NEPETAQUEST 2011: Incredibly serious business.

[Frost]

Agh, sorry to keep bugging you, but I just read over your itinerary again.

I hope I'm not being paranoid or patronising, but I didn't see any mention in your todo list of extending Exploration or Hive Covered In Cute. You're planning to make them longer, right? Thirty-second loops (excellent though they may be) aren't really workable as walkaround themes, they'd drive our players up the wall.

[The Z-W]

It's okay! You're not bugging me at all. Yes, i'm also planning to extend those two songs. I just need to figure out how I want to extend them so they don't sound overdone. Perhaps my fellow musicians can aid me on this?

[Snuffleheim]

Alright, I've been thinking about the equippable item thing. The best thing I could come up with was fursuits. Nepeta wears the pelts of her prey sometimes. What if this were the equippable item? Not only could this give bonuses to her stats and such, it could also modify the effects of her Roleplay slightly. The thing is that that would require at least a bunch of different colors available on Nepeta's sprite, and I dunno, it seems more like Nepeta if she has her blue stuff. I suppose we could make that the ultimate version, but that means it has to be found later in the game.

[orderboundChaotic]

What if the ultimate fursuit was a stat-modifying version of the original fursuit?

[Frost]

If we're willing to sprite individual fursuits, we might as well use equippable claws; they'd be less work to sprite and more logical. We could conceivably bring in some sort of recoloring algorithm for Nepeta's sprites, but nowadays palette swaps really aren't as straightforward as they used to be. Ideally, we need to keep looking for something else.

Maybe plushes? They wouldn't need to be visible in battle, but having Nepeta's abilities change when she has a particular plush on her person has an odd sort of logic to it. It'd also allow for a certain amount of humor; the Horrifying Giant Spider Plush "creeps you out a little", the Hoofbeast Plush fills her with STRENGTH, and the Nepeta Plush is the best equipment in the game.

[Snuffleheim]

But how do you "equip" a plush?

[Drillgorg]

Guys I'd be willing to do some spriting if need be. I'm not too good at working from scratch, but I am handy with edits. Wanta stay involved with the project.

[orderboundChaotic]

You hold the plush, I guess? We do not need to actually see it on her person.

[Snuffleheim]

We definitely need spriters.

Edit: That... ugh. I don't like it. Well, I'll keep thinking...

[Frost]

Drillgorg: Good! I have a specific and important task for you. Bet you weren't expecting that, heh.

We still haven't decided whether we'll be going for a low-resolution game (doubled pixels, eg a 320x240 framebuffer rendered to a 640x480 window) or a high-resolution game (eg 640x480 normal-sized pixels). We have a high-resolution character template, but not a low-resolution one. It'd be nice if you could scale down the high-resolution template by approximately half (or perhaps slightly larger), then resprite or edit it until A) it's a usable template and B) it looks good when scaled back up.

Much of the anatomy work has already been done, but you might want to widen/shorten the limbs or increase the size of the head or something. Whatever looks good.

[Drillgorg]

Drillgorg: Good! I have a specific and important task for you. Bet you weren't expecting that, heh.

We still haven't decided whether we'll be going for a low-resolution game (doubled pixels, eg a 320x240 framebuffer rendered to a 640x480 window) or a high-resolution game (eg 640x480 normal-sized pixels). We have a high-resolution character template, but not a low-resolution one. It'd be nice if you could scale down the high-resolution template by approximately half (or perhaps a little less), then resprite or edit it until A) it's a usable template and B) it looks good when scaled back up.

Much of the anatomy work has already been done, but you might want to widen/shorten the limbs or increase the size of the head or something. Whatever looks good.

Thanks that is exactly what I am good at! I'll see what I can do.

[Frost]

Wow

What a frighteningly neat exchange

Counting down the seconds until Drillgorg has his hands bitten off by a dog or something

[Esrever]

you do know that the countdown in the comic is the countdown to when drillgorg explodes, right???

[Varkarrus]

Esrever Drillgorg = Headcanon.

[Drillgorg]

No really, the countdown the trolls are doing right now is the countdown until I explode, because someone pointed out that Andrew has never let a robot survive in mspa ever. I will try to finish the sprites before then.

[ocpmovie]

I'm drawing Nepeta now. Actually I've just drawn Nepeta but not yet posted.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AO1I086X
50 megs, Quicktime MOV movie.

CGI tests, mainly walk cycles. I took a generic CGI model [Victoria 4], put her in clothing reminiscent of Nepeta, and posed her hundreds of different ways- lots of action poses and over a dozen different walk cycles.

[She would have had a tail and more accurate costume, except ... well, if you have a PC and want to help me quickly, PM me ...]

There are a lot of errors in the actual images [which are all high resolution]- particularly, the coat is stiff and the legs often go through it. However, this sort of reference should be valuable for deciding what the sprite needs to be able to do- how it should walk, what sort of action poses might be needed, etc. I used simple one-light lighting which makes the light source very clear for sprite shading.

I'll post the actual high-res images as well. But people doing sprites could use these for reference, and they could perhaps be temped into a rough version of the game or just noted as to which poses might actually be needed.

[Drillgorg]

Ok here's my first hack at it with the images from the OP:

show spoiler

hide spoiler

Originals:


Shrunk:


Scaled back up:

Low res is less work, but also less space to work with, harder to show emotions.

Up next I may try adjusting the proportions a bit for better low res sprites.

@ocpmovie: holy crap.

[Snuffleheim]

acpji;hosvsdubjke.njgf;biluehjndf! I can't think of anything equippable that either wouldn't need added respriting or isn't stupid.

[ocpmovie]

A Nepeta design ...




The low res sprites are I think too low, to the point where it would become more work rather than less.

[Drillgorg]

It was tough deciding what to do with some features, like the fingers are really just a small checkerboard that kind of look like fingers.

[ocpmovie]

Silly that the males are currently smaller than the females.

[ocpmovie]

Rawrrrr.

I printed out the proportions template and drew Nepeta in as close to those proportions as I could manage.

My Lucky Seven drew Nepeta in a pose like this once, and I decided to change the arms enough to draw a similar pose.

I'm curious how well this pose might shrink down for sprite use.

Big GIF version:
http://orangecow.org/mspaintadventures/nepetamini2.gif

[ocpmovie]

yeah, this officially took forever to do

[GEMPadre036]

She looks rather... old.

(Sorry I've been a less present here over the past little bit. Real life strikes again!)

[godFish]

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.