Crabescent Dithering
Indie
Indie Games
Gallagher the FAIL.
Jan 27th
So! My SoRR sprite-smithing venture didn’t work out. Well, it did and it didn’t. Technically, I learnt new techniques and made some great sprites, but unfortunately that’s not an end of it. No-one in the community seemed to like my artwork and the general tone of the members was inappreciably snippy. I don’t know what I expected, after all it is the internet and—even worse—they are forum dwellers. It isn’t all bad though. Afterwards, the experience left me feeling somewhat sour but also made me think about Paraplu again.
Resultantly, I pretty much just sat down and drew 20 items right off the bat. Then I updated Grubby Metal Statue (to look more “goofy”, at the request of my cohort). Last time I attempted to make item-sprites for the game it was a major brick wall for me; finding an appropriate tonal angle was frustrating me intensely and ultimately it was likely what halted my last creative streak. I honestly think drawing Gallagher was what gave me the perspective to bring me to my feet again, studying the original early-90s SEGA art taught me some really useful things about animating sprites, namely:
- You can do it with even fewer colours than you think you need
- Fewer colours makes animation easier
- You can do it with fewer frames of animation than you think you need
- No-one will notice if you copy and paste parts during animation
- Motion blurring is easy and can save you from fully drawing tons of original frames
Animating a sprite that was about 5 times bigger than anything I’d ever attempted before seemed very daunting; but when I look back at some of the best sprite art I’ve ever seen I realised just how cheap they were about creating these things. It doesn’t have to be hard, you just have to be clever. Even that’s not specifically true… it’s not really about cutting corners, it’s about knowing which areas to concentrate your efforts on.
Something that I’m bad at, apparently.
-LEARNING POWER -
WE CAN ALL LEARNING.
LEARNING WILL GET THE MOUSE TO THE CHEESE PLATE.
"Yikes", or Three Game Recommendations
Jul 29th
That last post was pretty messy and incoherent. Sorry about that.
Here are some Indie games you should play. Today’s theme is "simplicity".
Weird Worlds: Strange Adventures in Infinite Space ($25) 
This is a casual, coffee-break game – no real arcade or VG experience needed here. Each game is a randomised series of events that occur as you explore a randomly generated galaxy. There are a finite number of things that can happen in this game, but the way that are combined in each different playthough makes it delightful. The whole game-experience is very "lo-fi", but almost impossible to not enjoy, in the space of 5 minutes alliances are formed, ancient artifacts are found, giant space battles are staged and space whales are sighted. Yes.
Knytt Stories (Free) 
This is a popular one, but I still know a lot of people who haven’t got around to it. Please, please do. It only takes about 2 hours end-to-end, but is a gorgeous example of minimalist game design. Nothing about the game is particularly attractive or clever, it’s just the purity of the thing. Knytt Stories simultaneously chills you out and keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Bridge Builder Game (Free) 
Elefunk – a PS3 download game that came out recently – is a much more fleshed out version of this game, but the added complexity I think detracts from the excellent simplicity its granddaddy offers. The premise is simple: There is a chasm which a train must cross. You build a bridge using a limited supply of steel, then set the train off. Then the train falls into the chasm. Then you make modifications to your deathtrap until the train eventually makes it over without. It’s hilarious fun for the whole family!
Umlautgames: Thrustburst
May 21st
Hey. There’s a fairly neat indie game that just came out called Thrustburst. Essentially this is a tiny coffee-break style game, which is something I don’t normally focus on but I think this one is definitely more than polished enough to warrant further attention.
The game is based on an old game called “Urthwurm”, which was a one-button game where you steered an ever-moving worm (well, line really) through an endless cave for as long as you could manage to not hit the walls. Thrustburst expands the formula slightly by adding a simple weapon and shield system, and including controls to slow and speed your ship. It’s very hard, but also quite a lot of fun – each time you play you’re likely only going to survive as long as a few minutes, and quite often less than that.
But the other interesting thing about it is that it was conceived and designed by a few of the brightest minds (such as Helm and ptoing) at the Pixelation forums, one of my most frequent hangouts on the ‘net. It’s the most heavily “academic” pixel-art forum on the net by a long stretch, and quite often skitters into the boundaries of being elitist, but nonetheless is probably the best and most interesting place to learn of and develop pixel art techniques. For this, the visual design is both interesting and thoughtful. The game is free and downloadable from their team website.
Tiling
Apr 4th
So, last night I really did a lot of work on Paraplu. Like many nights I spent working on Soft Landing the result was… nothing. No new graphics, just about 3 hours of meandering experimentation. Sometimes I feel really good after these sessions, sometimes I truly wish I at very least could come out of them with something to show.
It’s a tricky thing. I suppose I shouldn’t be hard on myself, since a lot of times that I do this I realise afterwards that I have come a long way. Last night, I’d never attempted to draw a stone tile pattern before, and a few hours later, I still couldn’t do it. Almost all of the work I have done for Soft Landing represents my first attempt at any number of things.
I’m hard on myself when it comes to my art, which is both good and bad. I could probably do with a little more self-praise, as I almost never feel happy with my work, and that causes me to only really work in short bursts. Like most creative people I hate it and I love it when someone points out a mistake or shortcoming in my work – I like seeing myself learn but I love seeing myself create something wonderful that other people and myself can agree on. I don’t show my art to many people, and even the people I do show it to only see what I carefully let filter through. The problem, I guess, being that I don’t think I’m very good, but I have no real way of knowing. I don’t suppose there really is, now I think about it.
