I see no simpler and more effective way of distinguishing foreground (walkable areas and walls) from background than just painting them black. Any better idea?
Written by MM. Posted at 1:28 pm on December 4th, 2009
31 comments.
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the rooms look kind of plain, how about adding some stuff like barrels or so. with them standing on the ground, it could be easier to distinguish between foreground and background a litte.
Why is that a bad idea? (painting walls and ground black) I think it looks good.
Yeah it looks good!
Perhaps you could give it a white outline or something too, but that would probably not blend well with the rest of the art.
Instead of making everything black, allow a “texture” kind of like in soldat where you can set an area (a building) to one color/texture (could be something like brick looking material for walls, concrete looking for floors) but make sure light doesn’t affect it. This would allow for actual “areas” to be in the game not just different backgrounds on blank foreground
How about having the torchlight outline the walkable parts where it touches them?
I agree with anon.
Try it out, see how it works.
Onward! *whip*
I like the black better. It’s quite simple and doesn’t require a bunch of new textures.
I feel the Black looks very out of place and have two suggestions:
Much darker (or lighter) but still procedural textures on the foreground (walls, obstructions, etc.)
Another layer of parallax for the foreground, it should only be slight, but should be noticeable and possibly could make the walls stand out.
What do you think?
Why not just doing like in mario bros games? Put the background with no edges and add edges to the graphics in foreground. No need to put big black edge to the graphics, can be a gray with small thickness. Dunno, maybe you can try 1pt thickness edges for foreground and 0 pt thickness edges for background.
http://www.mobygames.com/images/i/45/25/57375.jpeg
google it dumbass
Yeah, pure black looks kind of bland – or worse, lazy. Just go with a darker/more contrasting texture, and the light-stopping properties should take care of the rest of the ambiguity.
we told you this a long time ago.. anyway the nicer method would be to have a dark and ground-specific texture. If your ever decide to make a real map with ground etc, not always a shitty, empty, same looking, boring building. how a player will distinct what kind of surface is he walking on?? on some foot steps will be louder, some would be penetrable by bullets etc. you didn’t think about that?? everything cant be black.
I really like Guil idea. It’s very simple, but really works, especially on brighter maps (I imagine some maps will have more lights, no?). Combine the edges on foreground with darker textures and that’s it.
If you want my opinion – I agree with everyone else – black looks bland and lazy. My suggestion is this: you have a midground or near background and then you have a distant background. What you need besides just discerning what is a floor and wall is foreground. As suggested, I would go with a darker texture, with a lighter color near the edges – acting I guess you could say as somewhat of an outline.
Foreground elements – if it’s wall or floor, in a post-apocalyptic ruined building, what would you see from a cutaway building? Think of material. Most walls and floors in buildings are usually concrete. Concrete cracks and crumbles. Concrete also has rebar in it. So you could have the illusion of chunks missing and bent rebar sticking out. The chunks would be closer to the viewer. Despite that the game is 2D, you have to remember – we see everything in 3D. Psychologically, when I look at one of your screenshots, despite that it is orthographic and completely flat, I always somewhat tend to feel like the sprite has 2 feet of “z-axis” floor behind it and 2 feet in front (viewpoint of the player). In other words, 2 feet of floor on either side of the sprite. This is my mental image. So if your sprite is standing on a portion of floor that has a chunk missing out of it – if that chunk doesn’t look too big, then it will seem that the sprite is still standing on a solid portion of floor.
Other foreground elements could be like torn sections or pieces of floor. Your sprite alwasy seems to be in a hallway (since the wall behind the sprite has equal depth over the whole map at the moment. In a large building, there are several walls obviously, so you could have pieces of “hallway wall” on the “other” side of the sprite in the foreground. Nothing that would be distracting – it is scenery. And even in front of those bits and pieces of foreground-wall you could also have parts of the floor or perpendicular walls showing through – then that would also add a bit of depth to the map – foreground-wise.
