I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that railing on RM games for using art in the title screen is silly. Ideally it should be pixeled, but most RM games have drawn elements, e.g. portraits, battlers, battle backgrounds, panoramas, animations. Photos and 3D renders and stuff are still no-nos, though. I should update the first post to that effect.
I've also decided pure black backgrounds look a lot better when everything is pixeled, so I should update the first post with that too.
@Ynlraey:
#1: I find it odd that the start/load/exit text is the same size as the title. Your logo is also weird. You have these solid circles and then a wispy glyph thing in the middle that's a lot glowier than the circles. I actually do quite like the circles. My suggestion would be to lose the wispy thing, anchor the circles on the right more strongly to the rest of the logo, and pick a stronger font. Thick, straight lines and smooth curves to match the solid presence of the circles.
The picture looks like you just scaled down the luminosity, also; you should go for more brightness/contrast adjustments and play with the curves or something to make it dark and vibrant instead of wan and gray. Also, try adding some black to the top and bottom. Might make it pop out more.
#2: Title and new game/continue/exit look too similar--I would make the latter smaller and pick a different font, honestly--and the tribal glyph thing isn't working for me. The part where the text overlaps it looks messy, and it's painfully obvious it's just a vector or something with an outer glow. It doesn't have weight or substance. Does the tribal pattern actually relate to your game, by the way? If not, I would strongly suggest doing something else, because tribal patterns are really overused. For example, a lot of people get tribal tattoos just because they think they look cool without actually understanding the meaning.
The font is really overused, btw, and I feel like the title itself needs something more. Like, you probably
do want to have some kind of logo or grounding elements with it instead of just text. Text + a fancy texture on its own does not a nice title make; exercise a bit of design. By the way, I dislike fancy textures, because they're often used as substitutes for good design.
Those issues aside, both of these are pretty decent. You could make them stronger, but they don't look bad as they are.
@Lune de la Cruor: I was trying to showcase good design that doesn't rely on being flashy or arresting to achieve its purpose. Those title screens aren't breathtakingly beautiful or anything, but they're very consistent with their respective games. They get the job done, and they
fit. I probably should've stressed that more by linking screenshots so you can see how it all kind of ties together, because title screens shouldn't exist in isolation of their games. Like, the point I was trying to make wasn't that those were the absolute pinnacle of what a title screen should be, although I realize it sorta came off that way in retrospect. It was like, hey, here's something that works without being really elaborate.
At the 2nd I don't even know what the title is...that wierd symbol above the text caught my eye again, I am assuming it's not the title.
The title is
Yume Nikki, and the logo thing is presumably a maze, which relates to the game. You explore a little Japanese girl's twisted nightmares, which are often quite mazelike.
There probably are better examples out there, but those were the title screens I could find, and again, I wanted to emphasize that you can make a good title screen that isn't flashy. As far as pixel games needing a pixel title goes, that is
absolutely true. There's more wiggle-room with games that aren't pure pixel, though, and like I said at the beginning of this post, most RM games fall into that category.
@kentona: As I said in the first post, a title screen is the first thing someone playing your game sees, and it needs to make a good impression. That doesn't mean it needs to be flashy or take a lot of time; it just needs to look good. It's like anything else in game-making. You can take a casual, slapdash approach to it and churn something out, but you probably shouldn't if you want to impress.
I agree with mawk, although I probably would've put it a bit more gently. The big issue here is not that people lack spriting or Photoshop or font skills; the issue is that they lack
design skills. They lack a discerning eye to tell what looks good and what doesn't. It's a skill you have to learn like any other, but you can work on it by studying professional examples and trying to discern what they have in common.
@kentona again: The new version of that title screen is a
hell of a lot better than the old one. You can actually read the damn text now, the font is no longer silly and overly ornate, and the black bars are classy. That actually looks quite nice. Feld picked a nice piece of art, my quibbles about using art in RM titles aside.
Couple nitpicks if you feel like continuing with it, though. You did good by making his name darker than the title, but it should be smaller, too. Also, the title starting on the left and not quite going all the way over to the right is weird. Either it should be right-aligned to match the clock, centered because you center things in title screens, or go all the way across the top of the screen there. Hmmm. I'm actually not sure changing the alignment would be an improvement, because I'm not sure it wouldn't look too unbalanced for a title screen, and the current design leads the eye from the title down the hand of the clock and to your name. Which probably wasn't intentional but is interesting. If you justify it, anyway, space the letters, don't make the font bigger. Maybe a little, but not a lot. Or make it bigger and make the bars bigger to match and move the clock up so you still see the center. Dunno, just tossing out ideas.
@Feldschlact:
Isn't an even worse habit to constantly revise your work over and over again to accommodate someone else's objective standards of 'excuses' and 'needing to fix it'?
That's a terrible excuse for ignoring constructive criticism, and I'm a little insulted by the implication that listening to us is somehow enslaving yourself to our opinions. There is a
huge difference revising your work based on careful consideration of points people bring up and mindlessly trying make everyone else happy. It's a little off-putting when someone asks you for criticism and then ignores it, but obviously constructive criticism should always be taken with a grain of salt, and I'm certainly not one to force people to change their stuff when they like it fine as it is. To my mind, your title screen needs work, but if you're happy with it and don't care what other people think, that's all that really matters.
@mawk: ilu broseph :3333
