The Screenshot Thread
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OrigamiRose
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OrigamiRose
Member
Strange. It looks great on my computer. Maybe I should bright it up a bit.
So I'm working on a Java remake of Advance Wars. Nothing spectacular. I certainly hope that all of these graphics are only placeholders until I find someone willing to do some pixeling for me. But even if that doesn't happen, it will still have the heart of Advance Wars and I hope that it will play similarly or better. Current features include movable cursor, map scrolling, skeleton of a unit select menu, and dynamically changing terrain info which is relatively incomplete as I focus on more pressing features. All of the code is up for grabs for anyone interested in assisting or in Java in general, as well as a runnable version of the game before I implemented all of the sidebar information.
Looks like you've got a waterfall which disappears behind a tree though.
Juan J. Sánchez
Sponsor
Oh yes, much better. The other looks dull in comparison. I'm not a fan of the blue screen tone, but it's okay.
MarioSuperStar
Member
That really looks way better than the other one.
In the first one, the tiles looked like they were slightly gray, not black.
It made it feel like a smoky place, or dull(like mentioned above) or something like that.
In the one above, it really looks like a night scene.
To make a night scene you don't need to darken or gray the scene that much,
you just need to darken it slightly and add some slight purple/blue tint.
Remember that the moon gives light, not like the way the sun gives, but it's
light after all.
In the first one, the tiles looked like they were slightly gray, not black.
It made it feel like a smoky place, or dull(like mentioned above) or something like that.
In the one above, it really looks like a night scene.
To make a night scene you don't need to darken or gray the scene that much,
you just need to darken it slightly and add some slight purple/blue tint.
Remember that the moon gives light, not like the way the sun gives, but it's
light after all.
MarioSuperStar
Member
Well, maybe it's because the water tile it's a rather too dark tile, and with the tint it makes it looks almost black.
It's not a bad thing, though.
It's not a bad thing, though.
rey meustrus
Sponsor
RTP water is an approximation, like everything else on screen.
That screen tone is much better. The real reason not to just darken the screen is that when it gets darker, our eyes can adapt...but when the screen gets darker, it's just darker compared to everything else around you. At night, the colors are turned more monotone because our eyes can only see colors when it's brighter; when it's dark enough, our eyes can't pick out the colors but can still pick out the general brightness level. You could make it better if you could apply a slight blur effect, but I don't think that's possible; the best I could think of is to do a script in VX that constantly takes a bitmap of the screen, blurs it, and puts it in a sprite in front of everything else, and that would probably be rather slow. True post-processing graphics effects would require lower level access to the graphics system.
Finally, the blue/purple tint works because we've been trained by movies to think it's an appropriate approximation. Movies are never actually filmed at night because the cameras need more light. Instead, they're filmed during the day and they have a filter applied during editing, much like how we make maps in RPG Maker. For as long as movies have had color, night scenes have always appeared slightly blue, so that's what we're used to on a screen. I can't say exactly whether we want night time to be blue otherwise, but I can definitely say that there's no way to get screens to show us what night time actually looks like unless it's a really dark screen at night.
If anyone's familiar with Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a show from over ten years ago that made fun of really bad movies), there was one movie (I think it was Werewolf) where it was really obvious that a night scene was filmed during the day because there were dramatic shadows visible and the sky was pretty bright. I think the sun might have even gotten in the shot at one point!
That screen tone is much better. The real reason not to just darken the screen is that when it gets darker, our eyes can adapt...but when the screen gets darker, it's just darker compared to everything else around you. At night, the colors are turned more monotone because our eyes can only see colors when it's brighter; when it's dark enough, our eyes can't pick out the colors but can still pick out the general brightness level. You could make it better if you could apply a slight blur effect, but I don't think that's possible; the best I could think of is to do a script in VX that constantly takes a bitmap of the screen, blurs it, and puts it in a sprite in front of everything else, and that would probably be rather slow. True post-processing graphics effects would require lower level access to the graphics system.
Finally, the blue/purple tint works because we've been trained by movies to think it's an appropriate approximation. Movies are never actually filmed at night because the cameras need more light. Instead, they're filmed during the day and they have a filter applied during editing, much like how we make maps in RPG Maker. For as long as movies have had color, night scenes have always appeared slightly blue, so that's what we're used to on a screen. I can't say exactly whether we want night time to be blue otherwise, but I can definitely say that there's no way to get screens to show us what night time actually looks like unless it's a really dark screen at night.
If anyone's familiar with Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a show from over ten years ago that made fun of really bad movies), there was one movie (I think it was Werewolf) where it was really obvious that a night scene was filmed during the day because there were dramatic shadows visible and the sky was pretty bright. I think the sun might have even gotten in the shot at one point!
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