As thou all knowest, My main project right now is Balding Overweight Man. I have a splendiferous head artist, however, motivation has been somewhat lagging as of late. She only draws standstills, no animations whatsoever and not much large stuff. I'm currently in charge of animations (Not too bad...) I'm looking for someone who could match the drawing style of BOM reasonably well and do occasional tricky animations in characters that have already been drawn and good cutscene size (640x480) drawings as described by me. I'll also take any music I can get that hasn't been used a bajillion times by clickers, and if anyone is currently project-less who can take major programming roles, I could probably use your help. Most of all, though, I need beta testers and input-ers...es. That makes for long credits lists and a barrel'o'monkeys' worth of fun. Actually, I may only employ the help of beta testers and inputerses, so as to keep my all my eggs in a fireproof, shatter-resistant, bullet and waterproof basket.
You say you want someone to match the style of the game, but can we exceed the drawing style? I don't like it to be honest. There are way too many amateurish mistakes like improper use of shading, gradients, pillow shading and other things that are complete no-no's in terms of sprite making and even drawing in general.
It wouldn't be very hard to match this style, but by doing so I would be purposely forcing myself to draw the wrong way which is kind of awkward to do.
Uh... no. Just no. Did I say it had to be as good as the drawing style? No. I said, it has to match the drawing style. It's not supposed to be a realistic art style. If you want to send me a demo of your "better" sprites, and I think they'll go along well, I'll glady accept your help, but otherwise it's gotta be the same.
(fancypants.)
Sorry. I was just curious, but now that I think about it I don't think the way I draw sprites would really match with this game. The only reason I said anything is because I was thinking of getting back into working on games again since I haven't made anything in over 8 years, and there really isn't that much in the way of people looking for help here.
Yeah, I must be a psychic. I knew you'd somehow get out of it, so you wouldn't have to show me your "awesomely better" sprites. (not really a quote, but I love making them up.) Anyway, no hard feelings. (at least, not on my part...) Are you good with other stuff?
I'm not trying to make myself sound like an awesome artist. I am actually pretty decent though. I've been really busy as of late so I haven't drawn anything in years. But I have learned plenty of things (bad habits, especially) to avoid from forums such as Pixelation. I haven't really had much time to apply them though.
Here is some old work I found on my hard drive.
Again, these are pretty old. If I were to do this one over again, I would definitely improve upon the shading.
This one was done for an ACoders compo. I think I did a good job with the animation on this one, but I forgot to add the other end of the scarf.
This was supposed to be a sprite for an RPG that I never finished. I never got around to fixing the proportions of the arms or adding the legs.
I wish I wasn't so busy with school. If I had time, I'd try drawing some sprites using sel-out/Capcom style shading and other methods that I've learned over the years.
But again, I don't think this whole cartoon style you're going for is my thing. I probably can help with other things like play testing and give input though.
You're right, reborn. Those are cool, machrider, but how did you see your art as any better? Some of my art in other games kind of looks like that... but I generally tend to draw larger stuff. Little sprites like that are hard to make good looking. (they are good, though)
Originally Posted by Reborn! I'm fine with either style. There's no "wrong" way to do art.
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I was referring to the use of pillow shading. In a cartoonish game especially, you don't need that many colors or gradients in a sprite. It's kind of hard to give an individual critique of what I'm trying to get at when there is an entire screenshot of the game rather than some individual sprites.
ARG! It won't let me edit! I just read what you said about testing and input. Great! Just be sure to check out the downloads page from time to time for new demos. Thonk ye aboonch.
Also, you may have noticed. I am somewhat guilty of the same amateurish mistakes I mentioned too, or in the past at least. But I am sure I can draw better now that I know a lot more about drawing/spriting. School has been killing me though. I'm going to make a game or work on something. I just need the opportunity, or rather the free time to do it.
I think giving feedback for the game wouldn't be that much of a problem. I'm not exactly sure yet. I guess I'll try to help if I can.
Well, I played the game and I don't know. This doesn't seem like the kind of project I'm looking to work on. It seems like a funny concept but I don't know how I can help with it. This is completly different from anything I'd make.
I think instead of looking for other projects to help on (as there hardly any besides this game and some others), I'm going to start my own. I maybe I'll revive one of my old projects I was working on while I was still with Natomic. But also I need to focus on getting this school semester done. I'm sorry for wasting your time like this. I just thought I'd say something rather than have this post sit here while nobody was replying to it.
weirrd... I know I posted my arg message before that one. Anyway, some sprites are done by me, and some are done in conjunction with Buanwa art studios. Take the BOM sprite for instance. All I did on that was the cape, torso, and animations. (well, I guess that's most of it...) Buanwa took care of the shading. That actually is an older sprite as well. The newer sprites of the other members of the Lardbutt League are a bit different. http://www.tcentertainment.webs.com/ll.png
Far left is ArcoIrisHombre, then Rhinopsychi, Bom, Fattress, and what will be Craigles Ferginand. (these are all still tentative and don't even have animations.) Right now the some of the backdrops are in the process of redo-ination.
I mean, I played the game and it seems very unpolished in its current state. There are lots of bugs happening sporadically and randomly all at once, and that makes things difficult. I wouldn't be able to tell you what is going on for you to reproduce them if I tried. The controls are also very loose and there seems to be little in the way of collision detection.
I guess one thing I could tell you is that the game freezes as you hold down.
But.. I don't know. This isn't going to work. I don't think I can help much with this game. I've play tested games in the past and usually they are in a very polished state when being shared for bug testing. It's a lot easier to work with a game that is working as it is intended, save for a few bugs. But your game seems to have a lot of problems just due to not being finished yet to that point, which makes things kind of hard to work with.
I guess my advice would be to tighten up the controls and if you are using the default movements, use a custom one instead. In the current state of your game, you would be better suited to discuss any issues with your game on the Clickteam forum* who could do a lot better job in helping you with custom movements (and issues with them) and other coding related things like that rather than bug testers who can only tell you what they see on the outside.
*Or any other coding related forum.
Edit: Also, the enemies are very annoying. The bouncing ones especially. Not to mention that most of them are smaller than you. The running ones can move faster than you can and sometimes don't die (which is what I meant by collision detection).
I think you should be able to step on enemies by walking over them. That would make the small ones less of a pain to deal with.
Okay, but still... I think your main priority is the make the controls less loose. My guy was sliding all over the place which made it hard to kill anything.
Other than that, like I said before, the running enemies don't die sometimes. They have some wonky collision detection and can run much faster than you and even run through you which makes things a bit annoying. The fact that they are very small doesn't help either; I wish I could step on them.
Try to do something about the enemies in general. They act a bit too random, moving around all over the place faster than your character can even keep up with. The bouncing enemies for example bounce way over my guys head constantly, making it hard to do anything other than get hit over the head by them.
The game keeps freezing after a while. The old game freeze unless you hold a button bug. I'm not sure if you know of it. I don't know what to say about that. I used to get that all the time while using the Games Factory. I think it may because of having too many sounds play at the same thing and it not being able to handle it but I don't know. So I apologize for any later parts of the game I haven't commented on because of this. Maybe someone else can help with that.
But sure, take your time. At this point, there is a lot you can improve but it shouldn't be too hard to do. What you have so far is actually pretty good, I didn't mean to sound like I was saying otherwise. Just fix these issues and try to make the game a bit more polished and make the controls a lot more solid (think: if a player dies it should be their fault, not because the game acted funny or unfairly.) and things will be a-ok.
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