The VG Resource

Greetings, all.

I'm starting a Mega Man fangame (because no one has ever done that before) and I just created my first sprites for the game (which happen to be my first sprites ever). I'd really appreciate it if you guys could give me some feedback and suggestions.

Introductory animation:


Mugshot:


Here's artwork for reference.

As some of you might notice I borrowed the mugshot border from Mega Man 5. That's because I'm using Blyka's Mega Man engine for Game Maker, which uses Mega Man 5 as a base. I'll change that in the future.

Thanks in advance!

Greetings DuoDynamo, make yourself comfortable here.^^
Since you are a fresh graphic artist we will go somewhat easy on you. Our advice will be honest, but do not expect us to sugarcoat our feedback extra for you.
If our criticism is like a hard hit in your belly, please do not think bad of us. We will try to help you as good as we can, but it is required that you listen to us and learn from us, as well the mistakes we did and you will do. Now that we are done with greeting and the warning, now let us go down right to give you criticism.


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First of all please save your work it as a bmp or a png. Saving it as a jpeg or jpg, ruins your work. As it is now it wouldn't be able even to be used in a NES game, because it has now on each pixel a different colour, even if they look the same. The colours needs to be consistent and actually have the same values of which the colours are made of.

One sprite layer and tile can only have 3+1 colours. 3 colours from what you have chosen and 1 for the spritesheet it is on. In a NES game the background colour would be the internal ROM itself. However it is possible to use more then one sprite layer.

For presentation I will show you one of my works.

Now a big applause for the Ultra Master Zest.


Ultra Master Zest is a sprite consistent of two sprite layers, which means he uses 6+2 colours. Truth to be told, he is only using 5+2 colours, because both sprite layers share the same colour. A sprite layer can be of any size, but the greater the sprite layer is, so greater is the chance the sprites and the layer start to flicker.

What is flickering? Flickering is the inability of the NES to display more then 8 sprites in a line at the same time.
The size for a single sprite and its layers are 8x8 in pixels in lenght and height. When the size exceeds 64 pixels in lenght or height on the screen one the very same line, flickering will occur. During flickering the sprites will go invisible at random.

Back, when I didn't know about the colour limit, I took things a bit too soft. As a result I created sprites, which would consist of too many sprite layers, which in turn would make the sprite in practice useless.



This here is one of my older sprites, which I called Armor Man. As you can see he is only consistent of 5 colours, but because he needs so many sprite layers, he will cause flickering with Megaman on the same screen. Two lines have 7 sprites as you can see, by counting the colours on a single 8x8 sprite. If it has 3 colours or less, it only uses one layer. 4 till 6 colours and it uses two layers.
The NES might be able to handle the colour count, but not the sprite count.


Sometimes it is just better to utilise 3+1 on a big sprite layer, while your second palette consists only of one 8x8 sprite.

My Ultra Master Zest is made with NES limitations in mind, therefore he will work in a NES game, if is ever placed in a game.

Tiles are a different story, as they making up your background. They are also used as Pseudo sprites on black screens as you have seen them in various Megaman games as the so much called fortress bosses.

One thing what you can keep in mind is that 24+8 colours are possible to be displayed on the NES at one screen at a time.
4 palettes for the sprites which are 12+4 colours and 4 palettes for the tiles which are also 12+4 colours.

Once you have fixed your sprites, I will comment on them. If you have any questions, please ask.

Edit: Before I forget, use for NES graphics, these colours. These are the colours the NES can and will only be able to use.

The sprites seem a little jagged, the movement seems a little stiff especially around the legs(just my opinion) and as Thanatos-Zero said, there are certain limitations that the classic megaman style for the nes should have and jpg should be avoided.

@Thanatos-Zero
You may have gave some useful information, but the criticism seemed a little dragged out. All I mean to say is that it may work out a little better if it was a bit more condensed, but still contained the same amount of knowledge. Also, the warning about criticism could have been avoided.

@EpicEbilninja
I only wanted to give DuoDynamo a warm welcome, since he is new to TSR. The warning is justified, since he is a newbie. Some of my colleaguess had a bad time here, because they were not used to brutal honesty. It would be sad, if DuoDynamo would leave this place, because of some misunderstandings and mental wounds in his soul later. My warning just prepares him for future criticism.

I know where you're comming from, and it was nice of you to do that, but I just find in my own opinion that the warning is more for the welcome topics or if there is a complaint about the criticism given. To me, the brutal honesty is not a bad thing at all, but really the members of the community making an effort to help one another in terms of improvement and something that before joining the site should atleast be considered. Because they were asking for feedback and suggestions, I assumed that they already had the honesty of the site in mind.

you didn't do anything wrong in saying the warning, I was only saying it could possibly have be avoided

The sprite reads poorly to me. I can't tell what's going on in the face area. Looks nothing like the mugshot. If that's supposed to be an animation fix it because I can tell it's going to be too stiff, even for a Megaman game.

Also, Thanatos-Zero your comment was way too long and didn't get to a point before I lost interest.the examples were not clear and didn't give me any information as well.

Also he used Tinypic. Tinypic for some reason ends all image tags in jpeg. It's obvious these or gif/png because of the transparent background.

First of all, thanks to all who replied for your patience and assistance! I did not expect a sugarcoated feedback and nor do I wish for it, so bombs away! I want to make my sprites as good as they can be, and the only way I can do that is with honest feedback and constructive criticism. That said, I found Thanatos' lengthy explanation very informative and I think it is just what I need at the moment. As you guys said, I'm a newbie at spriting, so I'll need all the help I can get. It might have sounded repetitive for you guys who are more experienced, but for me this is some new and important info.

Now, I do have some doubts. Thanatos, I didn't quite understand how Ultra Master Zest's layers work with each other. More precisely, I didn't understand what the first layer, that black frame, is for. Also, if I understand correctly, not counting the background color (which I assume will be transparent in-game), each layer is limited to 3 colors, right?

I will remake Turbine Man's sprite and mugshot with those limitations and the feedback in mind. As soon as it looks good enough, I'll redo the animation as well. And btw, as Novally said, I used Tinypic, so that explains the jpeg. The original pic is a png.

(02-09-2013, 02:15 AM)DuoDynamo Wrote: [ -> ]Now, I do have some doubts. Thanatos, I didn't quite understand how Ultra Master Zest's layers work with each other. More precisely, I didn't understand what the first layer, that black frame, is for. Also, if I understand correctly, not counting the background color (which I assume will be transparent in-game), each layer is limited to 3 colors, right?

First of all, you can tell the sprite layers apart by the palettes they are using.
The first big layer is made of several 8x8 in pixel sized sprites, while the second layer is only conistent of one 8x8 sprite, shown with a different palette.
However both layers are counting towards the 8 sprites per line limit horizontally and vertically.
The black frame is just an example of how the sprite can look like, in total darkness. It was meant to instill a feeling of fear. It still uses the same palette.

As for your question you are correct.
Each frame can only have one palette, but this doesn't stop you to combine 4 layers or frames into one sprite. You just have to keep in mind that your combined sprite doesn't exceed the limit before flickering occurs, which are 8 sprites in a line.
In theory four 8x8 spritelayers with four different palettes on the very same place count as 32 pixels (4 sprites) in wide and length horizontally and vertically on the limit of 64 pixels (8 sprites). You can now add three of this combined sprites to form a square, which would have from all sides the maximum amount of sprites allowed on a line, before it starts to flicker with an additional normal 8x8 sprite on the line, where these combined sprites are.

Now, if we let out the additional palettes and focus ourselves how big we can make the sprite with one palette, we can construct a really big one out of 64 sprites, formed as a square for example. It would be really 64x64 pixels big in height and lenght.

