"The Missing Tickets" development thread

[Recca Phoenix]

The origin of these characters was actually a concept for a kid's book/webcomic/kid's comic.....
Jasper and Augustus are actually a border collie and a giraffe (actual stuffed animals owned by a relation and me.....) I draw in a very anthropomorphized fashion.....
The story for this one is it's a mystery game for kids where you have to figure out what happened to 2 baseball game tickets Jasper bought.
The system runs on a variable-based "clock," where every action adds, say, 30 minutes to a "clock" you see in the corner of the screen. You have a set number of hours to figure out what happened (so you can still make the game in time...).
This game will have a lot more story than the last one, and I am going to have lots of humor. I have only drawn Jasper right now, and I might go back and change her hair or give her a tail.
Augustus will look pretty much like a normal guy except with a giraffe tail and little giraffe "antlers."
Other characters in consideration include a black lab, a german shepherd, a dinosaur, and several imaginary....things.....
I'm probably going to draw the backgrounds for this one -_-;;;; because the style is looking very cartoony now.....

[monele]

It retains your cute style ^^ (how could it not??). I'm definitely not against a more light-hearted game.

[Rika-chan]

I'm noticing something about your art style, that I didn't mention when looking at your last game because it was probably something you couldn't change.

Actually, it's not your style I mind, it's the "MS Paint" look. Do you intentionally make your characters look pixellated? (Maybe the word is non-anti-aliased.) You're free to use it, of course, but I think you could do much better. Just my opinion.

[Recca Phoenix]

It's an unfortunate consequence of using the pencil tool in Seashore.... using the paintbrush to outline makes the color from the paint bucket not fill evenly -_-;;;;
I suck at light/shadow/perspective, so I tend to go with the superflat look.....
But yeah, if I used the brush to outline it would look waaaay better.
It kinda ticks me off....
I can still change it but I have done about 1/5 of the chara art for this game already....

[monele]

Tip : keep using the pencil but maybe try drawing at a higher resolution (bigger image, bigger drawing) and when you're done, resize it down to the size you actually want for the game. It should reduce it while filtering, making things smoother.

[Recca Phoenix]

Here is a sample of something done with the paintbrush..... horribly yucky

[ShiraiJunichi]

Have you looked at the Gimp? I've never used Seashore, so I don't know what features it has, but the Gimp may have more (like layers). I think layers would be able to help with your coloring problem...

[Rika-chan]

Well, I'm not a Mac user, but assuming you're talking about this Seashore, then it sounds a lot like GIMP. If so, then you're not using it to its full potential. It should already have layers which makes coloring things a lot easier. I also recommend monele's suggestion about starting with a larger picture and resizing the final product.

[NetGenSuperstar]

Well, I'm not a Mac user, but assuming you're talking about this Seashore, then it sounds a lot like GIMP.

It's basically a Cocoa port of GIMP.

Unless Seashore doesn't use the newest version of GIMP, I doubt using the GIMP would do anything except make his experience more annoying. GIMP will need to load in X11, and that's almost like using Windows in an emulator because of how cumbersome it is.

[DaFool]

Well, I like your artstyle's simplicity, it does blend well together and is charming the way it turns out in your game.

Do you draw directly on computer via tablet? If so, then yes, you'd need to have a higher resolution and use smaller pixel diameters for the paintbrush.

The best result though -- unless you have a wacom cintique -- is to either scan a hand-lined drawing, or else go through the trouble of vectorizing to get the ever-smooth lines.

[Jake]

The best result though -- unless you have a wacom cintique -- is to either scan a hand-lined drawing, or else go through the trouble of vectorizing to get the ever-smooth lines.

I disagree.

Firstly, I really don't see how having a Cintiq is any different to having a Graphire in terms of the lines you draw; that part is down to on one hand the software you use and on the other hand the artist's skill. Buying more expensive hardware isn't going to make you better at drawing or give you a steadier hand, and it isn't going to make your software magically work better. The Cintiq solves the hand-eye coordination disconnect that some people suffer with tablet drawing, but not really anything else.

Secondly, cleaning up scanned artwork is a black art of its own, and in my experience it's just as hard to get decent smooth-line results from a scan as it is from drawing direct on the computer. The best physical-media smooth lines come from pen and ink (because tech pens clog and rollerballs get patchy and textile-nib pens skip over paper texture too readily) and that's not only hard but messy and troublesome.



Personally, if I want smooth lines I set my tablet to 'medium' or 'hard', which steepens the response graph for pressure and means two physical pressures similar to each other map to a much closer line width. I also use Photoshop or OpenCanvas, 'cause I've yet to find another tool which has such good 'hard brush' lines. (And I've tried the GIMP; I hated it.)


Mac software is a tricky issue, though. Personally I use Photoshop Elements 4 on mine; it's often packaged with tablets anyway, and it's not terribly expensive if you need to buy a copy. ArtRage looks pretty good from the demo, but I've not had a chance to play with things like layers (essential, IMO) because it's a similar price to Elements, which I'm already happy with.

[DaFool]

I don't have a Cintiq and never tried one, I was speaking in hyperbole, but geez, man.

You are right though I haven't really noticed that I am benefitting from Photoshop brush lines...most of the freeware out there are almost no better than MS Paint in this aspect.

[Recca Phoenix]

Ok, this last one I colored on a separate layer instead of paint-bucketing. I also shrunk the size after I finished coloring her.

[ShiraiJunichi]

If you would like smoother lines, you could consider using a vector graphics program, link inkscape- http://www.inkscape.org/index.php?lang=en

[Recca Phoenix]

UPDATE UPDATE

This project was sitting in the corner, collecting dust and giving me big sad puppy-eyes for a month or so while I dealt with the outside world and my laziness with regards to its complex programming.

But then I really wanted to get back to it, I missed game-making.... So I changed my ideas somewhat and got back to work. It's progressing well now, although more slowly than DtY because I didn't write 80% of the story out beforehand... Thankfully, though, it gave me room to change the gameplay system in the beginning (I had this part of the game where about 1 minute of gameplay was adding up to like 3 hours of coding and it wasn't even that interesting.)

I started using a different approach when drawing the characters (paint tools and drawing at a larger size then shrinking) and it helped a lot. The backgrounds are filtered photos (photoshop's cutout filter) with the black outlines hand-inked, it matches the game well and it's a lot easier than drawing my own bad-perspective backgrounds. It's a really cartoony game, after all.

The only problem is that it doesn't seem replayable. After all, if you get the suspect right the first time, on every successive playthrough you already know "who did it." This is why I thought of adding an unlockables thing for each ending (good and bad), but I still have to work out the programming kinks for that >_<;;;;
The timing system makes it a little challenging to figure out who it was within the time period, but still you have the same problem if you get it right the first time.
I wish I could implement something that would change the suspect (maybe a seemingly random choice menu in the beginning?) but I thought that would be too silly and require an additional slew of programming later.

Anyway, here's one of the screenshots. (I have changed the fonts since I took this, btw.)