I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but:
To have clean edges that blend well with any background, you want to create your images/sprites with an Alpha Transparency channel. The image format PNG supports this alpha channel and is used often in games. Most modern art tools (like GIMP) let you create images this way.
@claudeb Yeah I ended up making the map arrays by hand. If the maps were any larger I would have used Tiled instead. Source code peek: http://heroinedusk.com/demo/atlas.js
I used 3D models as guides for many of the tiles. Once I figured out how many tiles I wanted visible, I played with the camera position and focal length until some test cube tiles were giving me a good perspective and fit into the view nicely. After settling on basic positioning (no science here, just what felt good), I used those same settings to prepare all the tiles.
Then I'd make primitive 3D tiles and render them. Import the renders into GIMP, then in a new layer trace over the outline and general shape. Add a bit of shading and that's about it. For simple tiles the workflow is actually not bad -- assuming you already can do basic blendering.
If you see the attached grid.blend you can see the reference models I created.
pops, saving is done with cookies. If you have cookies enabled you should be able to close your browser/tab and open it again to resume. Death is currently permament though.
SDL and Allegro don't support hardware accelerated alpha blending. They are "out-dated" but are much more widely ported than newer alternatives. Thus tend to be more supported on archaic open source operating systems (which is extremely important to many of us on Open Game Art). Some of us target unusual and hobbyist devices like linux handhelds where color-keying is a useful technique.
Anyway, a lot of people are uploading art they already created for a current game project. So if you see lots of pink backgrounds or pre-rotated sprites that's because people are actively using those techniques.
For reference, I'm a programmer and I created that 360 spaceship art.
I provided rotations of that spaceship because not all graphics libraries have a rotate function. E.g. I use SDL 1.2 for several projects (including Flare) and it does not have image rotation.
And rotating the 3D model inside a raytracer beforehand is always going to give crispier results than rotating a small 2D sprite at runtime (both pixel quality and speed).
One of the things I like that TurboSquid does is they have this quality/certification checklist. This is useful for finding high quality game-ready assets. I think OGA could benefit from having expert moderators being able to mark games as "Certified Game Ready".
How this might work on OGA.
Each art section (on the forums) has a public list of quality checks required to be Certified Game Ready
Uploaders could click a button to request Certification, if they think their model is good enough
Expert mods get an email to check this asset, and approve/reject Certification
Search can be limited to Certified Game Ready art.
Example standard we might have on art.
Overall: general high quality, something we'd actually see in a game.
3D: diffuse/normal/spec maps as needed, clean geometry (outfacing normals, no duplicate facets, etc), normalized loc/rot/scale, origin at 0,0,0. Models meant for movement need appropriate rigging. (here we can actually refer to existing open standard instead of writing our own)
Sprite Sheets: frame position and timing data as needed, minimal expected animations represented (e.g. a character only standing might not qualify as game-ready).
Tile Sets: correct full permutations represented for e.g. walls/corners. Tile sizes (optional offsets, etc) specified.
Well Flare is built to be an Action RPG and nothing more. Combat is the main gameplay and always will be. Story-heavy games require branching dialog and should be built in another engine.
I say this because Flare has always been about small, controlled scope. Otherwise it's almost impossible to actually finish and engine and make a game using it. Flare is already 3.5 years old, and even slight additions in scope threaten to expand the project by years. Consider, for example, that FreeDroid's dialog engine alone is about 10k lines of code -- nearly a third of the size of all of Flare. Flare gets a lot done in a tiny amount of code because of its focused purpose.
Combat is central to the Action RPG genre, but there are certainly ways to make it less violent. Imagine a cartoony game in Flare where you're a wizard kid shooting a bubble wand at tiny monsters, and instead of dying the monsters turn into candy.
Or to make the enemies really deserving of violence. Undead and demons are easy. Natural beasts less so, as they're mostly acting territorially. Sentient humanoids are really questionable unless they're actively part of some larger evil plot (e.g. they're at war, slaughtering humans). I don't like the idea of actual human enemies at all, and I don't think I'm a mature enough writer to have an effective human villain.
With Wandercall I have a story designed that most, if not all, of the enemies are obvious evil. Where they aren't obvious evil, they're metaphysical -- personal demons instead of literal demons.
