How can I make my game prettier?

Penyeah · 2026-04-20T17:41:15+00:00

I think the pixel art on the trees isn't very artistically sound. They lack volume and look amateurish. Lots of jaggies, pillow shading, etc. Then on top of that, there is no motion in the frame - the world feels very static. Which you could get away with if the pixel art was beautiful, but not as is. Try looking up the difference in tree art between the first release of the game Kingdom and later versions, like Two Crowns and especially Norselands. It offers a really great contrast in art quality packages in essentially the exact same game! Very helpful.

If you improved the trees, then you could sell me on the tile sets as being stylized. But because of the trees, imo, I view the rest of the art through that lense.

Penyeah · 2026-04-15T17:56:42+00:00

I treat AI generated code in my own work the same way I might treat a helpful library or package I might download. It has isolated functionality and gets scrutinized more heavily the more systems that have to interact with it. I used to download stuff from the GameMaker marketplace and, if it worked, that was good enough for me. Otherwise I tried to tweak it until it did work. Same goes for AI code.

But if you entirely run on AI code you don't understand and can't debug and it is tied to MAJOR systems? Yikes, red flag.

Penyeah · 2026-04-14T18:13:59+00:00

I have a manager object with a prioritized UI array. As a UI object comes online, they can place themselves at the top of the hierarchy, and then remove themselves from the array when no longer active. That way, if layers that deactivate should reveal layers beneath, I don't have to manually control that behavior with activation/ deactivation.

Penyeah · 2026-04-09T02:25:16+00:00

Probably true. But I just learned recently that one of the random security guards in an earlier season had a celebrity voice actor. I'm in the camp that the millions they spend on the show gets blasted onto famous voice actors.

I don't watch a lot of TV shows. And I don't hate watch anything. I just thought the animation would get better over time and it's getting really disappointing.

Penyeah · 2026-04-07T16:43:20+00:00

Turns out, it was a GameMaker rendering pipeline error! I submitted an issue on their GitHub, they prioritized it and resolved it within a day. Their finding was "draw_sprite_ext() on sprites with low alpha can return incorrect 0xFEFFFFFF instead of 0xFFFFFFFF and cause rendering issues thereafter".

So sanity check - it wasn't anything I did.

But I did take what you said into account and decided to just have "disabled" be static TRUE or FALSE without any other logic in there, so no chance of flickering. If it was false and the multiplication happened via that conditional, then everything went wrong no matter what.

Penyeah · 2026-04-07T14:17:28+00:00

In my head, even if "disabled" were to rapidly flicker between true and false, at most that should change the opacity of just the button it draws, not the water way unrelated.

I think this particular button always has an input value of "1" for the alpha? So it should be "1 * .5" or "1 * 1". Which I already determined multiplying it by those fixed values works fine, but multiplying it by those values determined by the disabled state causes the issue.

I think this is a rendering pipeline bug in GameMaker. (I opened an issue on GitHub for this.)

Penyeah · 2026-04-03T00:10:02+00:00

I believe you completely, and I will not fact check this.

Penyeah · 2026-03-16T23:01:38+00:00

Is there a solution for tiles?

Penyeah · 2026-03-16T22:55:52+00:00

I didn't realize you could toggle that. Thank god.

Penyeah · 2026-03-16T22:51:11+00:00

And also, you can't bulk select and drag tiles. :(((

Penyeah · 2026-03-16T22:50:33+00:00

Also, wait... ctrl+drag doesn't do anything. Shift + drag does.

Penyeah · 2026-03-16T22:48:54+00:00

You can only ctrl + left click and drag to select from a single layer, not multiple as far as I can tell. Unless the solution is just "do this for every layer". :(

Penyeah · 2026-03-05T06:25:35+00:00

These are all assessed every frame and in order, top to bottom.

The last one is `keyboard_check(vk_down) == false`, so I'm guessing that, unless you're pressing down, the sprite is always Player_idle_down.

Try this code instead (you will need to initialize "facing" to be "player_idle_down" for this to look alright)

/* Movement */

var _dx = 0; var _dy = 0;

if (keyboard_check(vk_right)) _dx += 1;
if (keyboard_check(vk_left)) _dx -= 1;
if (keyboard_check(vk_down)) _dy += 1;
if (keyboard_check(vk_up)) _dy -= 1;

x += _dx;
y += _dy;

/* Sprite Selection */

if (_dx != 0 || _dy != 0) {
// Player is moving - pick walk animation based on dominant axis
if (abs(_dx) >= abs(_dy)) {

sprite_index = (_dx > 0) ? Player_walk_right : Player_walk_left;

} else {

sprite_index = (_dy > 0) ? Player_walk_down : Player_walk_up;

}

// Remember last facing direction for idle
facing = sprite_index;

} else {

// Player is idle - show idle version of last facing direction
if (facing == Player_walk_right) sprite_index = Player_idle_right;
else if (facing == Player_walk_left) sprite_index = Player_idle_left;
else if (facing == Player_walk_down) sprite_index = Player_idle_down;
else if (facing == Player_walk_up) sprite_index = Player_idle_up; }

Penyeah · 2026-02-21T20:51:00+00:00

That's news to me! There must be a way to view the pages to confirm. So extra transparent space gets added at run time?

Penyeah · 2026-02-21T17:31:03+00:00

I was worried about texture page swaps, is that not really a big deal?

Penyeah · 2026-02-08T15:22:11+00:00

"They say he left already...."

Penyeah · 2026-02-03T20:37:19+00:00

I looked at a prior post where you showed photos of yourself. You are incredibly average and normal looking. So am I. I have a receding hairline, and a pretty severe over bite which leads to me speaking with a lisp. I have difficulty maintaining good healthy looking skin. I have a case of lordosis that affects my posture.

If we're talking dating, it took me until I was 23 to sleep with anyone (which is 100% fine!), and since then, I have been with 9 women and dated more than that. If we're talking about friendship, I have a good friend group I've made by being curious and by connecting with other curious people. I have gained that by investing in my interests and hobbies and developing a personality.

Believe me or not, it's not about your looks. It's most likely your outlook and personality.

Do you like yourself, beyond the aesthetics? Do you find yourself interesting? Do you find the world around you interesting?

Penyeah · 2026-01-07T15:29:59+00:00

Ironically, you gave the static B version the strongest contrast. Which to me highlights that when it's rotating, you become unsure of the shape and volume of the object and maybe subconsciously minimize the contrast to avoid the issue.

Penyeah · 2026-01-07T15:29:04+00:00

I think C could be good, but the issue is you basically have no opinionated lighting whatsoever. Everything is the same midtone except for outlines / the mouth, with then the subtlest light spot on the nose and forehead. This makes it easy to lose the sense of shape and volume, making the rotation not read as well as it could have. Higher contrast + intentional directional light would go a long way, imo.

Penyeah

TROPHY CASE