Poison backgrounds

Back to our regular updates! No whining in this one, folks.

So I’ve been thinking photograph backgrounds are not going to cut it after all. I’ve been trying to modify my background-making process, with minor success. u_u Still using Sketchup to create furniture and stuff, but from that until the finished product it’s a looong winding road. I hope to one day have a nice, clear algorithm that I can follow and make pretty pretty bgs every time. Riiiight.

Anyway, lesse some pics. Tiny pics because at full res they look kinda…yeah. Especially the lower one. *shudders*

 

Test backgrounds

I’m a background artist

I’ve recently decided to help a fellow game maker with their backgrounds. I’ve never worked on someone else’s project before, so it’s a change for me to draw what someone else wants. The project is called “The Universal Hope” and is a GxB/fantasy game (we GxB developers have to stick together right? lol ). I think it has an interesting concept. I personally love fantasy games.  Read about it here.

For this game I’ll be doing the background linearts which is the best part as far as I’m concerned and it’s why I accepted in the first place. While it’s harder because I have to figure out the angle and what needs to be in the scene, coloring isn’t my strong point, I believe.

So, here are a few examples of what I did so far.

What now?

Now that Summer is finished I’m at a loss somehow. I always felt guilty for working on something else when I had an unfinished project and now that I can, I don’t know what to do.

I have two projects on my mind now and I’ve decided not to make the same mistake again. I’m not going to do anything until the story is finished. That means no drawing sprites, no backgrounds, no GUI, not even dialogue until I have a solid storyline. It makes sense because things like character appearance and location are bound to change in the first stages.

Of course I failed at this and did a bit of each, but it’s okay because I call it practice.

I’ve been trying out a new way of doing backgrounds. I’m a bit disappointed with the results because I worked harder than with SFM bgs method, but the results aren’t amazing. I did learn from it though, I guess that’s why I called it practice. ^^

Backgrounds practice

Assorted stuff

After a few days break, I’m back on track. I don’t even know how I’d classify what I’ve been doing. Miscellaneous, I guess. I’ve fixed a few things that were bugging me. Not big things, things probably most people wouldn’t even notice/mind. I’m not usually a perfectionist, just when it comes to thing I am passionate about.

One of the awesome little things that I’ve done is fix the god awful nvl screen. I used nvl when showing online chat. But it had the default look, plus the game menu buttons would continue to show even when in nvl, when the rest of the textbox was gone. That drove me crazy. The solution was quite simple, but it took months for me to care enough to look for it. Until recently I always thought there were better things to do, but now that the project is approaching completion (omg! can’t believe I said that!), it’s time to do all the little things I always put off.

I also drew a nice background for a club scene. I did an animation for lights changing using ATL. Didin’t know what ATL was when I woke up this morning (uh… at 1PM actually…). I am so proud of it, even though to a professional it would look like crap. ^^;

So, to show you a little piece of what I did today, here’s the new “chat window”. It’s actually just a plain old png. The button and scroll don’t do anything, I hope people won’t click them and be all confused. It would be possible to actually make a functional messenger, of course, but I have to draw the line somewhere if I want this finished any time soon.

"Yes, I know my ID is stupid, I was 11 when I made it, ok?"

 

I did some other stuff, too. Fixed some annoying stuff in the game, thanks to the wonderful people on http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/ I would have been lost without them. Finally I can start implementing my idea, which is that whenever you find a character’s special ending it will color his picture in the main menu.

I forgot to mention the endings – all written! 3 for Devli-pooh (hehe), 3 for Alden and 4 for Seth cause he’s awesome like that. LOL. One of Dev’s ending could be considered the alone ending though, because you don’t actually get to have a “confrontation”. This only happens if you pursue Devlin, but don’t get a special event.

I’ve decided on naming the endings rather than numbering them. I will probably write “special ending” on the special ones, but so far I have: 3 special endings (you need a lot of points for these, probably a walk-through or something), 4 good/normal endings (some are happier than others), and 3 bad endings (not necessarily bad, I try to not let it be too depressing).

Background dilemma

Yes I’m still alive ( amazingly so after watching all the episodes of glee in 3 days).

I wrote a little today. It was a scene in which Iris goes with Alden to visit an old tower. I was debating in my head how many backgrounds I should make. They meet in front of the tower, then they go to the top (just a few lines here), then -OMG HUGE SPOILERS- rain starts and they go inside and sit on the steps. Here they talk a lot so I already made a background for the inside of the tower. The thing is… should I make a BG for the part where they are at the top of the tower? I HATE doing outside BGs because doing hills and trees is super hard for me. I’m thinking of just skipping it. No one will be like “I really liked this game, but there was one place where I felt like the creator got lazy and didn’t make that one extra background.”

Actually, there is one other place where I have this problem. It’s the alternative to going with Alden to the tower. Iris takes cover from the rain in a bar. The thing is, I made a BG with the entrance of the bar, from the outisde. I even added a nice rain effect. Then it hit me. Oh wait, the whole action happens INSIDE THE BAR. *throws self off cliff* It looks stupid when Iris talks about what’s going on inside the bar and we see the outside. Should I make a CG for the inside? Probably.
[/Rant]
Obligatory image:
Um… lemme find something.
Ah, there we go. Doodleicious pic of Devlin I did in 10 minutes