Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2018 1:18:37 GMT
I had an idea on discord from seeing Firedjinn's background art, that it would be nice to give like a 1st person view from time to time of important things in the story. If anyone has played the Pokemon Mystery Dungeons games you should get what I mean, but here are some examples (NDS game) ![](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/509017273860751372/510941374670045222/fogboundlake.jpg) ![](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/509017273860751372/510942080470745100/hqdefault.jpg)
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Post by firedjinn on Nov 11, 2018 5:39:18 GMT
oh, wow, yeah, that wild arms artstyle is SUPER golden sun. that might be good.
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Post by arcticsin on Nov 14, 2018 23:00:56 GMT
I use autodesk revit. It's an architectural design tool but can be used to make high quality 2d renders quickly. Here's one I just did now (it's at a static angle, resident evil style but I can do overhead as well). ![](//storage.proboards.com/7001003/thumbnailer/qdYNPpdwcppzKQCGvBmP.png)
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Post by arcticsin on Nov 14, 2018 23:35:14 GMT
![](//storage.proboards.com/7001003/thumbnailer/EFhNqrL0dUOqkMZwYrpI.png) and one that's more to the liking of Golden Sun's angle
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Post by finalbattel on Nov 17, 2018 21:38:11 GMT
Question: Would it be possible for certain assets (crates, houses, monsters, etc) to utilize the 3d model -> flattened 2d sprite, but then other assets (such as floor tiles, etc) simply use traditional straight-forward pixel art?
In the case of things like walls or floors, it genuinely would be easier in some cases to just create the pixel art by hand- especially given they're just a flat plane.
Oh shoot this also reminds me.
A unified palette range or something- consistent colours for highlights/shadows etc so things actually match. That's something to keep in mind going forward.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 17, 2018 21:45:39 GMT
I imagine it would depend on whether or not it fits in or feels out of place. :/
I do know that menu items do need to be standard sprites. I personally really like how Dark Dawn approaches menu icons, even though the layout's pretty bad.
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Post by arcticsin on Nov 17, 2018 22:41:01 GMT
One things I preferred from Dark Dawn over the GBA games is the viewing angle of the world - in the gba games, if you took the map and viewed it in 3d, you would see that the world is made at a 120° angle, where as the angle that the walls and the floors make in Dark Dawn are 90°.
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Post by WitchRolina on Dec 14, 2018 2:40:16 GMT
We need to double down on this discussion and get it figured out ASAP. No art that the artists create will be considered usable until we have an official art style that everyone is trying to emulate. First things first - Resolution. All graphics are going to need to keep this in mind. I believe we should take the assets from the GBA games as our base, and do everything in proportion to them. With that in mind, here's two possible screensizes. Let's take a look at the GBA resolution for our point of basis: ![](https://i.imgur.com/3niPTfp.png) 240x160 16x16, 32x32, 64x64 This is 1:1 to Golden Sun, both in sprites and screen real estate. Pot and Barrel are 16x16 in their allowed dimensions. The character sprite is up to 32x32 in size, while the bed is 64x64 The first option, which I prefer: ![](https://i.imgur.com/sl9ua2L.png) 640x360 32x32, 64x64, 128x128 This is the Switch's resolution (720p) cut in half both ways. It scales evenly with the switch (2x to reach 720p) and modern smartphones (4x to reach 1440p). It's a 2.4583x screen real estate, while doubling sprite sizes. Barrel and Pot are 32x32, characters are 64x64, and the bed is 128x128. Then there's the second option: ![](https://i.imgur.com/sgKwgey.png) 960x540 48x48, 96x96, 192x192 This is the resolution of most modern games/televisions (1080p), but cut in half. It scales evenly with modern HD televisions and monitors (2x to reach 1080p), as well as the upcoming UHD monitors/televisions (4x to reach 2160p/4K). It's a 3.6875x screen real estate, while tripling sprite sizes. Barrel and Pot are 48x48, characters are 96x96, and the bed is 192x192.
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Galda
Localizer
I just..... like Cats. That's it
Posts: 25
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Post by Galda on Dec 14, 2018 4:51:46 GMT
Question: What are the pros and cons of each option?
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Post by WitchRolina on Dec 14, 2018 13:25:13 GMT
The larger the sprites and art assets, the greater the amount of detail (read: WORK) that is going to have to be put into it. This makes Option 1 far easier to work with. Furthermore, Option 1 keeps sprite sizes in powers of 2, which from my understanding makes things easier in terms of data allocation (original GS sprites had to be in powers of 2 for their dimensions due to the GBA's hardware restrictions).