Just for you, I have prepared an example, so you can see it for yourself.


Before I forget, you can apply to each sprite the same palette and more. All what limits you, is the palettes you assign to each sprite. As long you do not go over the 8 sprites in a line and use more then 12+4 colours for sprites, which appear on the screen at once, your graphics will be fine regarding the NES limitations.
There are some cases though, which make minor flickering acceptable like it occurs by the the fortress bosses in Megaman 2.

you know, this is one of the few decent Robot Master designs I have seen where both the sprites and the artwork actually succeed in resembling the style somewhat. I know this is more about the sprites but for the artwork but I would only suggest more squiggles in your shading (if you notice, almost any other RM's classic artwork does not have "straight" shading, it has curvy lines on the legs and other areas). other than that I think for the stage select icon you should try to fix the jaggy lines on the bottom rim of his turbine(?) by adding anti-aliasing. if you are not sure what that is you can find out about that and lots more in our own spriting dictionary: http://www.spriters-resource.com/communi...?tid=13868

Alright, I spruced up the mugshot a little bit. Added anti-alias, some more shading and adjusted it to the NES limits.



I'm still having some problems with the sprite itself though. I'm going to have to use two layers anyway, but I'm worried the second layer will end up too big. Like this:



I tried using other color schemes to minimize the size of the second layer, but they all ended up looking way too bland and unfinished. I want to get the color scheme nailed before I start refining the sprite.

I suggest you to use a white, with a tint of yellow in it. This way you do not need to resort to a bigger second layer. Instead you can use the second layer to give your sprite more colours for his face. One 8x8 sprite is enough for the second layer.

As for the mugshot in the stage select, it is a background object with sprites in it.
Background objects or rather background tiles are different comparred to the sprites. They never flicker and therefore can make better use of their own 4 palettes, which also consist of 3+1 colours per palette.
A background tile is always minimally 16x16 pixels big in height and lenght.
Unlike sprites, you cannot combine them to get out more colourful tiles, but you can use sprites in it to increase the colour count.

Normally you can only give a 16x16 in pixel sized background tile its own palette unless you have the MMC5 Mapper for your NES game available, which allows you to give a 8x8 tile from the 16x16 background tile its own palette. However all games after Megaman 2 use the MMC3 Mapper, which is similiar to the MMC5, but not as advanced as the latter. The MMC3 allows in any case for more space to be used which are 512 KB. Megaman 1 and 2 used the MMC1 Mapper which only allowed a maximum of 256KB for space to used. The MMC5 Mapper uses astonishing 1024KB, but was never offically used for a Megaman game.
Only a few Megaman hacks use the MMC5 Mapper, namely Megaman Odyssey and Rockman 4 Minus Infinity.

Back to the mugshot:
Reduce the colours and compare your mugshot to those of the Megaman games. You will see, that the mugshots rarely uses shading, except the used palettes allow it.

Also the outlines with the colours in them look ugly. I suggest you to keep the outlines black. AA is usually used to make curves less blocky to make them appear more rounded for example.
In any case, try to not exceed the 8 sprites limit on a line. There are still other mugshots with sprites in the Stage Select.

Bonus:
If you are interrested, use Tile Pro Layer on Megaman 3 and look for the mugshots there. This way you can see what is used as a sprite and what is a background object.

Edit: Could you post your work in the future with the original sized sprites and background tiles? It makes easier for us to do edits, if necessary.

just make the yellow the same color as his mouth. no need for them to be separate colors, as close as they are.

(02-10-2013, 09:12 AM)Mighty Jetters Wrote: [ -> ]just make the yellow the same color as his mouth. no need for them to be separate colors, as close as they are.

But the layer will still be too big right?

idk what you mean by layer but it would be rid of the extra color which should help with fitting inside limitations.

I took the liberty to edit your sprite.


It is not much, but so your sprite will work flawlessly.
I removed the highlight on his chin, as it would be inconsistent with the whole sprite.