think it's too "matchy".
Everything is scattered a bit too evenly and there aren't enough little localized zones of interest. Here's some specific things I see, and changed:
Too many rocks. It doesn't really add variety if they're everywhere. Having them spaced somewhat evenly adds to this problem.
Too many dots. The pixels in the grass are too high contrast to have them all over, and they don't imply any kind of texture to it; just a bit noisy.
Here's how I've changed a few things:
I changed the pixels in the grass to be less frequent and made some look like blades of grass. Note that I never place them near the tops of trees; it breaks the illusion of perspective, as it'd be strange to see grass with the same detail from the top of the treeline as at the base (we aren't going for any mind-blowing real perspective thing here, and I don't address shadows, etc either). I also clustered the grass highlights a bit more around the rocks, giving the impression that the rocks are displacing the grass a bit. I also changed the grass colors above the road. The road makes it easy to avoid any kind of dithered transition or something fancy, and it looks nicer.
@capbros: It's my own program, but basically I just throw code at it until something good comes out. The algorithm basically makes a bunch of layered shaded rectangles with various size configurations and other special tweaks (like adding rivets to larger ones).
@Clint Bellanger: I've got the start of a level generator for Mega Man 1. It'd be neat if I end up having it generate the graphics too.
Btw, here's a mockup I made when doodling some ideas for the graphics generation:
Sample usage (with one of my other bricks):
Looks good.
Suggestion: add little doors or something to warp to other spots on the map, like in pac-man where you go through the side, and come out on the other side. They could open and close randomly.
This is nice. The sound is a better fit for my game than my own stuff. Using it in my game Robot Spider Invasion.
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