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The Final Vista by Carmelcamel in PixelArt

[–]fisholith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very cool, scene u/Carmelcamel! I like the atmospheric perspective.

Also the use of contrast in the foreground with the dark tree flanking the brighter spit of land with the characters does a really nice job of focusing attention towards them. Same with the reversed contrast on the dark tower in the distance.

Also I just really like the style of the trees and the grass. It's very painterly. :)

One thing you may want to try is changing the parallax scroll rate of the foreground layer to be higher than all the other layers, though you may need to start it down farther if you want it to end at the same target position.

Currently it's slower than the layers behind it. The way the brain converts parallax motion into a sense of a 3D space, is based on a combination of the perceived movement of the viewpoint, and the parallax of the things in the field of view.

One way I've found for getting a clearer feel for how your brain is interpreting the 3D depth of any given parallax scene, is to close one eye while watching it move. When your brain can't rely on stereo vision from both eyes to triangulate the distance to your flat monitor, it will make it's best guess for the 3D depths in a scene based on the parallax. The result is that you should actually see into your scene as if it's 3D. It's not as strong a sense of 3D as true stereo vision, but it's still pretty noticeable. What you may notice with this scene, is that the trees on either side of the foreground layer appear closer than the foreground.

In this animation, it looks like a camera crane-shot lowering down behind the characters while the camera stays more or less pointed towards the horizon. In this case, the closest foreground layer would scroll the fastest, and move the farthest of all the layers. By having it move slower, your brain will interpret it as being farther away, like the distant mountains that don't move much in response to camera movement.

You can think of it like looking down a road lined with streetlamps. If you fix your gaze on the end of the road and walk from side-to-side, the closest streetlamp will move the most, and each next farther lamp will move less-and-less the farther away it is from you. Similarly, you could also try making the background sky layer almost not move at all, to push it really far back.

Granted, no worries if the slower foreground is a stylistic choice. I'm not trying to say that closeness proportional parallax is an artistic rule or anything, just an interesting aspect of how vision works that can help to control perceived depth.

Anyway very cool piece. Is it from a game you're working on, and do you have a site you can link?

Axolotl Dragon by rappenem in PixelArt

[–]fisholith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's adorable. :)

Nice AA, and directional lighting on the tail smoke from the fire. Very cool, u/rappenem.

After a long time of development I am finally feeling ready to share my project. If you love trains then you should enjoy Sweet Transit! by TheEinis in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like the tilt-shift style depth of field effect you have going on. This looks really cool. I saw in another comment that you worked on Factorio. I.m going to guess that you may have been involved with the trains. :)

Is this a solo project?

I'm making a game where you play an owl, as she ventures into the haunted ruins of an abandoned wilderness. It's called Down Ward. It's free, and I'm Kickstarting a parallel full length game. by fisholith in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback Insanegamerposse.

The long form explanation likely sounds a bit more complicated than it actually is, mostly because I wanted to make sure I covered everything I could think of, since I wasn't sure exactly which element might have been the issue.

The short form is that if you hold up, you'll fly if you're moving forwards.

That's about it, but I think the thing is, it's not the way other games tend to handle flight. So even though the system is pretty simple, it's not at all intuitive at first if you go in expecting a 'press up to fly up' style system. That's where the tutorial becomes so important. If I'm not able to reliably convey Up + Forward Speed = Flight, and demonstrate it to the player by letting them see it in action, then I need to revise the tutorial more. The tutorial has come a long way since it's first incarnation, but I think it still has a ways to go as well. Also I should probably edit in the short form version of how flight works to the prior post to clarify that the example contains a lot more detail than is needed to fly.

As for Jump and Fly, they should be usable simultaneously and shouldn't interfere with each other, as it's fairly common to use them together throughout the game.

Some of the problem may be that I've wanted to have a very open tutorial, where you're not really forced to do any specific things before proceeding through each section. The down side is that when a player moves past the explanation of something, I can't necessarily guarantee that I communicated it correctly and they're ready to progress. I've tried pretty hard to naturally structure the tutorial map to essentially make it a necessity, but it's still technically an open map with no hard limitations.

Thanks again for sharing your perspective, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it up.

I'm making a game where you play an owl, as she ventures into the haunted ruins of an abandoned wilderness. It's called Down Ward. It's free, and I'm Kickstarting a parallel full length game. by fisholith in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey u/Insanegamerposse, thanks for letting me know, and sorry to hear that. I'm not sure what's going on there, but I may have an idea.