In my game-making adventures I think Fet probably more than anyone else has a good understanding of my creative process because he’s probably the only person I’m comfortable with showing anything I’m working on. Some of the sketches and mock-ups I send him are obscenely incomplete but he has developed a keen understanding how my work evolves and what it will look like when it’s complete – and thus I’m easily able to discuss direction with him during the developmental process. In the old days of #urd I used to get much more varied feedback. I wonder – if I posted the more nitty-gritty development art in here, would people be interested? (If so, let me know!)
Ramble ramble ramble.
I guess what I’m saying is, it’s weird to spend hours working on something and only come out of it with something as intangible as knowledge. I don’t even know how well it will really serve me in the future – it’s just impossible to say how many more times I’ll have to attempt doing it to end up with the right 384 bytes of information that looks great in a video game.
This Weekend:
- GT Legends with Ross. I’m sure we’ll end up @ Cadwell Park in 1965 cars, as usual. It’s the best fun. Looking forward to this! MAN am I rusty, too.
- Paraplu. Feeling very inspired.
- Not going out. I’m so tired, I just want to sit around for a few days and get my hobby on.
- Cook something nice! It’s been a while since I tried cooking a new dish. (Suggestions?)
- Sit outside on the balcony and drink some wine, because – well.. wouldn’t you?
- Jules
Noitu Love 2 Demo
Apr 3rd
Just so you know, Noitu Love isn’t just a weird name – it’s evolution spelt backwards, although the game is self is weird, copiously so – and also incredibly awesome. Really awesome.
For anyone who loves the old-fashioned, blast-o-matic Treasure games such as Alien Soldier and Gunstar Heroes, Noitu Love 2 will feel like home. Seriously, yes, it is that cool. If you don’t know what I’m talking about essentially it’s a platformer. In reality though, it’s more about the hyper-fast gameplay, screen-filling bosses, ridiculously long combos, explosions pouring out of everything almost constantly, wads of ultra-dumb enemies and some beautiful, beautiful pixel art. Although the control setup (mouse and keyboard) isn’t exactly the chummiest match for the super high-speed action, the difficulty is sufficiently lax that (at least in the demo) it pretty quickly has you comfortable zipping around, blowing things up and getting your combo on like no-one‘s business.
The whole demo only takes somewhere in the order of 30 minutes to complete, but it’s a damn fine way to spend 30 minutes. Oh, and it’s for Windows only, so far.
http://www.konjak.org/nl2demo.zip – Download it.
Indie Game: Vacant Ark
Jun 18th
Vacant Ark / Windows / Japanese / Freeware (Download)
I keep a pretty damn close eye on the indie\doujin shmup scene, and I can tell already it’s going to be a fine year for them as far as years go. The genre itself has definitely been kicking for quite a while, but perhaps due to the recent populatiry of portable systems and games like Geometry Wars (which itself has inspired quite a few indie clones) interest and exposure is somewhat higher. In my eyes one of the best shmups made this year is Vacant Ark. I think the first thing that draws me to this, perhaps after doing some sprite art of my own, is the gorgeous artwork. The sprites in this game really are of incredibly high quality, and if you didn’t know otherwise you’d think that they’d been taken from an arcade game from the late 90s. As the game has an aquatic theme, the palette is very soothing and I immediately noticed a lot of the little effects such as bubbles and rippling scenery that give the game a definite atmosphere that many doujin games like this lack. Additionally, the game is played fullscreen in 320×240, giving it an retro, arcade-esque chunkiness that I adore.
The premise for the game doesn’t stray far from what we have all become accustomed to with these games – shoot everything that moves. Hell, if it doesn’t move you’d better shoot it anyway, it’s probably just trying to trick you. What sets Vacant Ark‘s gameplay apart is the rather unique system for shooting. You can at any time only ‘store’ 8 shots. After you’ve let them all loose you can use your R-Type style pod to defend yourself, but other than that you really don’t have much in the way of offensive capability. If, however, your pod touches an enemy, or you destroy and enemy, they release a bevy of blue crystals that, once collected, replenish your shot supply. It’s a nice change of pace from the traditional sleep-on-the-fire-button approach, adding an interesting degree of tension to the gameplay, and especially the very imaginative and varied boss-fights. The game also has four difficulty levels, and to reach the last levels of the game you need to destroy every boss within the allocated time limit. This is a task that requires a fair bit of practice, even on the easy difficulty setting (“shallow”.. cute huh?).
If you are interested in indie games at all, I strongly reccommend you try this out purely to witness the amazing high quality of this little gem. It can be downloaded here, or if that fails, through a quick Google search.
[8/10]
Orbox B
Jun 15th
I’ve been playing this game called Orbox B, it’s a fun little logic-based puzzle game. The objective for each level is a simple task like removing all blocks from the playfield, or more commonly finding the exit. Your avatar (a nondescript yet oddly charismatic.. er… box), can move in any perpendicular direction and stops once it hits a wall. It makes more sense in practice, and it is fun. 30 levels all up. Free. Play it if you need something to do, it’s a pretty fun way to pass some time.
It’s been a pretty so-so day. Nothing really noteworthy happened at work. On the upside, tomorrow looks like it’ll mainly be pretty easy to handle, since I’ll be in training all day for the administration side of the new financial business software.
Did a liiiittle bit of work on Softlanding this evening. I’m redesigning the current hero-ship, Crystal Bell.
