This week, Despain, ReynardFrost, and Kilim enthusiastically dive into the subject of side content. What kind of side content is right for a game, the pros and cons of the positioning of the extras in your game, and the integration of side content into the main game. Check it out.
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Whew. It’s been a while, but I’m here with the follow-up tutorial on Walk Cycles. Make sure to check out the previous tutorial on the subject before continuing.
In the previous tutorial, I went over what a walk cycle is. How they work, and how they are commonly implemented in video games. I discussed the pros and cons of walk cycles of various frames.
Today, we’re going to dive into the actual creation of such a walk cycle. We’ll begin with the front (south)-facing direction. Let’s start with a new sprite:
This guy.
I intentionally made this guy asymmetrical. His arms are different. This will force us to pay attention to each frame and prevent us from simply copying and flipping the sprite. Continue reading
One of the things that I’m proud of is that I’m relatively quick when it comes to pixel art. Sure, most of that come from experience. But a lot of it has to do with my process. It’s especially useful for working on large-scale projects, such as RPGs, which can very quickly become overwhelming. Doing all of the graphics for a large RPG (or even doing a lot of them, like all the characters or all the tiles but not both) can be daunting. Today I’m going to teach you some good habits and some bad habits that will help you manage your time in ways to maximize your pixel art output.
Note that this article isn’t going to be like my other pixel art tutorials. Instead of discussing the pixel process, we’re going to look at some tricks that I use to keep myself productive and not get intimidated by large-scale projects. Be aware that knowledge of pixel art is required before you can expect to start pumping out graphics at a quick rate, so follow through on my other tutorials before diving into pushing yourself for speed. Get the techniques down first. Still, if you have some experience already, hopefully you’ll find these things useful. Continue reading
I recently played Skyborn. It’s one of the more attractive commercial RPG Maker games out there, and there’s been a lot of talk about it, mostly good. You can find it on Steam.
Still, I wasn’t expecting much from Skyborn. I’m pretty critical of RPG Maker games, and despite the impressive steampunk aesthetic, I wasn’t sure whether the game itself would impress me.
It did and it didn’t. I played it all the way through, which is saying something. But for the most part, it left me thinking “eh, this was okay I guess.” Is it worth the price? You be the judge of that. Beyond these initial thoughts, this is not a review—my goal is to look at some of the design choices made in Skyborn and what we might learn from them when creating our own RPGs. Continue reading
Update: Nope.
Forums seem a bit outdated these days when everything is so connected. Leave comments on the page or we can chat on twitter or facebook or whatever.
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I’m trying a beta launch of a forum for this site.
Whaaat? Forums? Why?
We’ve been publishing high-quality content on this site for a while now. It comes with the territory that a lot of people ask me for advice on their pixel art and their game projects. Email isn’t the most efficient, especially since a lot of my advice is general and would be useful for a lot of people. It seems like a simple forum would be the perfect way to create a space for opening up that kind of discussion.
I also find that giving feedback is one of the best ways to improve your own skills. To critically analyze somebody else’s work is a fantastic way of getting better at the craft. This board isn’t just space for “hey despain what do you think of this thing that I made?” (although that’s fine, I guess)—but a place for people to share and critique each other’s work. This provides a place to do just that.
Check it out.
This week, Despain, ReynardFrost, Kilim and CaptainJet discuss the three player psychographics: Johnny, Timmy, and Spike. What are they? What does it mean? And how can you apply these concepts to your game design? Continue reading
