NEPETAQUEST 2011: Incredibly serious business.

[The Z-W]

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yeah, this officially took forever to do

While I must commend you on your incredibly fast work and brilliant sprite-job, I have to say she looks a bit old. She doesn't really look like an adorable 6-sweep old girl here.

[GEMPadre036]

Weasel neck draping=increased evasiveness?

[Geekthras]

so my sleep schedule is officially shot to hell. Good morning, I just woke up earlier than I went to bed last night (i.e. 3 am vs 5 am). How YOU doin.

Therefore, I was awarded no coding and may Gog have mercy on my soul.

[Snuffleheim]

Wow, go away for a day an you get a new thread with seven pages of it.

On the topic of the equipable fursuits, what if she always has the same blue hat/tail, but the skins of her prey gets draped over her shoulders/worn as a vest type thing? The upper body section of the sprite would change, but the most Nepeta-y features would remain the same.

Well, the main issue is that it would require extra spriting, regardless of of where. I suppose I wouldn't mind a color-changing hood/feet/whatever if we were to go with that, but we're trying to make it so that we can stick with one unchanged sprite throughout the game.

@Geek: Good lord. I don't envy you.

[The Z-W]

Armor and accessories wouldn't necessarily require extra spriting. A lot of SNES RPGs didn't display the different attire you equipped.

[Snuffleheim]

Well, the idea we were playing with involved the equippable items being her fursuits. It kind of strain the suspension of disbelief if she had equipped the pelt of a brown-red monster, and yet still be wearing in-sprite her usual bright blue thing.

[The Z-W]

Hmm. So would she be able to make her own fursuits from defeated enemies? That would be an interesting hook, but would require some spirtework...

[GEMPadre036]

I've done a lot of amateur sprite editing in the past, so I can do some assistance with that.

[Snuffleheim]

Well, yeah, that's the problem. If we were to do it, I suppose the idea was to keep it simple and make it only color changes, except when she doesn't have one equipped. But that still requires a great deal more work that doing an equip item that needs no new spriting. The trouble is, I can't think of any items that would do that that aren't problematic for other reasons. For example, rings and necklaces are pretty much out because trolls think fashion is stupid, so she wouldn't wear those.

Edit: Well, I suppose if people want to take on the extra work, they can. Hell, I did that last thread, even if not much of it actually meant anything, in the end.

[The Z-W]

But would she wear them for RPing reasons? I don't know exactly how that would work, but it wouldn't be outside of her character to wear accessories for RP reasons. See: the fursuit itself.

Of course, if the graphics team is eager to take on the workload, then this is somewhat irrelevant.

I also have to wonder how the leveling system will work with the level-select system. Will the enemies scale in level to prevent it from being too easy? Presumably there will be a leveling system involved, unless the fursuit system could take the place of that. Which would be interesting; to say the least.

[Snuffleheim]

Well, that was one of the major pros to it. Instead of just fiddling with stats and such, mightn't it have some effect on her Roleplay special attack thing?

[The Z-W]

Oh, and I've thought of a potential special move for Eridan. Hope. It could work like a charge attack, making his next attack deal more damage. It could also just be a stat-buffing move.

[GEMPadre036]

I was under the impression that the "party" would level up instead of just individual characters. This could be used to help determine enemy levels.

[Snuffleheim]

@ZW: I suppose, but that really connects more to his title, which is supposedly more developed over the course of SGRUB, which this seems to be set before.

@ GEM: Wouldn't that be more difficult with the party changing between levels? Especially in a non-linear fashion....

Holy **** on a **** sandwich! I meant to be in bed more than an hour ago. O_O Bedtime. Naowz.

[GEMPadre036]

Not necessarily. It would help keep everything balanced on both the ally and enemy end of the spectrum.

[shadowedPhoenix]

Hm. On the sprite issue - if all we're changing is a few details on the fursuit elements, or just adding one component, not completely respriting every time Nepeta gets new gear, it doesn't seem too un-doable, I guess? (Though I'm saying that now when I have loads of time... XD) And ... yeah. Those are nice sprites, but they don't say six sweeps old to me.

The enemy levels changing with the party levels reminds me of FFVIII, I think? The trick's not to make it so that you can get by with a minimally levelled party, but instead cheesing the opponents with hi-level gear. Though we don't have as much complexity in the attacks and specials going on as they did, so hm.

Quick attempt at a hi-res version of the interface. Just seeing how it would look with the floating/transparent idea going on. Reminds me of PM: The Thousand Year Door. (... push off, visions of *the other* PM in a game.)

[The Z-W]

I absolutely love the look of that mockup. I think it's perfect, especially the little zodiac cursor.