Someone could write a utility that generates Flare tilesetdefs from a Tiled tmx file. But one doesn't exist yet.
I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but:
To have clean edges that blend well with any background, you want to create your images/sprites with an Alpha Transparency channel. The image format PNG supports this alpha channel and is used often in games. Most modern art tools (like GIMP) let you create images this way.
Thanks for the plug!
@claudeb Yeah I ended up making the map arrays by hand. If the maps were any larger I would have used Tiled instead. Source code peek: http://heroinedusk.com/demo/atlas.js
@surt
I used 3D models as guides for many of the tiles. Once I figured out how many tiles I wanted visible, I played with the camera position and focal length until some test cube tiles were giving me a good perspective and fit into the view nicely. After settling on basic positioning (no science here, just what felt good), I used those same settings to prepare all the tiles.
Then I'd make primitive 3D tiles and render them. Import the renders into GIMP, then in a new layer trace over the outline and general shape. Add a bit of shading and that's about it. For simple tiles the workflow is actually not bad -- assuming you already can do basic blendering.
If you see the attached grid.blend you can see the reference models I created.
pops, saving is done with cookies. If you have cookies enabled you should be able to close your browser/tab and open it again to resume. Death is currently permament though.
SDL and Allegro don't support hardware accelerated alpha blending. They are "out-dated" but are much more widely ported than newer alternatives. Thus tend to be more supported on archaic open source operating systems (which is extremely important to many of us on Open Game Art). Some of us target unusual and hobbyist devices like linux handhelds where color-keying is a useful technique.
Anyway, a lot of people are uploading art they already created for a current game project. So if you see lots of pink backgrounds or pre-rotated sprites that's because people are actively using those techniques.
For reference, I'm a programmer and I created that 360 spaceship art.
I provided rotations of that spaceship because not all graphics libraries have a rotate function. E.g. I use SDL 1.2 for several projects (including Flare) and it does not have image rotation.
And rotating the 3D model inside a raytracer beforehand is always going to give crispier results than rotating a small 2D sprite at runtime (both pixel quality and speed).
One of the things I like that TurboSquid does is they have this quality/certification checklist. This is useful for finding high quality game-ready assets. I think OGA could benefit from having expert moderators being able to mark games as "Certified Game Ready".
How this might work on OGA.
Example standard we might have on art.
Overall: general high quality, something we'd actually see in a game.
3D: diffuse/normal/spec maps as needed, clean geometry (outfacing normals, no duplicate facets, etc), normalized loc/rot/scale, origin at 0,0,0. Models meant for movement need appropriate rigging. (here we can actually refer to existing open standard instead of writing our own)
Sprite Sheets: frame position and timing data as needed, minimal expected animations represented (e.g. a character only standing might not qualify as game-ready).
Tile Sets: correct full permutations represented for e.g. walls/corners. Tile sizes (optional offsets, etc) specified.
casimps1: ooh, this is fun. Clever game idea!
(edit) and I'm not very good at it, but it's fun to watch the Minotaurs just wreck shit!
Well Flare is built to be an Action RPG and nothing more. Combat is the main gameplay and always will be. Story-heavy games require branching dialog and should be built in another engine.
I say this because Flare has always been about small, controlled scope. Otherwise it's almost impossible to actually finish and engine and make a game using it. Flare is already 3.5 years old, and even slight additions in scope threaten to expand the project by years. Consider, for example, that FreeDroid's dialog engine alone is about 10k lines of code -- nearly a third of the size of all of Flare. Flare gets a lot done in a tiny amount of code because of its focused purpose.
Combat is central to the Action RPG genre, but there are certainly ways to make it less violent. Imagine a cartoony game in Flare where you're a wizard kid shooting a bubble wand at tiny monsters, and instead of dying the monsters turn into candy.
Or to make the enemies really deserving of violence. Undead and demons are easy. Natural beasts less so, as they're mostly acting territorially. Sentient humanoids are really questionable unless they're actively part of some larger evil plot (e.g. they're at war, slaughtering humans). I don't like the idea of actual human enemies at all, and I don't think I'm a mature enough writer to have an effective human villain.
With Wandercall I have a story designed that most, if not all, of the enemies are obvious evil. Where they aren't obvious evil, they're metaphysical -- personal demons instead of literal demons.
Pages