In the background, besides the scenery, you should have some walls that seem further away. Not to complicate things – the game doesn’t have to look 3D, but due to the fact that you have parallax backgrounds and “distant” imagery – you don’t want the rest of the maps to be flat.
This is why I think you’re having this problem. The wall behind the sprite seems to be on one level or layer without any varying depth. The foreground is flat too. They both need some variation in sense of depth – then you and future L-D mappers can play with imagery and textures.
Also, don’t focus on graphics and eye-candy too much. Focus more on the graphic capabilities of the engine. The community can contribute largely to the rest. Remember, what I said before about the community also shaping the game. I have a feeling L-D will be a lot like Soldat in the sense of the community shaping it. Soldat’s community has contributed largely in gameplay (including map layout – which is critical), modes, graphics, etc. Compare Trenchwars gamemode and maps to early Soldat gameplay and maps. It didn’t get to that point right off the bat.
I can already see your maps and future L-D maps, so don’t worry about little things like this.
In fact, now that I’m mentioning graphic capabilities. You could add some depth to the lighting too.. explanation: If there are holes in the floor or small chunks missing – even if the player can’t directly see the hole/missing area – because of foreground or that the hole is closer to the middle or backwall of the floor or perpendicular wall, light could still go through. So you could be walkin down a hallway, and suddenly a few thin bars of light shine through the floor (from possibly old bullet holes) from some noob one floor below you sneaking around with a flashlight. You turn around, take a few steps and lay down a satchel charge, then run, then click and BOOM! Noob won’t know what hit him/her. Hehehe
I like snow POV, you need to make this engine as diverse as possible for us modders. A forground (In front of gostek, eg. barrels, broken walls), midground (Walls, gostek) and a background. And please provide dynamic lighting for destructibility and the opportunity to script our own physics to objects, eg. rope. so we can do swinging light fixtures and such. And that missing floor, and bullet holes mentioned would kickass, even if you don’t have fully destructible walls, just bullet holes would be great eyecandy.
I have a question, will there be ground-level sections between buildings where you have to run accrosd rumble strewn ground to the next spire/tower/building, and enemies can shoot you from the windows?
Or is it all claustrophobic interior combat? It’s just I’d like to see some long to medium range combat with assault rifles and high calibre snipers.
Maybe give it more than two colours?
just fucking put a god damn black outline
how about using a black center and using pavement/ceiling textures on the sides? should look quite nice…
thats a stupid idea dickface
@GD, this blog ain’t flaming each other, so if you don’t like somebody’s idea, don’t say he’s a dickface, maybe tell us why it’s bad. And remember, you can’t see their vision of the idea, he’s idea might be awesome from he’s perspective, but is a little hard to describe. So to put it simply: if you don’t have any constructive criticism, STFU.
Man Gigantic Dick, for your sake I hope you have what you claim to be, or else there’s nothing you could compensate with… at least not you intelligence, that’s for sure.
In other unrelated topics, TLD’s idea is pretty cool, I’d give that a shot. Or you could do that but just texturize the top side?
listen to snow.
lol way to write an essay snow. Print it, turn it in, thats pretty much an A+. Seriously…
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SORRY! I wont do that again. I just wated to see how it looked on your site with the black backround XD. You can delete it if you want.
Back on topic, an east way to differentiate foreground to background elements is that only foreground elements (in this case foreground is the play form you’re standing on) are affected by direct lighting i.e. Your flashlight bathes it in light, and lights from the buildings will directly affect the platforms. Only background light (distant gunfire, lightning, artillery) affects the background, this way it’d be obvious which is which because the light won’t penetrate the floor your standing on.
Black outline looks cartoonish, it kills the realistic effects I’ve made.
Gnoblar: the problem with that is you have to point the light to see what’s there. This kind of kills the benefit of a side-view game where you can see the whole map and can think about the tactics.
Yes I see.
Well then don’t make them black, make them dim or high contrast, not black.
It’s moddable anyway right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_perspective
This is a hard problem. I see countless games that fail at showing the player were he can stand and were not. I’m sticking with black for now.