Posts Tagged ‘ pixel art

Art Pass!

As things have been winding up on The Director’s Cut, I’ve been able to do a certain amount of work on New Game+ finally!  Over the last 9 months while I’ve been working on the PlayStation ports, I’ve literally only had the time and energy to work on New Game+’s soundtrack (which has a lot of tunes now) but none for the game itself.

But I’ve managed to do some work on it, including an art pass, quite recently as things have been quieter while Curve wrap up the ports.  I converted all the art to a new, simpler 32 colour palette (to match the Amiga, the game machine which I grew up on).  This means the look is more coherent, if less ‘detailed’, and another good thing is that it makes the rest of the art a lot quicker to do.  There is a lot of art to do for this game, so that’s a good thing.

Here’s a comparison between the NEW EXTERIOR:

… and an OLD EXTERIOR:

(I was trying to get closer to the original mockup:)

Here’s a NEW INTERIOR:

… and an OLD INTERIOR:

So, although it’s a subtle change, it’s hopefully going to make things look better, while being quicker to produce!  Let me know what you think of the new look!

(Also, this is a thing I bought recently…)

There is more news on the horizon about NG+…   I can’t announce it quite yet, but something pretty wonderful is about to happen!

Back to work!

Besides making Rockabilly Head, I’ve allowed myself to have a month or two’s break, while I went through the stressful process of getting my fiancee over from her native Japan with official visas and whatnot, and found a nice new house for the two of us.  It’s been good for me though, as I’ve had a lot of time to think about where I’m going with iLoveWar [far less likely to be the real title now, as the story’s taken shape.]

I’ve finally decided on the balance of gameplay I want to achieve.  When I look at similar-genred games, such as the Advance Wars and Fire Emblem series’ I see them veering either one way or the other – the AW-like chess-style pieces (closer to RTS, really) which are completely chosen by the player, or the FE-like story-based characters, which makes for a far more puzzle-based experience.  FF Tactics seems to go for this too.

I want to somehow combine a strong story with the flexibility and strong ‘building strategy’ of a unit-based game.  I think I’ve finally got there!  Basically, all units will be of one of six classes (two variants of three types), some will be ‘Character’ types and some will be ‘Drone’ (or AW-style) types which are like characters with a low level-cap who all look the same (I have a good way to explain this in the story, too which is important to me.)

Anyway, I’ve got lots of solid design done which I’m keeping in a proper document, with a semi-formal schedule and everything, now that I have the talented miss Selina Dean (from UK manga collective, Sweatdrop Studios) to help me with portraits and background art.

Here’s a mockup with a portrait based on one of her sketches to whet your appetite.  It’s showing our lead character, Mono: