What are you working on? (Game Making Thread)
- Thread starter Ellie
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StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
It might be better that way lols. We'll see if it gets better!
We don't use horses, but it's a secret. Muhahaha!
We don't use horses, but it's a secret. Muhahaha!
coyotecraft
Sponsor
I have some lighting suggesting for your snow tileset, Melanii.
1. If you want glittering snow you'll have to make the snow overall darker so the specs can be white. Might be neat to see as an animated autotile, slow flickering.
2. I think the wood is a little to orange, just bring down the saturation a little. Any vertical standing object like a wall should have some kind light gradient to it because it feels flat without it. The windows should probably be reflecting the snow, so lighter.
3. Making the snow darker and lowering the saturation kinda makes everything dreary. To make it brighter, I'd just use a simple light gradient as a fog, maybe a tiny rosy tint for warmth. You can make it really bright and wash out everything around the edge. And if it's snowing you'd remove it and having the darker snow will help snowflakes stand out.
1. If you want glittering snow you'll have to make the snow overall darker so the specs can be white. Might be neat to see as an animated autotile, slow flickering.
2. I think the wood is a little to orange, just bring down the saturation a little. Any vertical standing object like a wall should have some kind light gradient to it because it feels flat without it. The windows should probably be reflecting the snow, so lighter.
3. Making the snow darker and lowering the saturation kinda makes everything dreary. To make it brighter, I'd just use a simple light gradient as a fog, maybe a tiny rosy tint for warmth. You can make it really bright and wash out everything around the edge. And if it's snowing you'd remove it and having the darker snow will help snowflakes stand out.
StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
Thanks for your suggestions, Coyotecraft! I'll tell Star, and we'll see what to do about it!
coyotecraft
Sponsor
I spent most of last night fixing my battle animation script.
I added a new feature to replace an animation cell with a copy of the battleback. There's no easy way to zoom in on part of the screen, but I figure if I can copy battlers and the battleback onto animation cells, I could make it look like I'm zooming in.
It's still got a lot of kinks in it. The animation's "screen" position makes working with coordinates difficult. And I'm working blind in the animation preview anyways.
I added a new feature to replace an animation cell with a copy of the battleback. There's no easy way to zoom in on part of the screen, but I figure if I can copy battlers and the battleback onto animation cells, I could make it look like I'm zooming in.
It's still got a lot of kinks in it. The animation's "screen" position makes working with coordinates difficult. And I'm working blind in the animation preview anyways.
StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
So, I'm not a graphic designer at all, but I'd like to learn so I can pull more weight for my team. So I attempted to make a mock-up of the Ghost Shards menu for the Luna Engine.
The icons are all placeholders. Color schemes are not my strong suit at all.
All in all, I'm still learning!
*hides*
The icons are all placeholders. Color schemes are not my strong suit at all.
All in all, I'm still learning!
*hides*
rey meustrus
Sponsor
Hey, that looks pretty good! Assuming the icons are placeholders because they're all jaggy. And the color scheme isn't terrible; my only complaint would be the shade of orange in the LV droplet. There's room for frills in each box and with the borders (all rounded borders is kind of boring). And I would change the font; Abaddon is starting to be a bit overused, especially since I can tell what it is just by looking at it. But chin up! It's a great mock-up!
StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
Icon are placeholders.
What borders should I use?
Actually it's not Abaddon, but "Drakon". Haha. Guess you couldn't tell! :P
What borders should I use?
Actually it's not Abaddon, but "Drakon". Haha. Guess you couldn't tell! :P
rey meustrus
Sponsor
I'd take a look at the menus for other games, like Eternal Sonata:
There are just little details everywhere. It really makes the thing pop while not being too busy. Not that you have to do that much; just a bit of inspiration.
As for the font...I guess I can see a few of the glyphs look really neat, like the M and O. But the A, S, and E are all very distinctive of Abaddon. It was probably used as the base font and some modifications were made. It's really just fine for the main title, but a bit too decorative for the individual menu items, especially since each glyph is so distinctive. And then the "normal" font for all the white text is somewhat plain and boring.
There are just little details everywhere. It really makes the thing pop while not being too busy. Not that you have to do that much; just a bit of inspiration.
As for the font...I guess I can see a few of the glyphs look really neat, like the M and O. But the A, S, and E are all very distinctive of Abaddon. It was probably used as the base font and some modifications were made. It's really just fine for the main title, but a bit too decorative for the individual menu items, especially since each glyph is so distinctive. And then the "normal" font for all the white text is somewhat plain and boring.
StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
Star told me to use the same font in the header and commands, but I didn't really want to. XD
Funny enough, I have a whole folder dedicated to JRPG menus and UI, yet somehow, I still can't get this whole "graphic" design thing right.
