Zero's art

[Zerovirus]

Finally finished this thing. I think it's my biggest project thus far.

[Dunno]

I wish we had a jaw dropping smiley. For now I'll have to do with WOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAH and

[Golden_Soldier]

I would totally play that game

[Neoskel]

So the game is about Leo going around and murdering all the other signs of the zodiac?

You're a Leo aren't you.


Anyways cool image, though it wouldn't work terribly well as an actual game. I think it would work better if the 'interface' elements used a different palette than the background. I'd expect that stuff to be more of a purple like the player character there and as it is now it blends into the background too much for something that important. The boss critter there and the projectiles should probably also stand out from the background more than they do now. Also the minimap should probably be angled to same as the playable area to prevent confusion/frustration.

The below is spoilered for massive overthinking on theoretical/apparent gameplay elements

Spoiler:

I don't really see how the player is supposed to fight this boss. The interface implies that the player character's skillset is geared more towards fighting enemies that move around, while this is an apparently immobile boss which shoots (homing? the minimap implies so) projectiles from a distance. That kind of attack wouldn't really work on a player character that does all his damage in close range, so the boss must have some sort of push-back attack of some sort to keep the hero downrange (the purple bar under the boss' health?). I guess the fight would be the hero dodging missiles to get into range then spamming attacks until the boss pushes him back then stat over while trying to get there fast enough to outrun the cooldown on the push-back. Doesn't sound terribly fun unless balanced properly. Also, this seems kind of strange in that the battle area doesn't seem to be enclosed in any way to prevent the player character from just skipping this boss by going down the stairs.

Anyways, don't read too much into the criticism, it's all more of design criticism than art criticism and you just made the image for fun/practice and not as an actual game design if i'm not terribly mistaken. Good stuff, keep on being awesome etc. etc.

[Zerovirus]

Actually, I'm Aquarius. We weren't allowed to pick our own zodiac signs, because then everyone would have gone for the more easily aquatic-ized ones- aquarius, cancer, capricorn, and scorpio.

And you're right, on a second look I have no idea how this battle would go either? Maybe you smash the glowy orbs? Maybe the snake will move around a bit because hey it's a snake it has lots of movement? I didn't think much beyond how I could shove as much cool-looking stuff in there as I could.

I did plan to have like two summoned lion familiars, but that plan didn't really go through.

Anyways, based on suggestions at Pixeljoint, I revised the palette slightly so the orange is more desaturated. Won't be uploading that edit for the contest unfortunately, though I do think that it's a noticeably large improvement.

[Frogger5]

Woah, man, where the hell did that come from? I am in awe.

[Shinobody]

Dunno, orbs around certainly look better, in hypothetical gameplay means - they distract player less, and look more as "background terrain". On the other hand, it looks worser on "main" orb beneath the boss (which seems important), as it does on skills buttons, since it doesn't say "interactive/important" so much...
Of course, this comment is useless and anti-important, since it is Pixart STYLISED as game, not design for game (and adding one more color wouldn't improve it graphically, of course, and this version in fact does look better than the other.)
Apart from that? Awesomeness. (In fact, I tried to post here that doesn't just say "Awesome", since "Awesome" is default state of any Zero's art...)

[artisticdude]

Nice!

Reminds me to try and do something larger than 72px72p sometime... And I'm soooo envying your skills with rock formations... been experimenting and failing with that for some time myself.

That being said, the perspective of the flat rocks (where the character is walking) seems to change in the transition from the foreground to the background. If I look at the flat area by itself I don't see anything wrong with it, but when you look at the piece as a whole I can't shake the impression. I'm unable to say why that is... Other than that, I think the piece might be even better if there were a slightly more prominent secondary light source, but that's just me.

EDIT: thinking on it some more I get the impression that the foreground is more of an isometric perspective while the background seems more like 'vanishing' (3D) perspective. Could be wrong on that though.

[Zerovirus]

@artisticdude: Background does seem to be slightly side-view, as most traditional platformer games have it, but I think the issue is negligible.

This faction tree's about finished; time for me to actually learn WML, I guess. Also gotta get around to fixing up the palette to get rid of the foggy shadows effect mentioned a few pages back. Faction ideas in spoiler.

Spoiler:

The Faction flavor of the Jade Alchemicals, insofar as it relates to actually playing them as a faction in Wesnoth, is Militarized Transhumanism.

As a species of transhumanist consciousnesses, each body they use is independent of their consciousness; bodies are disposable, though resources still limit how fast bodies can be produced in wartime. Their technology is heavily linked to the availability of the semi-precious stone Jade, which is a great conductor of soul-energy (a concept taken from chinese mythology). Most of the Jade Alchemicals are synthetic consciousnesses, as producing a mind is remarkably easy after a few centuries of dissecting souls to figure out how they work. As both mind and body can be synthesized and replaced easily, every Jade Alchemical is, in a word, highly expendable.

The great archive of the collective Jade Alchemical population's consciousness is enshrined in a floating city rumored to exist over the far western ocean, though no conclusive evidence exists of this, as torture is ineffective on mass-produced bodies that can be abandoned by their mental inhabitants at will.

The society of the Jade Alchemicals is rather cloistered; each member of the Jade Alchemical, while recognizing the importance of their collective civilization, tend to remain to themselves. The Jade Alchemical generally prefer to keep their disposable bodies in cryostorage while they focus on matters of the mind. Mental arts, reasoning, debate, and ethics are favored pastimes among this almost purely mental race. A few deviants set up entire simulated landscapes to adventure in, or focus on visual and physical arts instead of the more common mind-games favored by a majority.

