General Screenshot/Movie Thread

Okay. I see. I didn't want the sky to be too dark, but I'll experiment with darkening it for the sake of contrasting it with the foreground.

The dark brown color was due to there only being 2 spaces for shades of green in my palette, but I think I found an opportunity to free up another color.

Edit:
I'll continue to adjust the water's palette as I work on the zone.

 

Awesome work, I really like the way this project seems to be going and your art is looking very clean and nicely put together, so good work on that. If I could offer one small nitpick for something which looks a little off to me, it's the blue line separating the background from the reflection. I'm guessing it's there to help differentiate between the two, and if that's the case an alternate solution may be to add a scrolling effect to give the reflection a shimmer, that way you could vary up that joining line and still be able to see the difference between the top and bottom halves. You could also use the same palette as the top for the bottom and it still wouldn't look out of place due to the effect.

Anyway, just a suggestion. I'll be keeping an eye on this hack, I'm looking forward to seeing what else you do with it.

 

That has a already been done. If you look closely, each line of pixels in the reflection is a little bit to the left or right. The main reason the blue line is there is because the original art for the island from Ecco the Dolphin had it.

Thank you for complement, Stephen.

 

I think that Calvin is suggesting something similar to the effect used in the ocean of Emerald Hill Zone. Making the reflected section darken would give that more a impression of ocean than just a flipped copypasta. Something like this:



Foreground is quite impressive, though. Keep up improving!

 

I think that the brighter orange belongs in the foreground if that darker shade of greenish brown is going to be used for the dirt tiles, but it's easier to tell apart now.
Still a little confusing at first glance, but I may just be pressing start a few times mid-game.

 

Do you have any colours available for a cycle? I think a soft palette cycle for highlights on that water surface will make that look damn near perfect. Well, that and blending that blue line better =P

 

I would, but because the same tiles are being used for both the reflection and the stuff being reflected, adding shimmering parts would require adding a lot more tiles which I would rather use for enemies and stuff. There's also that fact that the palette line that has a palette cycle is different from the one that is used in the backgroud. All that I would be able to do is add shimmering in the blank parts of the background, but it would look unnatural.

 

Another WIP stuff related to Tails... This time mini Remote Robot action and fully edited Caron Forest... Again. :V

 

Finally done.

 

I'm ok with the level layout, but not with the music (yes, I'm gonna criticize my own SMPS from 2015 year) - I hate square wave 1 instrument abuse, same drum pattern and chords I used for that one are annoying for me now, I cannot listen it. I think music needs change, because back then I was too inexperienced and shit with SMPS, nowadays I'm still shit (maybe, don't know anymore, after a lot of mixed feedback). But to summarize - keep working on it, I see potential here and can't wait to see more.

 

Well, sure, the SMPS is old but I waited so long to add it. You could do a remake of it.

Thank you very much! I hope I'll keep working on it.

 

quickly threw this together today

 

Ah, so I'm not the only one modifying the artwork of Green Hill Zone to make it feel more original, this is definitely a nice take on it, very Wood Zone~esque, in nature.
Which utility/utilities are you using to work on the Sixteen by Sixteen tiles; currently, I'm using GraphicsGale, it's been a pain to work with though, honestly need something better for those particular files.

 

Double Post.

Like many other things that I am giving a cosmetic improvement, the Save Select screen in Mania needed more use of its palette, so the lot of the text and numbers, as well as the New/Clear Icon and even the Chaos Emeralds, have gotten some touchups, no more worry of it looking as flat as it used to.
The primary font being used for this is a personalized custom version of The Zana GX Font by ZanaGB, similar to the version that I was using for MIAA 2015 and my IIZ Act III mockups, you'll also see it used in the Heads~up Display and as part of the Competition Mode's Player Indicators.

 

GIMP can save palette indexed GIFs like Mania uses.

 

GraphicsGale can do similar, but it's not palette issues that I am having troubles with, I've already got that down very well: My main trouble is figuring out which tiles make up specific pieces of the level art when editing from the GIFs in the Data\Stages subfolders, as all the art is presented in a partially scrambled order, one tile after another, being shown vertically in the GIF image without a way to organize them to do quicker bulk edits of platforms and the backgrounds; as a result, it's hard for me to immediately tell what I edited without trial and error, having to save and repack after changing one tile at a time to check what I did; not sure if using Gimp will fix this issue but I'll experiment with it if it has liberties to those particular files that GraphicsGale doesn't.

 

Well... I use GIMP to edit the art files, and the "scrambled tile order" problem simply didn't exist for me, as I arranged those tiles myself.

 

Based on that information, it sounds as if it's possible to take the Sixteen by Sixteens out from their original positions in the GIF and put them together in Gimp, as if the parts of the artwork were already a complete piece, kind of similar to how SonMapEd works.
In contrast, with GraphicsGale, I don't have that luxury: Because of the vertical descending order of the tiles all being stuck to the same column, it's not easy to tell what applies to what unless I was told by GG or a utility what part it goes to; the way that the GIFs are set up forces me to edit one tile at a time and "proofplay" (basically Proofreading in gaming form) every single time I make a change to see if I did it right, this is especially a trouble when editing a zone such as Green Hill, where I am using eight shades of a colour on the walls and select objects alone; by comparison, the Puyo Puyo Minigame Mode is a bit more straightforward, even with the same tiling structure, hence why what you see below was easy to make without much hassle.

To clarify, here are some screenshots presenting the way I have to deal with the tiles in GraphicsGale, also showing in~game screenshots with the utmost recent changes (albeit incomplete), as of this post; GG screenshots are in a Spoiler Box due to them being in high resolutions.

Spoiler: GraphicsGale Screenshots

 

Why are the colors so muted and washed out? It honestly looks bad both on paper and in execution.