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    Common Pixel Art Mistakes: Color

    February 10, 2018

    Common Pixel Art Mistakes: Color

    Common Pixel Art Mistakes: Color

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 08:10 AM PST

    I have seen a ton of beginner pixel art on this subreddit, and the internet in general, suffering from poor color choice. Even art from people who claim to be good at pixel art. Luckily, these mistakes are pretty easy to spot, even if you aren't an expert artist.

    •MISTAKE 1:
    Look at these pixel art drawings of bread slices. The one on the right looks much better than the one on the left. The one on the left looks like it has been left outside in the rain for a good few hours, while the one on the right looks like it has been fresh baked five minutes ago. Why is this?
    This is the most common mistake I see. Too many low contrast colors. There are 6 colors, and you can barely tell them apart. They are all just a slightly brighter or darker version of the main color. This makes the toast look muddy, while also giving it a weird, sickly texture.
    The bread on the right, however, only has three colors, and they are all very different from each other. the bread is a nice beige color, the crust is a light brown, and the spots are a very light yellowish color. This adds contrast and makes each color pop.
    TL;DR: Don't use too many similar colors next to each other.

    •MISTAKE 2:
    Here are two drawings of a tree. The one on the left looks like one of those 3d stickers you put on your school notebooks. Why? Because the highlights and shadows don't follow the form of the object. Instead they just stick to the left and right side, as if the middle was completely flat. How to fix this?
    Look at the right image. It looks much more rounded. This is because the shadows and highlights follow the form nicely. The shadow actually wraps around the tree like it would if it was an actual 3d object, and the highlight is confined to a spot from where the light is coming from.
    TL;DR: Make your highlights and shadows follow the form of the object so it doesn't look flat.

    •MISTAKE 3:
    Pixel art of some containers. Never use gradients. Ever. Use dithering instead. You might think it looks cool, but it just makes your game look like a 2005 RPG maker fan project made by a 12 year old. TL;DR: NEVER USE GRADIENTS

    •MISTAKE 4:
    A pair of balls. Don't use the lightness slider to make shadows. It makes them look dull. Instead, play with the hue and saturation. Shadows are usually cooler and more saturated (darkening visually lowers saturation, so bump it up to compensate). TL;DR: Make shadows cooler and more saturated than lighter areas.

    •MISTAKE 5:
    Cool emperor dudes. When i look at the left one for too long, my eyes hurt. Why is this? There is more than one reason. Firstly, it is wayyyyy to saturated. The saturation is bumped all the way up on all the colors. This looks really bad simply because it makes it hard to look at.
    Second, the colors are all out of whack. Green and red are complementary colors, so they shouldn't be right next to each other (think of red text on a green background), especially on full saturation. When you have two complementary colors close together, make one of them less saturated. This is what I did with the right one. You can actually look at it and not have your eyes water from the contrast.
    Lastly, the one on the left lacks color balance. We have very warm colors (Red and yellow) next to very cool colors (Blue and green). This makes the image look disjointed. To fix this, i changed up the colors to make them more harmonious with one another. I made the warm colors cooler, and the cool colors warmer, as well as desaturating all of them.

    submitted by /u/Croatic
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    Lying to players for their benefit

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:06 AM PST

    I've been working on a rhythm game lately and a recent focus has been on accuracy and real time feedback.

    I calculate a player's accuracy using a small time window around the exact time of the note, group that into categories (miss, okay, good, great, perfect), and then show a popup like this for a few frames after every note:

    (GIF) Accuracy feedback

    AND THIS IS FINE... But... It is extremely rare to get a perfect accuracy rating on a note, even getting a good rating is quite hard, and a few players testing my game noticed. I got a few comments like "I feel like I'm tapping exactly in time with the beat, but I'm only getting average ratings. Why is that? Can you make the note window wider?"

    And yes, I could increase the timing window, but that would break animation speed and the overall flow of the game; I didn't want so sacrifice the overall responsiveness and quick action that define the gameplay, just to make up for the crappy experience of players less skilled in playing or that are new to the genre.

    So... I decided to lie.

    I ran two tests.

    • Test 1: Show the true accuracy.
    • Test 2: Show the accuracy mapped to a scale that is designed to be biased towards rewarding the player more than punishing them.

