I didn't recolor the gate on that one, but you probably get the gist.
There really is no way to have a palette and expect a perfect 1:1 conversion of every LPC asset without changing the look a little, granted, but I don't think those look bad either.
The paintings are part of an OGA-By LPC branch I'm currently working on, and will be included. I'm probably about halfway through recoloring the other OGA-By assets at the moment. I'm thinking it'll take another two weeks to release the entire kit, if I don't add the extra character animations I've been working on.
BlueCarrot, I'll dig up some better terrain tests, but I'm elbow deep in furniture. It'll take a few days or so. :)
@Pvigier - Licensing matters a lot when you can get sued for releasing your game on Steam, even with proper accreditation. Share-Alike is a requirement, not a suggestion.
@Samuncle - The thing is, the projects aren't parallel. LPC could use my branch, but I can't use a lot of theirs. It's not just the licensing, either; enforcing a strict palette enforces how the art is shaded, and LPC style differences being what they are, a lot just won't fit.
I'm thinking of calling my branch the Dame set, after the game I'm developing with it.
@BlueCarrot - I'll get you screenshots and demo images once I'm a little further on! :) Putting WIP art in an open forum or an imgur link always feels more permanent somehow. I have a few previews on twitter and patreon, but I want something good and PR-worthy first.
I started packing the assets into atlases, but honestly it makes it harder to navigate in Unity and more difficult to make changes to. I'll be doing tiny atlases (lamps, beds, ect) or object group .pngs instead at the moment. We'll see what's easiest.
I'd love more of your submissions opened up, thank you!!
Yeah, I understand wanting to be more inclusive under CC-by-SA. If more artists do open their submission up to OGA-by, I'd be thrilled, but I'm going to keep to the waived version for the kit I'm working on. The 'oh, here's the download link' workaround has always seemed to be a very gray area, and I know a lot of people who are leery of touching it.
I'm going to be very busy anyway, just getting that palette fine-tuned, and adjusting Sharm's LPC items for it. I'm about 55-60% done now, and would be happy to show you my progress. I find it easiest to share WIPs and overviews via the OGA Discord channel; there's enough LPC material I don't think I could share a proper draft without releasing the kit.
Once it is released, I'll have it organized up and down, though. It should help quite a bit with your repackaging project, if you chose to pursue it.
I'm already doing this on a smaller scale, but you're welcome to piggy-back off of mine if you'd like to go big.
I've been really busy lately with an entirely DRM-waived LPC set with a unified palette (which is about up to ~105 colors and almost finalized). This means remaking assets like the snow and sand terrain, tweaking things so they fit stylistically together, ect. But it also means that the credits are down to Redshrike, Sharm, myself, and you for your work on the upholstry set. I'll likely add derivitives of Hyptosis' work as well later.
So-- easy to credit, flexible license that can be used for Steam projects, and the color palette reinforces stylistic compatability. The idea and preview sets have been received really well so far, and I think that might be a big thing that LPC has been lacking.
I would also recommend Aseprite-- it's what I've started using, has tileset support, and it makes color management a dream. It's not free unfortunately, but it does have a demo version, and I think it's well worth the $20.
#4 - The head positions are substantially different between the male and female swing animation, in particular. If we're dealing with the original vanilla LPC base sheets, the male top-facing stand / walk is one pixel higher, the left facing shoot on the female set is one pixel to the side and not perfectly mirrored to the right, the first two frames of the top-facing thrust animation are off for the female, and she bobs differently than the male base during her walk cycle. She's also off to the side during two or three frames in the Hurt animation. The only true match is the magic animation.
I did fix some of these issues in my own curated set, but it also means people using the original base's assets will jitter if combined.
#5 - Naming each animation would be good. Especially if we're adding guns in-- "Shoot" might not cut it anymore, and we should probably rename "Hurt" to something like 'Knockout'. Hurt should probably be a flinch when damage is taken.
