Zombie Maximus - Zombie TDS

[Bombshell93]

Hey its been a while, I'm working on a project thats quite far into development but my sprites were rushed and have suffered for it.
I'd like to begin cleaning up the sprites before I present the game to steams Greenlight, with you help hopefully I can get them looking their best.
EDIT: I have chosen to go for another style, adding another dimension to the sprites allows the shading to show form better and the style will allow me to stay truer to the characters cartoony designs.
here is the current progress
just a few concept doodles I'm still working on the rest of the legimations
after I've finished the games level editor I'll be doing the 204 frames of leg animation. (was 240 but I realised the side and diagonal strafes on the up and down sprites can also be mirrored to cut down frame count)


Here are the current sprites, the general idea of what everything is, is easy to grasp but they just don't look good in use,
http://i.imgur.com/BJNv6.png
here is a screenshot of them in use
http://i.imgur.com/R2E0Q.png

EDIT: so this isn't directly related to this project but I did think I should give top-down sprites another go with a better understanding of colour pallets, here is what I came up with.


I'd like to start with the player and zombie sprites as their main parts of the game.
the sprites do rotate and are sampled via point sampling (not having any sticky icky interpolation blurring up my sprites)

I'll get to work and update soon, if anyone has anything worth mentioning about the sprites which I should take into account, I'll be watching the thread while spriting.

any and all comments and crits are welcomed and encouraged,
thanks in advanced,
Bombshell

[Gors]

I don't know, I think that vectors be a better graphical choice for this type of game imo, but I'll digress.

to be honest, the fact that the head is huge and covers the whole body and legs kinda kills the readability, it makes them look like balls with arms running around the screen. I'd use a more realistic proportion for this, both for better representation (shoulders, legs) and immersion (a less cartoony setting will make it more scary, if that's what you're going for). But the main problem in this is the bland backgrounds. the grass doesn't look like grass, but rather a green sky with stars of some sort. Use a lot of vegetation, such as trees, bushes, and other props such as walls and dirt paths to decorate the background and make it more preasant to see.

Of course, I'm basing those C+C off the screen you gave me, so you might have more things in other parts of the game, but if not, please consider it.

[Bombshell93]

I thought the same of the background, its surprisingly difficult to make a top down view of grass look good. I eventually settled for the crappy pattern you see on the screenshot.
As for proportions I think your right, the massive heads was okay for a lazy small project (which is what this started as) but it would look a lot more presentable if proportions were fixed.

also while I'm posting, minor update, new pallet and revamped shading, I'll get the zombies arms done before the main characters, just for the sake of aligning proportions.


EDIT: I forgot to touch on vector graphics,
I'm not using vector graphics because quite frankly I'm bad at them XD I'm also unsure on how to write an importer and renderer for them so I though it better to stick to what I know.
EDIT: Current Progress

[Hoeloe]

I'm also unsure on how to write an importer and renderer for them

Look up Bezier curves. They basically contain everything you need to know.

[Bombshell93]

I'm also unsure on how to write an importer and renderer for them

Look up Bezier curves. They basically contain everything you need to know.

the problem is a mix between efficiency in execution and how to import the files, this still doesn't change how I'm not very good at vector graphics, especially in comparison to my spriting work.
although in stills the sprites don't look their best when rotated, I can assure you in gameplay its hard to notice distortion, even if your trying to find it.

on a bit of a tangent I know how bezier curves work but realtime vector graphic rendering is handled a bit differently, typically the vector graphic is imported via 3 point beziers (4+ point if you know what your doing), which are rendered as triangles, an equation is used to determine what in the triangle is inside the curve and what is outside the curve, its quite finicky in both importing and execution.
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems..._ch25.html

but this game I hope to eventually port to windows phone and XBLIG, so I'd rather keep it fast and simple.

[Hoeloe]

the problem is a mix between efficiency in execution and how to import the files, this still doesn't change how I'm not very good at vector graphics, especially in comparison to my spriting work.

I do know how these work, but there are a fair number of optimisations you can do if you put some time into it. What you had there is the basics of it, but since a lot of that is vector operations, you can forward it to the graphics card and make it practically costless.

As for importing files, that's actually fairly trivial. You just need to research the file format of whichever vector file you're saving things as, and read out the required bits.

Vector graphics can be substantially easier than sprite graphics, though, unless you're getting into the seriously complex stuff.

[Bombshell93]

the style of the game being a retro arcade shooter (my friend is working on the music in chiptune and the sound effects are made with 8-bit synthesizers closely resembling gameboy sounds) I'd like to stick to the sprites,
though my next project "Speedo Joe" (of which I've posted sprites of before) has been planned out quite thoroughly in all but the graphics department so maybe I'll use that as an excuse to revisit vector graphics, I do love a bit of graphics programming.

[Cobalt Blue]

if you want your game to have a rather 90's arcade feel, then instead sprite each one of the 8 directions for each sprite properly. sprite rotation is ultimately ugly in all aspects.

[Bombshell93]

the size of them would make for very jerky movement and the rotation doesn't effect the sprites appeal during gameplay (its a different story when you pause the game ofc but thats easily covered up via a background to the pause menu.)

Here is the current progress, I'm very unsure about the character, the zombies look okay but the character just doesn't I think it may be the bright colour of his hair and the shading making it look like hes looking at the floor.

[Bombshell93]

okay so trying to stick truer to the retro theme I was aiming for, I'm going to try oct-directional gameplay, here is the sprite to start with, I'd like to refine it a lot more as it currently looks like ass.

doing this requires a slight change to the games shooting mechanics but I'll give it a go and back up the current version, if it plays okay I might be alright with oct-directional sprites (by that I mean up looking and diagonal looking rotated at 90 degrees a time)

[Gors]

by doing this, you'll have to limit your shooting to 8 directions too, but I believe it can make your game more interesting.

also the player's arms should be more stretched, and zombies could show more of their backs to show they're hunching, imo.

[Bombshell93]

well I've actually been considering doing something along the lines of this http://www.pspminis.com/wp-content/uploa...bies-2.jpg
with a bit of tweaking to the collision detection and ofc the drawing of the sprites it gives a lot more graphical opportunity than top down, it'd also be easier to stick to the cartoony style I was using originally.
that said here is a new iteration (with a middle body slice to show leaning while moving)

[Bombshell93]

okay so I've been both reworking the engine to allow this and trying to get the angle right,

I'm aiming for something along the lines of age of zombies, I've been having a bit of difficulty getting the angle right and even now the overall sprite doesn't look great, regardless I prefer it over top down (the game initially being top down so I could finish it faster, I didn't think I'd get so attached to the project)

[Previous]

I think it isn't balanced with the back that straight down to the heels. It's a bit like he's leaning forward so the lower body should probably be moved a few pixels to the left.

[Bombshell93]

hows this?

EDIT:
after this I'll get to work on Right, Up and Down,
after them I'll get walk cycles (body and legs being seperated) and then I'll do the diagonals