A Dark Game ... Help Requested

[PyTom]

Well, I've decided to put my previous project on hold for a bit, to make a shorter game I can actually finish in a week or two. The problem is, I'm worried that the game is too dark. Not in tone, but in palette. It's largely set outdoors at night, and so I painted some dark backgrounds... and now I worry that they're too dark to show up on everyone's monitor.

Please take a look at the two images linked below.

http://www.bishoujo.us/moonlight/pics/moon.jpg
http://www.bishoujo.us/moonlight/pics/nomoon.jpg

Can you see all of the picture in your monitor at the default settings? What about if you turn the brightness setting all the way up? There's a rock cliff in the upper-right of moon.jpg that's hard to see on my monitors under some conditions.

Please let me know how they look. I need to know if they're okay, or if I need to gamma-correct/redraw them. Anyone with tips on how to fix this should also feel free to speak up.

Thanks!

[Jojo]

I can see the cliff...not perfectly well, but it's supposed to be nighttime. I can tell what and where it is, and I guess that's what counts the most with visual imagery, right?

[PyTom]

Yes... I'm just worried on some monitors, it may not be visible at all.

Thanks for taking a look.

[Sai]

All I can see is:
A moon
Little bit of grey below the moon
Stars at the top, then black area below
Brown strip at the bottom that runs from the left corner and swoops round and finishes somewhere half up the right side
Where the brown strip sort of ends I see green outlining which looks like a bush

So I guess I would imagine the strip to be the edge of a cliff... like standing on a mountain top road that has a bush on it and looking out to the sky.

Maybe that's just my weird imagination and monitor....

After taking it into Photoshop and turning the brightness up on the pic I see it's a nice looking beach =)

For nomoon.jpg I just see stars at the top, black area in the middle and a brown at the bottom in the shape of two bumps.

[Xarbia]

On my monitor with default settings I can only see the moon and a vague grey line in moon.jpg, and nothing at all in nomoon.jpg. When I turn the brightness to 100% I can see everything clearly though (the stars and the horizon and the different tones of blue), so the game would not be unplayable, just require me to change my monitor settings .

[Tage]

I can see both perfectly with what I have my monitor set to all the time (Edit: and default settings too).
Moon, Stars, Beach, Water, Bush, Rock Cliff for first
Stars, Beach, Water, Boat(?) on left, Red and Green Buoys(?) on the right for the second

Edit: I'm using a 17'' flatscreen lcd monitor

[RedSlash]

Too dark on my monitor. Got to crank my brightness and contrast to full to see everything. My mon is color colab'ed close to the sRGB's 2.2 gamma standard.

[BlackSpider]

On my standard 17" CRT monitor I can see the moon, the stars and the beach (yeah, someone said it was a beach, but I'm not sure if it is one myself) in moon.jpg. Though the beach outline is clearly visible. In nomoon.jpg I can see the stars, and two big bumps on the horizon. IMO slightly adjusting the brightness of those two backgrounds could only help.

[Tage]

I'd have to agree. Since it seems like there's differing answers, it couldn't hurt to brighten the images a bit. n.n

[H looser]

I think the colors are to dark.

When you have a lot from these pics it is too bad for the eyes!!!

I can´t see a different between the blue water and the dark night!

Sure it is difficult to see at night but I think you can change this.

[rioka]

NoMoon: Can only see the stars
Moon: Moon and stars plus a bit of the shoreline
Once I brightened it, it looked much better.

Sorry to hijack your thread PyTom but... since we're talking about dark backgrounds, how does this background look to you guys? My game will also be dark and I also need to know how you guys will see it. Thanks! =)

[Yang Sei Fu]

That's why...most Japanese games use indigo and big stars for the night...so people can see.

[PyTom]

Okay, I actually got the suggestion to use indigo/blue tones to indicate night, so while Yang was posting, I was already busy working on it. How's that for service?

I took my original moon image, and gamma-corrected it by 2.0 or so. I then shifted it towards blue for a bit. The result is at:

http://www.bishoujo.us/moonlight/pics/moongamma2.jpg

Is this better? I'm not sure if I can salvage the current drawings, or if I simply have to start over and draw them brighter and/or bluer.

Thanks to everyone who took a look at the old pictures, and everyone who'll look at these new ones. The issue of how colors appear on monitors appears to be more difficult than I originally predicted. I'd appreciate it if people could give me pointers, especially ones that assume that people don't have calibrated monitors. (Which are nice, but I assume most players don't have.)

[Yang Sei Fu]

Refer to the night banner for AIR.

More waves. Wave lines are sources of light.

[rioka]

That looks much better! And the blue actually enforces the night feel.
Btw, dont' forget to make your character's dark as well. It'll ruin the night feel if your colors are all bright and not shaded in for the night scene. Good luck! Can't wait to see your finished game in a week or two. =)