One interesting feature of the Jade Alchemicals' culture is that, while most Jade Alchemicals are pacifist if only because they regard the physical world and other living beings as insignificant and lowly at best, some of the Alchemicals prefer the visceral, physical thrill of battle. The Jade Alchemicals do not consider any other sentient races as equals, due to their possession of mundane, earthly bodies; thus, the Alchemicals with a taste for war are not legally restrained from murdering and destroying in any way. Some see this practice equivalent to the human practice of hunting wild animals, while others see it as a natural way for the 'superior mental master-race' to show their domination of the world.

In organized warfare, as contrasted to the skirmishes perpetrated by individuals of the race, the Jade Alchemicals adopt a devastating strategy. Their golems, controlled by more warlike minds which have decided to forgo bodies of synthetic blue flesh in favor of the raw power of metal and stone, power themselves by consuming the souls of enemies and storing them in the large crystals protruding from their back. These chained enemy souls are consumed as fuel over a long period of time, in order to power the huge war golems. Naturally, the process is unspeakably painful, though the Jade Alchemicals do not fret that they are causing pain to a 'lesser people of the meat'.

The Jade Alchemicals are a rare sight on any continent, but they are agreed to be a collective enemy of all the sentient races of Wesnoth. However, their mind-based immortality makes them a nuisance that cannot be stopped by the simple devastation of their bodies, and thus far all the armadas sent to bring their sky-city crashing down to earth once and for all have met with failure or worse.

Spoiler:

The gameplay of this faction is intended to be similar to a combination of undead and rebels; the faction is mostly neutral, allowing for independence of ToD, while several of the units draw their stats from equivalent undead units. The most obvious parallel to the undead playstyle is this faction's heavy reliance on Dark-Adept-equivalents for granular ranged damage.

The first line splits up into three trees, one of which is an archer, but I don't think that's enough. The other two lines are respectively melee and magic. However, that's not important, as with faction balancing, the lv1s are the most crucial. That Lv1 will probably have all three kinds of attacks, making it sort of a mixed-fighter style unit.

The next line of units, the golem-guys, go all the way up to lv4. They're the usual heavy-armored granular damage two-hits-melee tank units.

The upper-righthand corner has the main fighter unit line, which is pretty simple. I'm probably going to base their stats off the spearman. Generally, I expect this unit and the first unit-line to be the most frequently recruited.

And then we have the flying eyeball bot which is definitely not influenced by steelhive in any way. It upgrades into a versatile fighter of all ranges at high levels, but it requires a lot of XP to level, along the lines of the loyalist mage. At low levels, it's basically the primary scouting unit of the faction.

The final line is a heavy-ranged line which gains leadership at lv3. The stats are based off of the dark adept, except with damage types flipped to the corresponding arcane and fire types; as with the dark adept, these units have no melee at level 1 and thus are glass cannons. While all other units of this faction are neutral, this unit is lawful.

The bottom left corner is a unit that I may or may not finish drawing and include in the faction; it'd play a similar role as the Walking Corpse, complete with the ability to plague enemy units into more little crystal-versions of itself.

Maybe I should make a more traditional archer line, because right now the primary ranged damage comes from units with mockup stats similar to the Dark Adept; glass-cannon damage. Even the Undead have a skeletal archer; you can't use dark adepts all the time, they're not survivable enough.

[Drakefriend]

Sounds quite interesting, but I think the Level four Golem looks overdone, even considering we are talking of a level 4. Maybe make him slightly smaler?

[Dixie]

on faction (off topic for art):

The concept is interesting. The sprites are certainly pretty cool, in any event. I might be interested in helping you with the code part of the faction, if you'd like. Doing units/factions is not too big a strain and I've done it a few times, so...

As some brainstorm/ideas (if you're interested), it could be cool to think a few special abilities based around death, since souls are such a central point of the faction. An idea would be some kind of harvester unit. Since jade is so important to them, any jade unit dying adjacent to a harvester could have the harvester recuperate some of that jade (i.e. some gold is generated). Any stat increase from killing an enemy could also work: Max HPs, heal, damage, or even a charge-up attack of sorts... Maybe even steal a part of a killed enemy's xp or some gold. Whatever you do, the idea of undead-like in regard to melee unit resistances and DA-like units is cool, but some sort of gimmick to differanciate them would be needed, imo (appart from alignment). And I'm not sure about the plaguing unit, I'd rather make it a support unit of sorts. Other things to factors are the price-range (especially the price of the core unit(s) ), and the number of available recruit: 5 is generally the most inflexible factions, some (in mainline) go up to 8, the average being around 6 - 7 (I don't remember exactly).

Anyway, ust brainstorming stuff. If you'd like me to help with the WML, I'd be happy to just do whatever you ask me and not nag on anything, since it's your work, after all. I can still provide comments and ideas if wished, though

[Zerovirus]

I've been trying to stay away from complex WML ideas and custom abilities because I know where my limits are for WML coding and custom abilities is not within that limit

I'd love help with the coding to make some of my more far-fetched ideas for the faction possible though!

@drakefriend: NEVAAAAAR

I like the overdone-ness

[8680]

I too would be willing to write custom abilities of any complexity, as long as you don't mind my using Lua.

[Shinobody]

@Drakefriend: Asking Zerovirus to don't overdo is like asking wind to stop blowing.
Ah, and current Fire Dragon sprite has set top size limit for 5 and 4 levels quite high. This Golem is maybe like half of it...
(Besides, Wesnoth surely lacks giant magical robots...)
Wait, so this faction will be (hopefully) made by Zerovirus AND Dixie...?
That's to good to be true.

[Zerovirus]

I actually used the Fire Dragon as a size-reference during the initial sketch process. This sprite, unlike my others, was made by me scanning a page-large doodle I made into the computer, stretch-skewing it a little, and then proceeding. I even considered making it about 25% larger, due to comparing it with the Fire Dragon!

I suppose it's a good thing that I didn't do that