I'm not sure what it is they do that I can't see. o.o
Funny enough, I have a whole folder dedicated to JRPG menus and UI, yet somehow, I still can't get this whole "graphic" design thing right.
I'm not sure what it is they do that I can't see. o.o
coyotecraft
Sponsor
Melanii":g3be6nuu said:
I think it's has more to do with typography. Hierarchy and arrangement of text. Using different fonts is just another level of text separation.
LEVEL
50
50
HP: ||||||||||||||
- EXP 00100/00500
StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
Should I work more on typography then? I wonder where I can learn more...
coyotecraft
Sponsor
It's mostly Visual Balance and making the IMPORTANT stuff prominent. Whats the hierarchy of information? When the player opens the menu what are they looking for?
Hit Points and LV. will probably be at the top of the list, so Big and Bold
Money, depending on it's role.
It's not a bad idea to use separate typefaces, but it needs to pair well. Tall + Stout. Curvy + Square. Thick + Thin. Big + Little. Straight + Slanted. Light + heavy. Get it?
I've always felt rpg maker's menus were poorly designed. Partly because it's boring blue windows but mostly it's the fact that the text is the same size, color, shape throughout. In Japanese version they use a mix of numbers and roman letters, and a natural contrast between Kana and denser Kanji.
レオンハート
委員長 MP:777
Leonhart
Commander MP:777
I just noticed how Japanese characters don't get thicker when you increase the font size. It's so much cleaner. Edit: It's just that particular size. Still, to get the English version to match the weight like that in rpg maker would require extra lines of code to change the font.
Hit Points and LV. will probably be at the top of the list, so Big and Bold
Money, depending on it's role.
It's not a bad idea to use separate typefaces, but it needs to pair well. Tall + Stout. Curvy + Square. Thick + Thin. Big + Little. Straight + Slanted. Light + heavy. Get it?
I've always felt rpg maker's menus were poorly designed. Partly because it's boring blue windows but mostly it's the fact that the text is the same size, color, shape throughout. In Japanese version they use a mix of numbers and roman letters, and a natural contrast between Kana and denser Kanji.
レオンハート
委員長 MP:777
Leonhart
Commander MP:777
I just noticed how Japanese characters don't get thicker when you increase the font size. It's so much cleaner. Edit: It's just that particular size. Still, to get the English version to match the weight like that in rpg maker would require extra lines of code to change the font.
coyotecraft
Sponsor
Practice. Mock-ups. Experimentation.
Right now I'm struggling to come up with a sensible file system API.
This is stuff that's potentially going to reach the end user, so it's actually pretty important to get it right.
What does everyone expect a file system to be able to do?
So far I have;
Coming up with a way to organise that so the next person who uses the code can deal with it is difficult. I'm looking at my past examples and they were pretty awful with how many different "Create X" they had. I'd like to make it extensible as well so the end user can attach their own content loaders.
Might be worth splitting it up further into distinctive file accessors and folder accessors...
This is stuff that's potentially going to reach the end user, so it's actually pretty important to get it right.
What does everyone expect a file system to be able to do?
So far I have;
- Create folders
- Change directory
- Open files - done via operating system, eg; open file.html should open a web browser
- Get info - reports if file/folder, size and if it's a known type gets extra info
- Compress - Compresses a file/folder into .zip
- Mount - .zip files can get "mounted" to a special directory and accessed
- Duplicate - Copies folder and all contents
- Create alias - Makes an internal symbolic link (usable by the API)
- Create file list - A file iterator
- Remove - Moves to recycle bin or similar if it exists or deletes entirely
- Find - Searches for a file or folder (can search within directories)
- Rename
- Move
Coming up with a way to organise that so the next person who uses the code can deal with it is difficult. I'm looking at my past examples and they were pretty awful with how many different "Create X" they had. I'd like to make it extensible as well so the end user can attach their own content loaders.
Might be worth splitting it up further into distinctive file accessors and folder accessors...
rey meustrus
Sponsor
Why reinvent the wheel? Copy something mature like POSIX that people will already be familiar with. And my additional suggestion is to provide some cross-platform way of getting at app-owned file space, typically the ~/Library/APPNAME folder or %APPDATA%/APPNAME in Windows. With some guarantee that the user will always be able to read/write in that space.
The cross-platform app-owned file space was one of the reasons for me looking into this. It all stemmed from some problems with Android.rey meustrus":al3pv2as said:
I'm looking at what POSIX had and I started on stuff around that, but I ended up backing down as I was starting to solve problems before even encountering them. My problem set is creating temporary files, opening files in the OS's default behaviour and accessing specific system folders.
MysticalNinja
Member
I plan to work on a couple of character packages/sets using my own character base, i also want to sell them but i've got to look into that sort of thing.