41–50 of 90 posts
For those unaware, Derek Yu is the creator of Spelunky. Here’s one of his best posts, it’s about how to actually finish making a game: https://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-gam...
Bad pixel art is a pet peeve of mine. This is really advanced advice compared the problem most games have: - pixels of different sizes - rotating (!) pixels - scaling pixels - smooth gradients with millions of colours - dynamic lighting overlayed on top ... I could go on :(
There are two main categories of pixel art in games. In one category it’s about retro authenticity and these games are defined by the fact that their final buffer is the same low resolution as their art. They also often feature limited palettes, especially ones that were actually used on retro consoles. There’s also a second category of pixel art, where the style is more modern. The art is still low res, but the fina…
Bad pixel art is a pet peeve of mine. This is really advanced advice compared the problem most games have: - pixels of different sizes - rotating (!) pixels - scaling pixels - smooth gradients with millions of colours - dynamic lighting overlayed on top ... I could go on :(
I share your preferences, but it's a rock and a hard place. Performing any of the tasks you listed by hand is extremely labour-intensive. Doing without those features is a harsh creative limitation - in my experience, the result isn't "this game feels retro", but instead "this game feels oddly flat, repetitive and static", which is much less forgivable. I've worked on a game which aimed for authentically retro pixel…
The problem is that most indie games render at 2x or 3x or more natively.
Bad pixel art is a pet peeve of mine. This is really advanced advice compared the problem most games have: - pixels of different sizes - rotating (!) pixels - scaling pixels - smooth gradients with millions of colours - dynamic lighting overlayed on top ... I could go on :(
Why are any of these things "bad"? Back in the day pixel art was constrained by technical limitations, but now you can use the same style but with less technical constraints, and include these sort of things. It's not "true" pixel art from 1990, but that doesn't make it "bad".
There's something to limited color space that those people do not seem to understand, be it the ones saying such critique, or the ones getting mad at it. We see color quantization in any realistic painting after the renaissance. Limiting the color space actually makes the pixel art look more realistic, because then every shade or shadow fits the overall drawings. Once you go Stardew Valley, sure it's pixel art, but just like a Picasso is great, it's not a Caravaggio, it's not "realistic" when it comes to how lighting reflects off surfaces.
Then there's the use of tiles/repeating background parts or having a full canvas where every pixel is unique. Although it's nice to look at, there's just too much information for the brain to process. That kind of art is nice, but in a game it's distracting. I personally call that kind of art pixel paintings and separate it from classic pixel art with tiles and limited colors.
It might be all just rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I firmly believe there's some science to what I just described. Look at any Caravaggio painting but especially portraits to see how limited the color space really is, how sometimes he uses shades of a color to give the impression of a very distant (color-space-wise) second color. It's really about that.
Kind of a "draw the rest of the fucking owl" step there at the end.
Also the form of the sprites changed significantly, it was a massive shift in artistic personality and aesthetic direction that the tutorial just called it “not using straight lines”. I think they could have made their point while not swapping in a different set of tastes entirely.
Bad pixel art is a pet peeve of mine. This is really advanced advice compared the problem most games have: - pixels of different sizes - rotating (!) pixels - scaling pixels - smooth gradients with millions of colours - dynamic lighting overlayed on top ... I could go on :(
Why are any of these things "bad"? Back in the day pixel art was constrained by technical limitations, but now you can use the same style but with less technical constraints, and include these sort of things. It's not "true" pixel art from 1990, but that doesn't make it "bad".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two main categories of pixel art in games. In one category it’s about retro authenticity and these games are defined by the fact that their final buffer is the same low resolution as their art. They also often feature limited palettes, especially ones that were actually used on retro consoles. There’s also a second category of pixel art, where the style is more modern. The art is still low res, but the fina…
Having pixel art and then each “pixel” being 4 or 16 pixels, obvious when scaled or rotated, I think is bad artistic form regardless of whether it’s a vintage styled or modern styled game. It breaks the flow and suspension of disbelief that comes with pixel art. The brain can’t interpolate anymore. Besides, it’s not hard to render to a buffer and scale it up nearest-neighbor, and it always looks better IMO
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I share your preferences, but it's a rock and a hard place. Performing any of the tasks you listed by hand is extremely labour-intensive. Doing without those features is a harsh creative limitation - in my experience, the result isn't "this game feels retro", but instead "this game feels oddly flat, repetitive and static", which is much less forgivable. I've worked on a game which aimed for authentically retro pixel…
how exactly is it a hard problem? You don’t have to rotate the sprite by sining and cosining pixels by hand, you can just render to the same resolution as your sprites and it’ll look fine. The problem is that most indie games render at 2x or 3x or more natively.
Artistic preferences are subjective, but I expect most players would find that rotated sprite unappealing. This is especially true when the rotation is animated - the aliasing causes a distracting, staticky, random-noise effect which gives the impression that the sprite's fine details are chaotically changing. It's almost the aesthetic opposite of what most pixel artists are aiming for.