Samurai Sabre piccys

[monkeyman]

Ok thought i would throw in some constructive comments:

Move the HUD from the middle of the screen - it just looks wrong.

Take the advice of low res sprites, if nothing else I find it easier to create interesting looking ships with a smaller sprite size. Right now it doesn't resemble PC engine. Oh and whoever it was that said to try to make sprites symet6rical (so long as they're supposed to be) has a very good point. Try just drawing half the sprite then use whatever gfx software your using to copy and mirror it to get a more neat finish.

Oh and space ninjas can only be a good thing. Don't get too disheartened by some of the comments, but understand if this is your 1st shmup then it isn't likely to be a masterpiece, just use it as a learning experience.

[Spiegel]

I've never had or played a PC-Engine/TurboGrafx besides emulation (and the only thing I've played is Dracula X and Valis), so I can't comment on the intended style, but if you're gonna draw the sprites, search for pixel art tutorials. Learn things like manual anti-aliasing, outline, ortographic perspective, how to avoid jaggies etc. After that look at some pro sprites to see how to handle lighting, coloring and other tricks. It's not that hard (if you know art), but just new ways to handle old concepts. You can sketch something in paper, scan and pixel over it. If the sprite is symmetrical, do only one side and mirror it.

I think the green dudes/ships are nice. You could remake them in pixel art and voilà.

HUD is out of proper place, but I believe you're going to fix it eventually, so it's ok for now.

Background is meh, but it should not be your priority now. If there's no interaction, you can delay it and focus on gameplay and level design. But when you do it, I think parallax would be nice and don't draw anything that can mix into the action, like stars that look like bullets or asteroids that look like enemies. Color the objects with more saturation than the bg.

Is the logo really japanese? (Really, I had to look at a chart to 'recognize' the hiragana. Let's not talk about the samurai kanji...) Tip: google for characters until you find some nice calligraphy. If it's royalty-free, take it and edit it. If not, save it and do something based on it. If you're gonna write it, learn how to do it.

Most important: we can only judge it by seeing it in action. My next project will start with circles, triangles and squares while I focus on scripting, so I don't care about graphics in the beginning. You don't need to do something definitive about ir now, but eventually you should improve the looks. So the important is how things work in the gameplay and if it's free of bugs that would hamper it all. Show us a video of your game.

So keep it up. If it's your first project, chances are that we'll not see it complete, but as long as you're doing stuff, that's OK. If you fail, you can learn from it and maybe succeed later.

And Hamstersoft is ok. It's not a mega multinational you're leading so name it the way you want to and have fun. I'm totaly into the WTF!? factor as everyone can see. There's people making money by the name of Naughty Dog...

[Gungriffon Geona]

Why did you remove the picture of the ugly pikachu lookin thing next to the other pikachu lookin thing that was the best picture in the whole set

[ShmupSamurai]

Why did you remove the picture of the ugly pikachu lookin thing next to the other pikachu lookin thing that was the best picture in the whole set

1.) it was a god awful jpg

2.) THey were the samurai piloting the Grasscutter(player's ship, the name is a Usagi Yojimbo ref.), and they're not human, because furries are easier to draw for me.

3.) It's part of the animated intro, so it's not AS important as the actual game.

Oh and:

"Is that logo really japanese?"

Yes, I googled the characters and practiced their form before designing them in TGF.

[Spiegel]

"Is that logo really japanese?"

Yes, I googled the characters and practiced their form before designing them in TGF.

It looks like you separated some characters in two, like the KE kana, now it looks like SHI plus a weird letter J, and the kanji. In order to write in Japanese, you have to learn the order and direction of the strokes. And there are elements in each of them that look alien to the character.

Do this: google for the charachters, copy the most interesting ones and build the logo. If it's copyrighted, edit it until you have your own one (I don't know, paint a new one over the original); second option: copy the characters (as text) from Wikipedia and Wiktionary, paste them in GIMP/Photoshop/whatever and apply cool effects; third option: google for some anime logos, combine the characters as a model and then pixelart your own logo from it.

Also, you've typed the word Samurai with an extra I.

[Herr Schatten]

I agree with the posters above. Definitely go for a lower resolution. It will make learning pixel art a whole lot easier. Otherwise, you seem to have a lot of enthusiasm, which is definitely a plus. You should consider not doing everything by yourself, though. Maybe try to get an experienced artist (and musician) on board. Then you can concentrate solely on getting the game in shape.

[Ixranin]

Well graphics aside, I'm curious what sort of gameplay you're planning to have. All the screenshots really show is that you have an energy bar, "Saber Power".

[EinhanderZwei]

Well graphics aside, I'm curious what sort of gameplay you're planning to have. All the screenshots really show is that you have an energy bar, "Saber Power".

As we all know, the almighty R-Type was once on TG-16, so I guess (suggest?) that it's for R-Type classic or Leo-ish charge attack

[lordgalvar]

I agree that the artwork should be done at a lower resolution. Additionally, the art should have some sense of shading/shape through the use of blending, half-tones, and anti-aliasing. The style, as of right now, seems to allude to the Commander Keen and Chip games for DOS and Win3.1. Also, the background should be black and the ninjas should be dark blue or dark green (lighting can do wonders here).

Anyway, here is something that I threw together really quick based on the sprite size from Grind Stormer for the Genesis. I don't know if that helps.



Here is good resource on spriting:
http://gamesprites.wikicomplete.info/tutorial

One more thing that I noticed is that you used a lot of gray in the ship design; many vertical shooters use colors like red and blue because it helps make the ship interesting, the ship stand out from the background (while not completely contrasting), prevents a "washed-out" feel, and easier to give a sense of three dimensions.

[ShmupSamurai]

NOTICE: Game development delay.

TGF(the program I'm using) decided to throw a hissy fit on Samurai Sabre's mini-boss mid-test run.

As a result, I may be working on another shmup side project until I can get it fixed.

Anyone who has ever used ClickTeam products might be familar with the kind of "fits" these things throw...