    And 4 out of 5 times I ran this test, the player told me they feel like they did better and felt more immersed in the experience when using the mapped ranges.

    Here's a little graph I made to give you an idea of the mapping:

    (IMAGE) Graph of accuracy mapping

    This is also how I came up with the 5 accuracy labels that are presented to the players, they were originally

    • Miss
    • Meh...
    • Okay
    • Good
    • Yeah!

    But this was changed to:

    • Miss
    • Okay
    • Good!
    • Great!
    • Perfect

    Because results showed it made the game more enjoyable.

    NOTE: Just because these biased values are shown to the player, doesn't mean that they're the values used to calculate the player's score and end of level stats. Those parts of the game are still based on pure skill and accuracy, so this doesn't compromise any of that, it just seems to improve the experience overall for all players.

    This has just been my experience, I'm not sure how applicable it is to other genres but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

    TLDR: Tuning mechanics is important, but also consider tuning the player.

    Thanks for reading my first real post here by the way <3

    submitted by /u/spaciecat
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    How To Make Movement Physics In Unity

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 04:16 AM PST

    As a programmer, are there any benefits to learning 3d modelling software?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:56 AM PST

    Hello, I mostly work in 2d and have very little experience in 3d. Though I plan to stick to 2d for a long while, I'll probably have to adapt to 3d one day. I hear terms like UV maps,rigging, texture atlases thrown around and I don't have any idea what they mean. I've been thinking about picking up basic 3d modelling just to learn the workfow so I can work with artists better. So here are my questions:

    1. Have any of you programers dabbled in 3d modelling. If so, do you think that the experience has helped you with 3d games?

    2. How long would it take to get reasonably good with low poly 3d modelling with something like blender? Or, to be able to tweak free 3d assets so that they my game better?

    submitted by /u/Krons-sama
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    I made a demo for my metroidvania platformer.

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:08 AM PST

    First time solo dev with a dumbass question!

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:19 AM PST

    I am making a low poly 3D action adventure game. I am using blender to model and animate, and unity with playmaker to build the game.

    Should weapon and armor assets all be a part of the player model blend file, or should they have their own separate file?

    If you have clarifying questions please don't hesitate to ask!

    submitted by /u/MuyLocoPinocchio
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    Questions About Prototyping

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 02:39 AM PST

    I, as a hobbyist game developer, only really care about being able to play my games with friends and family, which makes fun the utmost goal of my games, not size or content. I recently left behind an old game project and want to return to it, however the main reason I left it was because it did not feel fun.

    The game was on a 2D plane game with 3D graphics where 2-4 players played as different colored gelatinous forms. The goal of the game was to collect pills to grow, and consume the players smaller than you. Players shrank over time, and could use a dash, that costed size, in return for a fast dash to one side. There were a few maps, each with a special trait that tried to make them each unique. The main issue with the game, besides the bugs that I had yet to resolve, was that it just wasn't fun. Granted I did only share the game with a very small, close, population.

    This brings me to my question. When you start a game that you think is a good concept. and prototype it out and find that its not fun, what do you do?

    • Do you rework some mechanics and try to make my existing prototype more fun?
    • Do you scrap the project, and try to learn about fun game design from it?

    As much as I want to have the game be fun, it might just be a bad idea. On the flip side however, the game might be a good idea, and I'm just missing one feature, or one element that makes it fun.

    Please, don't be shy telling me to scrap it, or that the idea is bad. I just want to know the procedure after an bad prototype, as I am almost completely self taught in the worlds of coding, game design, and the overall processes of making a game.

    submitted by /u/DatYak4405
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    Note: I didn't make any money until game #14. If you're giving up after your first or second financial failure, you're doing it wrong.

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:08 PM PST

    A while back, I posted this advice.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/6vl57d/my_answer_to_this_question_should_i_pursue_a/

    A lot of people responded in that thread and elsewhere, saying, essentially, "Thanks for the positive thinking, but not all good games are successful, and there are plenty of counter examples, so this is not realistic advice."