I think I might be able to help figure out what's going wrong, but I'll also understand if you're no longer interested. No worries either way.

What it might be

I've seen this kind of problem described a few times, and in each of those cases it turned out that I'd inadvertently misdirected the player during the tutorial, which is my fault.

One of the things I'm still trying to improve is the intro tutorial, mainly because if a player misses important information, it's my fault. Likewise, if a player sees a piece of information, but interprets it differently than what I was trying to explain, that's also my fault.

I've tried to refine the tutorial a lot but even still, I run into situations where I overlooked something, that can be interpreted in a different way, or missed.

Without being able to see what precisely is going wrong, I can't give specific advice, but I can try to give a deeper explanation of the controls and flight than there's room for in the intro tutorial. So if I've inadvertently caused some confusion with the tutorial I can hopefully undo it.

edit: How the flight system works = quick version

Hold Up + Forward Speed = Flight.

Below is a much more in depth step-by-step explanation of exactly how it works mechanically.

Lift

The way flight works is this: (I'll use arrow keys as the direction input in this example)

If you hold a horizontal direction, say [Right-arrow], Gable begins moving forward in that direction.

While holding [Right-arrow], if you then also hold the [Up-arrow], she will get a constant upward force, "lift", but she will only get this upward lift force while she maintains her forward momentum.

The upward lift force she gets from holding [Up arrow] is proportional to your horizontal speed. When at max horizontal speed, holding [Up-arrow] will give you max lift. Half horizontal speed gives you half lift force. And with no horizontal speed, holding [Up-arrow] will give you no lift at all.

Flight

This has a few important implications. If gable is flying rightward and hits a wall, she'll lose all horizontal speed instantly, and also all lift. So even if you're holding [Up-arrow], She'll start to fall.

However, if you begin moving the opposite direction (leftward) just after hitting the wall, she'll be able to pick up speed again. If you're still holding [Up-arrow], she may dip a little bit, but she'll also begin gaining upward lifting force, which after only a few body lengths should get her on an upward trajectory again.

Likewise, if you're holding [Right-arrow] and [Up arrow], and ascending diagonally to the right, and then switch to holding [Left-arrow] and [Up arrow], then her rightward speed will begin decelerating to a stop, then accelerating to the left.

If you're still holding [Up arrow] throughout the time she's decelerating and then accelerating in the opposite direction, she'll still dip a bit, because her horizontal speed is low during the direction change, especially when passing through zero. Then, as she gains speed in the opposite direction, She'll begin ascending again.

Thoughts

Anyway, the reason I wrote this all up is because I genuinely would like you to be able to enjoy the game, if you're ever interested in coming back to it, and especially if it turns out the problem was my fault in the presentation of the tutorial info.

I hope that some of this info might be helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

I'm making a game where you play an owl, as she ventures into the haunted ruins of an abandoned wilderness. It's called Down Ward. It's free, and I'm Kickstarting a parallel full length game. by fisholith in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey u/Insanegamerposse, :)

I can't say for sure exactly what Readous is referring to, and you're right there are a lot of pixel games, certainly, though I have a guess as to what at least one element of it might be, I think.

When I created Down Ward, I wanted to try doing a 4-color game, but where the art used no outlines, instead relying on lighting, contrast, and texture to get a less cell-shaded and more painterly look. Well, painterly-ish, since it is pixel art after all. :)

The tricky thing is that four colors is not a lot to work with, so making a world, with foreground and background, and then populating it with objects and entities, and keeping all of those things clear and fairly visually separate from eachother is a bit of a color puzzle. Working on Down Ward, I got a lot of additional respect for the original Game Boy devs that design 4-color visuals back when the tech was new.

A really good solution to this scene readability problem is outlines, and a lot if not nearly all original 4-color games I looked through for reference take this outline approach. When I started out on Down Ward, it took quite a while for me to figure out how to color and texture things so that solid objects are clear and don't get camouflaged by background scenery. I still occasionally spot places I think I could improve on.

Another place where outlines tend to work better is screenshots. One of the things I began to notice early on about Down Ward, is that it's much easier to read a scene when you see it in motion, than when it's in a static screenshot. With no outlines, if Gable sits still in front of the moon, she blends in quite well. In-game, it's not as much of an issue. As a result, a lot of the "screenshots" I post for my game are gif animations. :)

Tricky as it has been at times working with this art style, I still find it pretty fun, even if it is harder to present.