However, Option 2 is more future proof. It has clean scaling with modern monitors and televisions, and the next standard looks like it'll be 2160p (aka 4K), so by the time the game comes out the game may wind up looking nicer if its base resolution is this size due to even pixel up-scaling.
Programmers would have even better insights to this than I would. I'd say artists too, but if I'm being bluntly honest here, given that no talks have occurred in this matter yet despite having multiple meetings where we have said the programmers need this done ASAP so we can get generic assets made, I don't think the art team is terribly reliable on this matter yet. They don't seem to have been coming together as a team, with each person just doing their own thing... :c
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Post by firedjinn on Dec 14, 2018 19:57:16 GMT
I like the first option, I think.
Maybe if we want a bigger screen, we can just scale everything up (no antialiasing or anything, just everything 2x bigger and more blatantly pixel-y.)
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Post by WitchRolina on Dec 14, 2018 21:04:12 GMT
That's the idea. We don't need to go full HD if we're going for a retro look, right? Switch to modern aspect ratios, double sprite sizes to give a similar level of screen real estate. Then go for a nice aesthetic that can lend itself towards achieving a similar game feel to the GBA games.
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Post by sandman on Dec 14, 2018 23:31:46 GMT
Well, ideally we'll want this to look its best, right? So the obvious choice would be high res, unless we're trying to emulate the.chsrm of an old GBA game... Which appeals to a very niche audience.
I think the real question is how many of our artists feel comfortable in producing high level of quality consistently and in the style we choose.
The classic GBA look is easy to replicate if we're copying things and giving them a paint over. But if we try making our own assets in that style I feel like most of us will just end up making it too similar.
Personally I think it's easier to make high res images than trying to be minimalistic in a low res environment. There's more room to work with in a graphic and you don't worry as much when considering shades of colour. With a high res image, the shades can take up less space than in a low res image where a single block can take up a large portion and make proper shading frustrating.
Furthermore in high res images it's easier to critique and further refine as and when needed with precision.
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Post by sylvanelite on Dec 15, 2018 2:28:06 GMT
Here's my 2c for resolution based on a programmer's point of view.
We should aim for : 480x270
Which is half the resolution of Rolina's last image.
The first thing to note from a technical perspective, is that scaling a 2D sprite by a power of 2 is lossless. That is, if you scale a sprite by 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, etc you can do it with no loss in quality. Scaling by any other factor introduces loss. That means it makes sense to aim for a resolution that's some multiple of the most common screen size.
The most common screen size by far, is "1080p" which is 1080x1960. The GBA's resolution is not the same aspect ratio, so we shouldn't aim for a multiple of the GBA's screen size IMO. It's also worth noting while 720p is the same aspect ratio as 1080p, it's not an an even power of 2 to go from 720->1080 or visa versa, meaning there's some loss aiming for each resolution. It's much better to aim for 1080p and scale down to 720p, than it is to aim for 720p and scale up to 1080p. (scaling down by an odd factor looks better than scaling up by an odd factor)
Why 480x270? Because it cuts work down dramatically over larger sizes. When working with pixel art, each time the screen size goes up by a factor of 2, the workload to fill the screen goes up by a factor of 4. Having more pixels doesn't necessarily mean a better image.
The best example of 480x270, IMO, is Hyper Light Drifter. That game uses 480x270 internally, and scales up to 1080p. It looks gorgeous, while not feeling cramped by the internal resolution. So I think we should aim for that.
The most commonly used sprite resolutions are likewise powers of 2. I.e. 8x8, 16x16, 32x32. However, this IMO, shouldn't be a requirement for our project. In the past, this was a technical limitation of old hardware, you had to use those resolutions because of specific limitations in consoles (for example, no floating point math). Nowadays, there's no such limitations. Computers can handle images of any size. We could aim for a 32x32 character sprite, for example, but things larger than characters don't need to be powers of 2. That just needlessly constrains our artists for no advantage.
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Post by WitchRolina on Dec 15, 2018 2:55:28 GMT
24x24, 48x48, 96x96 at that size.
We constrain size to maintain the look and feel of Golden Sun. Please remember the actual goals of the project when posting things, as we're not "needlessly" constraining artists - we're forcing a look, style, and feel. That means sprites done in rough proportion to golden sun, with an attempt at having roughly similar vertical screen real estate to the game.
At minimum, I think we should have a 2x sprite resolution to GS. At maximum, I can see a 3x resolution - but I'd prefer 2x to be honest. And the closest we get to the target size and real estate is the 640x360 option, IMO.
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