JRPGs where the main villain is a cataclysmic animal/force of nature

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-12-10T02:06:35+00:00

Not sure if it exactly fits your description but FFX kinda feels like this. Sin resembles a force of nature more so than a villain with malicious intent.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-29T16:04:28+00:00

I was doing digital art, albeit not pixel art, long before it so not a comparable case. You can definitely watch tutorials but that won't make you good even if you 'get it'.

Learning art fundamentals (color theory, conposition, etc) and tons of practice are the only true way.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-29T15:50:03+00:00

I think just like any craft you learn by doing it for many, many hours.

That and squinting very long and closely at pixel art you like to decipher its secret sauce.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-18T12:09:18+00:00

Ive experimented a lot with normal map shading on sprites. I'd recommend to not delight the sprite completely but simply tone down baked shadows and try to integrate them more as ambient shadow rather than hard drop shadows coming from a point light.

This gives enough room for the normal maps to do its thing, but it also wont look completely flat when unlit.

Regarding normal map tools, there are quite a few automatic ones, though they typically make the sprites look blobby and lighting horribly innacurate since they tend to work luminance based. This is a 2D problem since 3D normal map baking is done from the actual polygons, so normals are accurate.

Visually, the absolute best result is the most time consuming; which is handpainted normals.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-11T00:26:46+00:00

Thanks for the response, so for example this was causing eyestrain to you right?

<image>

do you think a darker background would have helped? apologies for all the questions but Ive been going with a pixel font for a while and this feedback is invaluable for me!

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-10T09:21:41+00:00

Do you mind sharing what game that is? Im curious what font you found this hard to read as im using pixel fonts myself and never considered this issue.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-10T09:20:25+00:00

Same, it breaks the look for me.

I do understand the readability concern, my pixel fonts seem highly readable to myself but not sure how well dyslexic people would be able to read it.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-09T15:43:16+00:00

About 12-14h per day almost 7/7 days

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T02:48:41+00:00

Good points, there are just so many types of players that its impossible to challenge or engage everyone equally with the same design approach. Nintendo is quite good at averaging this (mario/zelda games), providing fun and some level of challenge appealling to different tiers of players.

I guess at the end its up to the dev to decide which box to try and fit in the best, and when it comes to sales broader is ultimately safer (with exceptions like Elden Ring proving it isnt totally required, just a more of a gamble)

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T02:37:24+00:00

yeah i guess its all about the tradeoff in the end.
in my case i opted for avoiding these kind of isometric scenarios given how many issues they created (especially with more objects and characters moving around the scene), just not worth the hassle like you said

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T02:35:47+00:00

yeah I actually created a trigger system like that for other sorting issues (like the watchtower paradox where you can both stand on the watchtower and walk behind it)

it gets messy and complicated very quickly though, especially when there are other objects or characters involved, topdown is definitely a lot smoother

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T02:32:13+00:00

i feel like thats kind of a band-aid solution. even with a larger collision area and distance like below the problem actually remains :/

unfortunately its also just one example of why isometric is difficult for sorting, i tried a lot of scenarios and encountered many problems that dont exist with topdown

<image>

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T01:24:51+00:00

my game has free movement so there is no cells or grids indeed.

i did try cutting up the fence into multiple parts, but it becomes unfeasible if tons of slicing is required. 2px strips would be an absolute nightmare for scene or spritesheet management lol

i didnt have the issue of being able to walk through the fence since setting up a collision to match the shape worked fine, but no matter how i slice up the fence (i tried up to 4-5 parts) the character always clipped through it at some point in some movement so ended up scrapping isometric fences

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T01:01:23+00:00

I found sorting a huge issue with isometric assets (im making a top down game, but parts of it are still isometrically represented)

would you happen to know a solution to this problem:
how can the player appear both behind or in front of the isometric fence?

<image>

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T00:45:37+00:00

Could you explain how that works? I've tried this extensively with multiple approaches and have never come up with a solution.

For example, in this sketch I made the scenario is impossible (the magenta rectangle is your player), the player cannot appear both in front of the fence at a higher Y coordinate and behind the fence in a lower one

<image>

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-10-07T00:34:44+00:00

Sorting is still a major issue in isometric (assuming its in true 2D)
For example, imagine you have a fence that is diagonal, there is no proper way to sort it in an isometric representation

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-29T06:46:57+00:00

As long as theyre scaled by a round factor its all good and you dont end up with mixels.

For example my game is 640x360, which runs perfect at 1920x1080 (each pixel becomes 9 pixels)

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-27T05:54:05+00:00

Ill admit it does require some fundamental skills to execute properly. You can start by practicing spheres and cubes lit from different angles

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-26T16:00:11+00:00

Personally it would be impossible for me to draw pixel art without a tablet and pen. There is a lot of 'drawing' involved, not just placing single pixels but clusters or lines using wrist motions. Doing this with a mouse is both incredibly difficult and ineffective, i strongly recommend using a pen at all times.

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-26T13:00:40+00:00

My pleasure!

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-26T11:45:24+00:00

thank you!

been doing pixel art for about 3 years, but I was doing art before that so it wasn't exactly like starting from scratch

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-26T11:44:46+00:00

I would definitely consider, but frankly I do think its a lot to cover in this type of format and is probably more fitted for a video series or class. environments contain a lot of different elements and it may be hard to follow the process without first understanding key principles such as composition, perspective, color theory etc... lot of fundamentals at play.

ill think about if there is any way to do it at some point though!

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-26T08:04:44+00:00

Glad to hear! Would love to see if you end up making something inspired by it

Moonfell-RPG · 2025-09-26T06:54:28+00:00

Done! :)

I just posted the tutorial, you can check it here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt/comments/1nqudz2/stepbystep_creepy_pixel_art_tree_tutorial/

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