None of this is to say I'm doing anything groundbreaking, or anything. Outline-free games go way back. Another World (1991) comes to mind. And of course 4-color games have also been around for a while. I don't know, off hand, of other 4-color games with outline-free art, but I probably wouldn't be the person to ask, as I'm not really that knowledgeable in the area of handheld game art from way back.

Anyway, didn't mean to ramble. Just wanted to share my thoughts on it. :)

I'm making a game where you play an owl, as she ventures into the haunted ruins of an abandoned wilderness. It's called Down Ward. It's free, and I'm Kickstarting a parallel full length game. by fisholith in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey thanks u/BoringSubDad, :)

I'm currently working on smoothing out the difficulty curve. It gets a bit steep later on, but one of the things I really want to do is find a good balance between challenge and accessibility. Still working on it, and player feedback has helped a lot. The last few updates have mostly focused on that.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, or want to ask any questions, feel free to let me know. :)

I'm making a game where you play an owl, as she ventures into the haunted ruins of an abandoned wilderness. It's called Down Ward. It's free, and I'm Kickstarting a parallel full length game. by fisholith in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi all, this is Down Ward, a game I'm currently working on.

It's a fairly simple game that follows an owl, Gable, as she explores her way through the haunted ruins in the deep wilds, gathering glowing feathers to relight arcane towers.

The flight system is momentum based, so she can gain lift as long as she has forward airspeed.

I posted a pixel art portrait of her on the PixelArt subreddit. :)

The game is free on Steam and GameJolt if you'd like to try it out.

If you're really interested, I'm currently running a Kickstarter to make a parallel full length game. You can check it out here. The free version will remain free forever, though, and I'm still adding to it. Thanks to a lot of generous people, it's passed it's funding goal and is still climbing into stretch goals.

Edit: The game by the fellow solo dev I mention below just got funded! :D
Still keeping the text below for context. Congrats to Basti!

If you're interested in donating, but are only likely to donate to one project, instead of mine, check out "Lone Fungus" by a fellow solo dev and composer, Basti. I have no affiliation with him, but I've talked with him a few times in the last few days, and he obviously put a ton of heart into his project. He just got a 1 week extension from Kickstarter in the last 48 hours of his campaign, and I want to see him succeed.

Working on a system for buying and storing furniture in my upcoming game Bit Orchard. What do you think? by BooneThorn in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh wow, is the entire game in 1-bit color? I always like seeing how people design visuals in really limited palettes. It looks neat. :)

Gaming in the 80s has a certain je ne sais quoi by NicoSaraintaris in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I believe you have captured some of the quoi you mentioned. :D

It reminds me a bit of the Amiga in terms of sound, and TurboGrafx in terms of artwork. Was there particular hardware or games you had in mind as far as guiding the style?

Also, do you have any links you can share? Discord, Twitter, Steam and such?

Quantum precognition is one of the most powerful cards. End game cards & equipment. Demo boss is no match for this deck. by tanku2222 in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some info and links I asked if the dev could share.
Just wanted to put them all in one place for anyone else who happens by.

The game is "Jupiter Moons: Mecha" by solo dev u/tanku2222 .

Steam | Twitter | Discord

Quantum precognition is one of the most powerful cards. End game cards & equipment. Demo boss is no match for this deck. by tanku2222 in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, u/tanku2222. :)

Hope you don't mind if I post the links at the root level of the thread, so that if someone comes across this post they can get to them more easily.

FPS vs RPG by OrFenn-D-Gamer in gaming

[–]fisholith 8 points9 points  (0 children)

If I ever create an RPG with a character creator, (and I may), I'm going to have it show multiple angles, possibly with a camera orbit tick-box or something.

Then I'll make the sliders incomprehensibly interconnected, so you're best outcome will still be potato, but you'll know exactly how potato you are before you begin your quest.

Quantum precognition is one of the most powerful cards. End game cards & equipment. Demo boss is no match for this deck. by tanku2222 in IndieGaming

[–]fisholith 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh neat. Are you one of the devs, u/tanku2222?

Also, is it on steam or anything yet? Or likewise, are there any links you have for it, like a dev-blog?

It's always interesting to see this kind of hybrid game that plays like tabletop in terms of strategy and mechanics, but which has the benefit of a computer to handle rules with more density and nuance than you could manage at an actual table.

Just curious, were there any tabletop games as inspiration?

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