#7 - As long as we're talking about writing scripts, a head / hair accessory placement script would be an absolute godsend. It's consistent (save with the closed eyes during magic for the base and the Hurt/Knockout animation.
1. If you use TheraHedwig's run, you will either need to replace the tilted head or redraw every hair, hat, and head accessory asset. I have tried to make that run work before, and I've always had problems with it, particularly some over-shading that breaks from the style of the rest of the set. It also doesn't read well.
2. As far as I know, no assets have been released for TheraHedwig's run or jump yet, so you're in the 'no assets available' realms already, and changes can still be made freely to the bases.
3. I HEAVILY advise you to preview animations before you spend any significant amount of time with them, and ideally as you work with them. I've tried mixing key poses from other sets before, and the result wasn't pretty. Or even clear what it was supposed to be. In the end, I've found it would have been better looking and easier to draw things from scratch.
4. My LPC project has switched to a unisex base, based off Redshrike's female, and I've made the breasts an asset than can be added or omitted. This has saved a ton of effort, and might be worth consideration.
5. I suggest splitting the sprite sheet into different sprite sheets, one per animation. I'd even recommend splitting the idle from the walk cycle. Most people don't seem to realize that the 'walk' rows are actually a standing frame and then an eight-frame walk, and what you get is a nine-frame animation where the legs stutter and splay out every cycle.
What's more, if LPC is expanded on, you're going to make LPC suitable for, say, platformers as well as RPGs. A platformer dev might have no use for the casting or thrusting animations, and might not want to include them. Worth thinking about.
6. I can't recommend an off-site version control system enough, with some strict guidelines, and animated gifs demonstrating the animation. It's easy to recolor an asset sheet. It's easy to correct an error on an asset sheet. It's hard to correct the same error on ten asset sheets in ten different colors. Have a master set, in one tone.
Try this one, Evert--
I didn't recolor the gate on that one, but you probably get the gist.
There really is no way to have a palette and expect a perfect 1:1 conversion of every LPC asset without changing the look a little, granted, but I don't think those look bad either.
Thank you!
The paintings are part of an OGA-By LPC branch I'm currently working on, and will be included. I'm probably about halfway through recoloring the other OGA-By assets at the moment. I'm thinking it'll take another two weeks to release the entire kit, if I don't add the extra character animations I've been working on.
BlueCarrot, I'll dig up some better terrain tests, but I'm elbow deep in furniture. It'll take a few days or so. :)
So, the nice thing about a 128 color palette is that you can have multiple looks for things like grass.
I've also done a lot of test scenes and variant color testing for different looks and variety, and thus far the finished set has been very flexible.
@Pvigier - Licensing matters a lot when you can get sued for releasing your game on Steam, even with proper accreditation. Share-Alike is a requirement, not a suggestion.
@Samuncle - The thing is, the projects aren't parallel. LPC could use my branch, but I can't use a lot of theirs. It's not just the licensing, either; enforcing a strict palette enforces how the art is shaded, and LPC style differences being what they are, a lot just won't fit.
I'm thinking of calling my branch the Dame set, after the game I'm developing with it.
@BlueCarrot - I'll get you screenshots and demo images once I'm a little further on! :) Putting WIP art in an open forum or an imgur link always feels more permanent somehow. I have a few previews on twitter and patreon, but I want something good and PR-worthy first.
I started packing the assets into atlases, but honestly it makes it harder to navigate in Unity and more difficult to make changes to. I'll be doing tiny atlases (lamps, beds, ect) or object group .pngs instead at the moment. We'll see what's easiest.
I'd love more of your submissions opened up, thank you!!
Yeah, I understand wanting to be more inclusive under CC-by-SA. If more artists do open their submission up to OGA-by, I'd be thrilled, but I'm going to keep to the waived version for the kit I'm working on. The 'oh, here's the download link' workaround has always seemed to be a very gray area, and I know a lot of people who are leery of touching it.
