3D pixel style coop action RPG (IRON FIST?)

[Julius]

The idea is to have a typical RPG/medival like town and outdoor environment, and different (user contributed) levels/campaigns to go to (through what is currently called a "travel agency" in ya3dag ). Those levels would be probably often dungeon type of levels, but not necessarily have to be so.
Cool would be also a type of meta-game where the town is under constant (night-time?) attack by undead (or goblins etc) and you need to help defending it with the townfolks (NPCs) from time to time, but I think that requires some code changes.

So I think the items Danimal is doing fit great, and some of them should do just fine in an dungeon environment also. We need to see if that sun-watch can actually be made to work with the dynamic day and night cycle build into ya3dag btw

What we do need to agree on is a character style though. I am honestly not too happy with the jRPG type of placeholder I am currently using, but it is an option.
The super-deformed art-style as shown in the examples of the first post would be of course nice, but I personally can't draw pixel-art well enough to create something like that (especially not with all the directions and animation frames required).
Another alternative would be using pre-rendered sprites, which is the least effort, but is very difficult to make look right in an pixel-style.
Lately I have been thinking that a character style a bit like those found in Sword & Sworcery (http://www.swordandsworcery.com/) also see here for a way to pre-render them ( EDIT: http://petemcnally.wordpress.com/2013/1 ... trix-plus/ was wrong link ) might be the easiest to do, as the renders can be manually touched up relative easily to improve the pixel look.

Edit: Maybe something like this: http://davidbdevelopment.wordpress.com/ ?

Not quite sure... and IMHO if there is a great pixel artist stepping up with his or her own style, that will be probably the one we should take.

Ah, and btw: here is a small vid on how a normal-mapped sprite in an 3D environment looks like: http://devbertil.blogspot.com/2010/12/n ... phics.html which is what I think would be great to do.

[Julius]

@Danimal: How about converting some of these to a pixel style?
http://opengameart.org/content/medieval-props-textured

[Danimal]

It would be easier to replicate, but i cant see many models worthy of being used, maybe the well and the sign post, but, do we really need tombstones? or collapsed pillars?

[Julius]

tombstones are cool for a haunted graveyard, and I also like the look of the fences. But no need to work on something you don't like.

[Julius]

I quite like this style, and it should be relatively easy to do:

Sword & Sworcery EP FanArt (totally copyrighted and randomly found on the net)

What do you guys think, yay or bah?

[Danimal]

i wouldnt know where to to start making those , the style is nice , but you would need someone else to replicate it

[Julius]

Since they have so little pixel, they are actually quite easy to do.

Here is something I just drew from scratch:

ninja test

ninja_test.png (1.24 KiB) Viewed 21436 times

The pose is a blatant rip (obviously), but I tried to recreate surt's Ninja in this style.

Now getting this to animate nicely will be a challange (I suck as 2D drawing), but I guess it is do-able. And how it will look as a sprite in 3d... well needs to be tested.

I am not sure why this "game" starts to become more an more "low-fi", and I am not even sure if we should go this way, but I would like to hear from you if that style is to your liking or not.

[andrewj]

Here is something I just drew from scratch:

The shape (pixel outline) of everything below the head is exactly the same.

So not actually "from scratch" -- a recolor of an existing sprite.

[Julius]

I am not denying that it is an apparent pixel perfect copy, but I did in fact have to redraw every single pixel from scratch as the source image is not a suitable sprite (which you can check yourself if you want).
Anyways, it was just a quick example of what it could look like. Just the style is obviously not copyrightable and the real in-game sprites would need to have their own poses etc.

But what do you think of it in general of the look/style?

It is really growing on me since it is so easy to replicate and create multiple direction for. It should also go quite well with sprite normal-maps as it is pretty close to a "diffuse" texture by itself. Last but not least, I am not really aware of a game with a similar character look.