[GEMPadre036]

Yeah, that's a great setup sP! Major kudos to you!

[Geekthras]

I like it. My one concern is how that will look with a real background - the text might end up being a little tough to read. But that can be worked around if the background is designed carefully.

By the way, I expanded on the first piece from before a bit - Good Morning as I'm calling it for the moment. I like the idea of having it as the background track for the opening, so I'm going to leave it as it is for the moment - I can crib off Charlies-Marie Widor extend it almost indefinitely and just fit it to whatever we decide the opening cinematic should be.

Now, back to wrassle with Eclipse some more

Also, someone totally needs to make a Nepetaquest 2011 "Where making this hapen" banner for sigs :P

[GEMPadre036]

Good Morning is sounding really good! Also, sig things would be awesome.

[BlueYoshi]

Good Morning is sounding really good! Also, sig things would be awesome.

Seconded on both counts. Would be good to put something in my sig space. Good Morning sounds good, seems easy to play for as long as you need it.

(Disappeared for a while too. Got distracted reading forum adventures.)

[shadowedPhoenix]

Yet more UI fiddling, and a bit of sprite size comparison.

First, testing the current hi-res UI mockup on different backgrounds; it seems to work unless the contrast is really up there? Take a look (warning, enough rainbows and funny colours to make Gamzee's day):

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Tried the floating UI on the lo-res screen, too; lose a bit of the detail, of course, but it still looks pretty good. Standard old Courier until better font is sorted.
Same test image, different sprite sizes. Also, large scale versions of same. Thinking it might be an idea to have the HP info stay onscreen while the player is idle? Well, it worked for Paper Mario again...

Can't think of many 2D RPGs that use sprites bigger than 16x24 - Alterniabound is 18x28 for Nepeta, and Golden Sun (GBA) uses things around the 18x30 mark. Bigger sprites seem to be used more in isometric games (eg: KH Chain of Memories) and sprite-polygon mixes (Paper Mario etc, 3D-capable consoles.) Unless I'm forgetting something, wouldn't be the first time.

Featuring Edgar and Sora as examples of differently sized sprites.

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[deathsquirrel]

I knocked this up in about 5 minutes. It's pre-linked if anyone wants to use it.

[Frost]

Phoenix, I'd recommend a subtle darkening behind each part of the high-resolution UI, perhaps as low as 64 alpha. The white-outlined text could do with something to give it a more uniform backdrop. Otherwise, I love it.

Drillgorg and GEM, I know I'm a couple of pages late, but something's occured to me. You're both experienced in "sprite editing". Does "editing" extend to "tracing over a large digital image to produce a small game-appropriate sprite"? Because if so, that could be a very viable way to produce enemy sprites, allowing us to bring in standard artists as well as spriters. I mean, recreating freehand art as pixel art is exactly how the enemy sprites for the original Final Fantasy were made.

And RE the fursuit discussion: switching up suits would cripple our spriting freedom, make the battle system more difficult to code, be a very large amount of work, and force us to limit Nepeta's animations. I mean, consider if Nepeta has six animations: idle, KOed, attacking, special, hurt, and moving. Now consider she has ten fursuits, all of which are complete. Some small change to the KOed animation therefore wouldn't just be a simple "move some pixels around" job; it'd be a painstaking "make these nine other sprites look exactly the same" job. We can only do so much programatically.

As I said before, if we want to go with fursuits, we might as well be going with claws; more logical, easier to sprite. Claws, of course, bring in exactly the same problems.

Now, the important thing: We now have a very workable UI and template sprites for each resolution, as well as a sort of vague lack of disagreement when it comes to using painted backdrops. Therefore, we're at the point where we can make an informed decision between high and low resolution graphics. Any arguments in favour of either? Should we put it to a small vote?

From the top of my head:
High resolution gives us more UI freedom and more detailed sprites. The latter, however, could well be a burden; larger sprites are almost inevitably going to take more time to create. When we have hundreds upon hundreds of sprites to create (check the OP for a list), this could be a dealbreaker for the project.
Low resolution is pleasantly retro, but lacks detail, and might make animations a little more challenging. It could be seen as a bit of a cop-out.

Thoughts?

[XionGaTaosenai]

I vote for hi-res. I'd really like the degree of hi-res that the sprites of newer games like Wario Land: Shake It! and Blaz Blue go to, but that may be unfeasable.

On the fursiuts, you mentioned that pallete swaps are not as simple as they used to be. What makes it not as simple? Could code be written so as to emulate older color mechanics to make pallete swapping simpler?

I think it'd be really nice to show Nepeta equipping other fursiuts as a simple pallete swap.