I'm going to be very busy anyway, just getting that palette fine-tuned, and adjusting Sharm's LPC items for it. I'm about 55-60% done now, and would be happy to show you my progress. I find it easiest to share WIPs and overviews via the OGA Discord channel; there's enough LPC material I don't think I could share a proper draft without releasing the kit.
Once it is released, I'll have it organized up and down, though. It should help quite a bit with your repackaging project, if you chose to pursue it.
I'm already doing this on a smaller scale, but you're welcome to piggy-back off of mine if you'd like to go big.
I've been really busy lately with an entirely DRM-waived LPC set with a unified palette (which is about up to ~105 colors and almost finalized). This means remaking assets like the snow and sand terrain, tweaking things so they fit stylistically together, ect. But it also means that the credits are down to Redshrike, Sharm, myself, and you for your work on the upholstry set. I'll likely add derivitives of Hyptosis' work as well later.
So-- easy to credit, flexible license that can be used for Steam projects, and the color palette reinforces stylistic compatability. The idea and preview sets have been received really well so far, and I think that might be a big thing that LPC has been lacking.
I would also recommend Aseprite-- it's what I've started using, has tileset support, and it makes color management a dream. It's not free unfortunately, but it does have a demo version, and I think it's well worth the $20.
#4 - The head positions are substantially different between the male and female swing animation, in particular. If we're dealing with the original vanilla LPC base sheets, the male top-facing stand / walk is one pixel higher, the left facing shoot on the female set is one pixel to the side and not perfectly mirrored to the right, the first two frames of the top-facing thrust animation are off for the female, and she bobs differently than the male base during her walk cycle. She's also off to the side during two or three frames in the Hurt animation. The only true match is the magic animation.
I did fix some of these issues in my own curated set, but it also means people using the original base's assets will jitter if combined.
I advertised this as a 'teen' base, but it's perfectly in line with the female animations, aside from the breasts. Might be worth considering? https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-teen-unisex-base-clothes
#5 - Naming each animation would be good. Especially if we're adding guns in-- "Shoot" might not cut it anymore, and we should probably rename "Hurt" to something like 'Knockout'. Hurt should probably be a flinch when damage is taken.
#7 - As long as we're talking about writing scripts, a head / hair accessory placement script would be an absolute godsend. It's consistent (save with the closed eyes during magic for the base and the Hurt/Knockout animation.
A few thoughts--
1. If you use TheraHedwig's run, you will either need to replace the tilted head or redraw every hair, hat, and head accessory asset. I have tried to make that run work before, and I've always had problems with it, particularly some over-shading that breaks from the style of the rest of the set. It also doesn't read well.
2. As far as I know, no assets have been released for TheraHedwig's run or jump yet, so you're in the 'no assets available' realms already, and changes can still be made freely to the bases.
3. I HEAVILY advise you to preview animations before you spend any significant amount of time with them, and ideally as you work with them. I've tried mixing key poses from other sets before, and the result wasn't pretty. Or even clear what it was supposed to be. In the end, I've found it would have been better looking and easier to draw things from scratch.
4. My LPC project has switched to a unisex base, based off Redshrike's female, and I've made the breasts an asset than can be added or omitted. This has saved a ton of effort, and might be worth consideration.
5. I suggest splitting the sprite sheet into different sprite sheets, one per animation. I'd even recommend splitting the idle from the walk cycle. Most people don't seem to realize that the 'walk' rows are actually a standing frame and then an eight-frame walk, and what you get is a nine-frame animation where the legs stutter and splay out every cycle.
What's more, if LPC is expanded on, you're going to make LPC suitable for, say, platformers as well as RPGs. A platformer dev might have no use for the casting or thrusting animations, and might not want to include them. Worth thinking about.
6. I can't recommend an off-site version control system enough, with some strict guidelines, and animated gifs demonstrating the animation. It's easy to recolor an asset sheet. It's easy to correct an error on an asset sheet. It's hard to correct the same error on ten asset sheets in ten different colors. Have a master set, in one tone.
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