[Danimal]

looks nice, but... how is combat going to be handled? i dont think i cant hit a character made like that, like shooting at a single spaghetti.
Anyways, its an interesting style, and all characters could be used in billboard style (they always look at you, rotating to show always the same)

[Julius]

I don't quite get your spaghetti comment, but yes the characters are planned to be a mix with of what you call "billboard", e.g. it is a sprite that always faces you, but depending on the viewing angle it shows you a different picture/view (like in Doom1/Duke3D but more advanced). Robert already implemented that for me, and I thought I made that clear previously

[Julius]

These are kind of fun to do

Again pose a rip, but this time I tried to recreate surt's rumbler:

rumbler_test.png (1.3 KiB) Viewed 21343 times

I guess mine looks a bit older due to the pose or head shape, not quite sure.

Edit: I wouldn't mind if others would try it too So far these are more or less concept drawings, but I guess it would be relatively easy to make them into in-game sprites.

[Evropi]

Is that a black man with a very hairy chest and... white hands and legs? I don't even...

[Julius]

Look at the concept earlier in this thread.
And large parts of the hands on many dark-skinned persons are quite bright, especially the palms.
But I have to admit that large areas of bare skin don't work well with this style, as you can't overlap to areas that have more or less the same color, as it would have been the case if I made the hands darker.

[Danimal]

Since everything is so quiet, here is an update on modelling status:

[Julius]

crates! every game needs crates

As for the coins and food-items... I guess those could actually be made better from sprites similar to the characters.

[Julius]

Some further tests... not sure:

further testing

furthertexting.png (1.75 KiB) Viewed 21236 times

[Julius]

Hmm... as there is a distinct lack of responses I assume the style isn't very well liked by the majority?

I have to say that I am somewhat split... obviously it is about the best (crappy) pixel-art I can do, but I also realize that it is driving the game into a direction which might not really be what we want. Any thoughts?

Anyways: I tried to make a bit of a turn table:

turn_ninja.png (2.31 KiB) Viewed 21204 times

But it is really quite hard to make certain shapes, as the style lacks shadows, and even if those might be added later by the normal-map, it is kind of difficult to work on these.
Maybe I should already add another layer with some shadow details from which one could derive the height-map later?

Honestly... I am not sure what I am doing here 2D pixel-art isn't my strongest skill.

[Danimal]

i dont really like it, and cant see where it will take the whole game style...

[Julius]

Ok, thanks for the honest opinion! I am open to other suggestions

Robert suggested some sort of >made out of flat segments that are not connected to each other< style, which I don't like since it doesn't solve the issue of making highly detailed animations (making 8 frame sprite animations is easier as the brain "fills" in the rest) and also because it looks somewhat like Minecraft.

Otherwise I already outlined some other ideas above.

Ahh... the perils of open-development

[Skorpio]

I think that pixel style is cool, but I'm not sure if it'll fit to the 3D props and environment. I especially don't like that 2D-3D mix in movies. Maybe it would be better to use some low res 3D models or make a complete 2D game.

[charlie]

I don't hugely like it either Julius but have kept quiet as 1) haven't got a better suggestion and 2) don't want to prejudge something without seeing it in better context. A few test images are not really appropriate for seeing whether it works as a concept or not.

[Skorpio]

It would be nice, if we could see/play a short demo.

[Julius]

Yes, but that would require me to do at least one full character with a basic runcycle based on this new style, which I am not sure is worth the effort.

I have another idea for a style that requires a bit more modeling & animating, but not overly so: Basically have a core body build out of a 3D mesh with a pixelish texture, but make the face, lower arms and lower legs out of animated 2D sprites. Will take a bit to get look right, and I need to figure out a strange .md3 exporter bug I am experiencing, but then it could be a quite unique look.

[Buch]

I must agree with Danimal Charlie and Skorpio - that style wouldn't fit very well, to me. You should likely go with something closer to the style used for props, like a lowpoly human-like model textured in low-res pixel art, or similar (which if I got it correctly is what you said in your last post).

And +1 to the playable demo request