    My original post did not emphasize one important point:

    I did not make any money until my FOURTEENTH game. Yes, that's right, I made THIRTEEN games before that without any financial success. Those thirteen games include four free games, so those don't fully count, but also include NINE financial failures. And the free games were important too, for career development reasons. Those free games included Passage, which continues to be a great calling card ten years later, and Between, which won an award at the IGF.

    But my iPhone games were supposed to make money, and they didn't really. My Escapist games were supposed to make money, but ended up generating $200 each.

    I never said "if you make a great game, it will make money."

    I said, "If you KEEP MAKING great games, and keep getting better and better at what you do, you will eventually make money." There's a lot of talk of counter-examples, but I think most of those are about someone's first game that was a "great game," but didn't take off, and they gave up after that.

    Building a name for yourself over the long haul is an important part of the "keep making great stuff" formula. Who's going to buy your first game? Don't be shocked when no one does!

    And is your first game really such an amazing game? Really? My first game sucked.... Well, I'm really proud of it for what it was, but it was my first game. I'm still learning and getting better at this after all these years.

    The take-home message that some people seemed to miss was this: You're going to fail a lot. Not giving up in the face of repeated, seemingly-endless failure is the hard part. But if you keep making great stuff and don't give up, success will come.

    Where's the counter example to that? Who never gave up across their lifetime, released 40 amazing games that were all failures, and died a pauper?

    I still haven't had a huge financial hit eighteen games in. but I've had three games that did pretty well, and one game that did okay. That's a 78% failure rate.

    Still, the 22% success rate has been enough to keep my family afloat while I continue to not give up as I work on game #19.

    submitted by /u/jasonrohrer
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    Wizard overhaul in Bravery and Greed, favoring closer ranges. What do you think about this new gameplay? Does it look satisfying?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 07:10 AM PST

    A discussion on how to organize yourself as a game developer

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 05:33 AM PST

    Do you *have* to be incorporated to be taken seriously as an indie?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:21 PM PST

    So I've been working on my project for a little over half a year now, and right now I'm set on having a working demo by the end of summer. It's occurred to me after reading several articles and whatnot that marketing is almost as important, if not even more important, than actually having a good game in terms of attracting a following pre-release. I've read up on how to do the marketing, and while I'm sure there will be a learning curve, I feel confident that I can maintain presence on social media, reach out to journalists, etc. to get publicity for the game. My one concern is actually opening up a full-fledged studio/company. I've told myself repeatedly that I don't want to put any money into game dev as a hobbyist until I'm certain that people want to play the game I'm making. Do I have to be ready to operate as a corporate entity before anyone will actually pay attention to my project, or can I get away without that?

    EDIT: Sorry if this is the wrong place for this, if there is a subreddit where this will be better received please let me know.

    submitted by /u/BuildABeastWorkshop
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    Visual scripting framework for unity: Constellation (MIT licence)

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:27 PM PST

    Unity Editor: Show a draggable point into the scene linked to a Vector2/Vector3 field

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 10:11 AM PST

    Framegraph: A high-level rendering abstraction which describes a frame as a directed acyclic graph of render tasks and resources (based on the GDC 2017 Frostbite Rendering Architecture talk).

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 09:17 AM PST

    Which EU school/university for Game dev ?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 11:29 AM PST

    Hi,

    I'm 21 and I'll finish my actual courses this summer. After that I would like to learn game Programming as I used to work in IT.

    The problem is that I live in Switzerland and there is not a lot of schools for that. So, which good game programming school would u recommand to me ? (preferably in Europe)

    Thx :)

    submitted by /u/bukibarak
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    A* Pathfinding (first blog post)

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:03 PM PST

    Not sure if this is appropriate here... I think it is, this is my first blog post on my personal development blog and I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to give it a read and provide any feedback. On the writing style, code, anything.

    The blog post itself isn't meant to be too much of a tutorial or anything, more just something to shove in potential employers' faces, but it would be great if people actually understand what I'm writing about - I don't tend to be very good at articulating myself.

    Thanks very much to anyone who reads it.

    EDIT I: here is the link

    EDIT II: here is a link to the implementation you can play around with

    submitted by /u/george_mcdonagh
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    Screenshot Saturday #367 - Expert Photography

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:53 PM PST

    Share your progress since last time in a form of screenshots, animations and videos. Tell us all about your project and make us interested!

