I've played with a 4-direction hurt (I call it a death animation) before. There were some problems.
The biggest was that there just wasn't room to get knocked off your feet on the side views, if you're standing in the middle of a 64x64 square. You'd have to somehow fall in the middle of where you were just standing. Either you go to a crouch first, then go Splat!, or we'll have to require the user to move the figure left or right as they're falling a certain distance.
There is a precident for the latter-- the fighter game genre has plenty of these kinds of frames, and people figure it out. And it would read better using this method than a careful crouch-prone combo. It'd need to be carefully documented, though.
I'm not sure how you're going to set NPC character assets from PC assets, though. And I wonder if requiring all animations for all assets are really the way to go here.
That looks amazing, Bzt! ... Honestly, I wish I had that compiled when I first started working with LPC. The original style guide wasn't nearly as thorough.
As soon as the animation standards are in, I'll be happy to link it in my LPC repository.
One thing I will say-- when making a palette, have some common objects sketched out, as well as some basic shapes like a cube, a cylinder, things like that. Grass is also pretty vital.
The colors of your palette will set the standard for how you handle shading. It's really important, and I wish I'd realized how much it affected... pretty much everything before I started. LPC uses 6 color ramps; that's pretty darn big. But a lot of modern pixel art will have 10+ color ramps, with very subtle texture shades for things like water and grass. So figure out your art style and plan accordingly.
If you'd like to preview my palette ramps while you figure the Python tool out, I made some easy-to-follow guides for skin / clothing: https://imgur.com/a/7XOZSwO
Hope that helps! Note that they won't work on everything, because different creators use different shading techniques.
I've made several armor sets, and the main constraint is the pixel size. You'll need to pick out the most distinctive feature of the armor and lean into that to make it recognizeable. Adding a knee-high skirt to slightly modified chain armor, a particular style of shoulder pads, and a traditional Chinese helm might do the trick. It really depends on what you're going for, how good is good enough-- and how many animations you want to support.
Helms would be the easiest, because once you've done the front, side, and back (and a few custom additions for the death animation) you're pretty much done and just need to place it correctly.
These are my LPC armor designs. I've also got a range of helmets on my gallery.
Honestly...? I did not like the original LPC grass-green. I felt like it washed out everything around it and clashed with the characters.
The greens were a combination of painting, adjusting, painting some more, finding games that resembled LPC's general 'look' and color picking / comparing with those, followed by more adjustments, followed by staring hard at Dawnbringer's palette analyzer tool. I also tried reducing the colors of the most basic LPC tilesets, and... there's just too many. It doesn't work.
The other problem was that the set would need to be pretty versitile, since LPC is a bit generic, and you never know what's going to be asked of it. Link to the Past, for instance, also has a bright RPG-ish palette... and half of its 120 Light World tiles are green. I can't afford that, not with a 5-6 shade ramp everywhere. Four green ramps was about what I was able to manage without compromising the rest.
I have more terrain tiles, as well-- updated animated lava, volcanic rock with a red glow between the cracks, an entirely new sand set, and new animated water for said sand (which has gone from yellow to a rich peach and honestly looks ten times better), and a new cliff face inspired by LttP's cliff tiles.
I've played with a 4-direction hurt (I call it a death animation) before. There were some problems.
The biggest was that there just wasn't room to get knocked off your feet on the side views, if you're standing in the middle of a 64x64 square. You'd have to somehow fall in the middle of where you were just standing. Either you go to a crouch first, then go Splat!, or we'll have to require the user to move the figure left or right as they're falling a certain distance.
There is a precident for the latter-- the fighter game genre has plenty of these kinds of frames, and people figure it out. And it would read better using this method than a careful crouch-prone combo. It'd need to be carefully documented, though.
I'm not sure how you're going to set NPC character assets from PC assets, though. And I wonder if requiring all animations for all assets are really the way to go here.
That looks amazing, Bzt! ... Honestly, I wish I had that compiled when I first started working with LPC. The original style guide wasn't nearly as thorough.
As soon as the animation standards are in, I'll be happy to link it in my LPC repository.
Thank you, everyone!
And keep up the great work! All the submissions were great, and I'm thrilled to see them. :)
I also have an LPC repository with a unified palette here: https://github.com/ElizaWy/LPC
It is a "branch LPC" project, particularly where the characters are concerned.
One thing I will say-- when making a palette, have some common objects sketched out, as well as some basic shapes like a cube, a cylinder, things like that. Grass is also pretty vital.
The colors of your palette will set the standard for how you handle shading. It's really important, and I wish I'd realized how much it affected... pretty much everything before I started. LPC uses 6 color ramps; that's pretty darn big. But a lot of modern pixel art will have 10+ color ramps, with very subtle texture shades for things like water and grass. So figure out your art style and plan accordingly.
If you'd like to preview my palette ramps while you figure the Python tool out, I made some easy-to-follow guides for skin / clothing: https://imgur.com/a/7XOZSwO
Hope that helps! Note that they won't work on everything, because different creators use different shading techniques.
Yes, of course. :) Have fun!
I've made several armor sets, and the main constraint is the pixel size. You'll need to pick out the most distinctive feature of the armor and lean into that to make it recognizeable. Adding a knee-high skirt to slightly modified chain armor, a particular style of shoulder pads, and a traditional Chinese helm might do the trick. It really depends on what you're going for, how good is good enough-- and how many animations you want to support.
Helms would be the easiest, because once you've done the front, side, and back (and a few custom additions for the death animation) you're pretty much done and just need to place it correctly.
These are my LPC armor designs. I've also got a range of helmets on my gallery.
Those really do look incredible. Well done!
Honestly...? I did not like the original LPC grass-green. I felt like it washed out everything around it and clashed with the characters.
The greens were a combination of painting, adjusting, painting some more, finding games that resembled LPC's general 'look' and color picking / comparing with those, followed by more adjustments, followed by staring hard at Dawnbringer's palette analyzer tool. I also tried reducing the colors of the most basic LPC tilesets, and... there's just too many. It doesn't work.
The other problem was that the set would need to be pretty versitile, since LPC is a bit generic, and you never know what's going to be asked of it. Link to the Past, for instance, also has a bright RPG-ish palette... and half of its 120 Light World tiles are green. I can't afford that, not with a 5-6 shade ramp everywhere. Four green ramps was about what I was able to manage without compromising the rest.
I have more terrain tiles, as well-- updated animated lava, volcanic rock with a red glow between the cracks, an entirely new sand set, and new animated water for said sand (which has gone from yellow to a rich peach and honestly looks ten times better), and a new cliff face inspired by LttP's cliff tiles.
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