    The hashtag for Twitter is of course #screenshotsaturday.

    Note: Using url shorteners is discouraged as it may get you caught by Reddit's spam filter.

    Previous Screenshot Saturdays

    Bonus question: What is the longest you have waited in line for something?

    submitted by /u/Sexual_Lettuce
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    What's the best way to learn LUA?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:37 PM PST

    Hello, I am wondering what the best way to learn LUA scripting is. If you have any tutorials that you recommend please link them for me. I heard that LUA is the easiest language to learn for game development. Anything that you guys/girls have that will help me learn the language would be highly appreciated. Please serious responses only. Thank you.

    submitted by /u/coltenbrown
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    Thoughts on Godot Game Engine?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:18 PM PST

    Hello, I recently saw the Godot Engine and see that the graphics are pretty good, lots of coding options, and etc. I am looking for your guys/girls opinions on the engine. Specifically ease of use, learning curve, coding experience, multiplayer capabilities, and so forth. It looks like a good engine although it is fairly new so I am sure that there are some bugs and downsides compared to other engines. Please only serious responses. Thank you!

    submitted by /u/coltenbrown
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    How to dynamically load entities using configuration files with Entity Component System

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 08:31 AM PST

    Hello,

    I'm making a small RPG game using Libgdx and Ashely (the libgdx's ECS library) and I've come upon a design crossroad, let me explain.

     

    My current scenario is the following: I'm using a factory to create all of the static game entities on game startup, that is the player entity with all it's components (sprite, movement, inventory, stats, you get the idea), items on the floor, spawn zones, npc's and so on. And it's starting to get really messy.

     

    I thought about using configuration files to composite all of my entities. I would deserialize those files and then create each entity as expressed in the file (using java reflection).

     

    I've been thinking about the pros and cons to this solutions but I'm not really sure:

     

    Pros:
    * I no longer have spaghetti code in the factory
    * I pave the way to a future saving system by making this loading system from configuration files

     

    Cons:
    * I have to use java reflection and the implementation might not end up being elegant
    * Maybe I end up with spaghetti in the files?
    * I will have to make a templating system so I can keep creating those instances on mid-game

     

    Do you think this solution is a good idea? Do you have a better one?

     

    There was an other redditor who had exactly the same question as me two years ago.

     

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/bastachicos
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    Pseudo coding Inventory System on Unity help(survival game)

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 12:11 PM PST

    The title may be confusing, but basically I want to get a second opinion on how I've thought through my (hopefully to be) inventory system for a practice project I'm working on. The basic idea is this:

    Create an empty 3D Object titled "Inventory" on player character, then use that as a storage place for items that have been picked up. For example, gun ammo that has been picked up would be moved from wherever it was before on the hierarchy to being a child of the inventory object. Then, in thought, it could be easily tracked what the player has in his inventory and could be recalled easily through UI.

    Very very basic, I'm also very very new to this, and I'm very very hopeful you guys won't rip me a new one because of how awful of an idea this may be. I'm new to programming and, as I said, this is more for practice in programming and fixing than it is for genuine application in a game. In my mind, I think this would work, but having never a) actually tried it or b) networked a game, I truly have no idea what I'm getting into. Would going about it this way cause networking issues?

    Any and all feedback is appreciated, id rather learn from people who know it best than get frustrated trying to do it and fail.

    submitted by /u/gdaddydog
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    New here, looking to start my first game. Any tips?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 08:16 AM PST

    I've followed a coding tutorial many years back on C++ and I've played around with engines like Unity and Unreal. I'm really just wondering where do I begin? What steps do I take, what tools should I use and anything else people want to suggest.

    This has always been my dream - to develop my own games - and I'd really like to start today. Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/notaton
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    What are the graphic capabilities of Leadwerks?

    Posted: 10 Feb 2018 11:07 AM PST

    Hello, does anyone know what the graphic capabilities of Leadwerks is now? They have some videos showcasing it but they are a few years old. I want to get a newer representation of them. If anyone has any experience in the engine or have seen a project built with it within the last year or so please show me it. I am looking for 3d games and environments. Thank you! Please only serious responses.

    submitted by /u/coltenbrown
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