The "How can I improve this" Thread

Purpose

The purpose of this thread is to help people who have issues with an asset, and don't know how to improve that asset.

Let's say you have a piece of artwork, but you're not quite sure it looks right. What you do, is post a screenshot or asset or whatever here, and let others have a go at modifying it, anyone can contribute their own skills/ideas onto the artwork to basically try and improve it a little.

Maybe you have a pixelated brick that doesn't quite look like a brick, post the image here (along with a palette if you have one), and several other people can have a go at touching it up, you can then decide what you like better, and use it. It doesn't have to be artwork! It can be music, it can be code, it can be sound effects, whatever you're having trouble with~

Rules

1. By posting any images, music, sounds, codes, any form of assets, you give everyone publicly the right to modify and represent it here in this thread for improvement.
2. Anyone who modifies the asset in question, may only post it in this thread, nowhere else.
3. Anyone who posts a modified asset to help, you do just that, and accept the fact that the "requester" may use it free of charge.
4. Since this is a small collaboration thread on minor assets, understand that credit does NOT have to be given at any time. Anything you improve, you do so at the kindness of your heart, without asking anything in return. The purpose is to help give a little kick in the right direction.
5. Only the initial "requester" may use the improved variations of their own design. Others can contribute, but they may not use what they contributed (because let's face it, that wouldn't be fair).
   
6. DO NOT CRITICISE THE WORKLOAD DONE HERE, this thread is to help the requester touch his/her work up, it's up to them what they choose. If people wanted criticism, they'd post their screenshots in the General Screenshot & Music thread, anyone posting is here to contribute physically, not cower behind their keyboard throwing critique.

Final Note

The difference between this thread and say, the General Screenshot & Movie thread or the Basic Q&A thread, is that the GS&M thread is meant for showcasing various work for "feedback and criticism", not for touch ups, this thread is for literal "touch ups/improvement examples". The BQ&A is more verbal and just general response, and likely gets swamped via code based questions. This one is more aimed towards assets, you physically SHOW your idea on how to improve it, not just type it.

If this thread becomes successful enough, I'll nudge one of the admins to sticky/pin it, but we'll see first.

 

Honestly you can have the pin right now, because this has good potential of being a success.

 

I don't have any content to add at the moment, but I'd like to thank you and the rest of the community for starting to reach out to help those who genuinely want help. This is an incredibly nice change of pace from the air of negativity that's been hanging over the community (and I'm admittedly a part of that) and I hope the scene can swing in a more helpful direction.

 

Any improvement on this?

 

I like the idea, if I can help, I'll try.

 

Suppose to be a crosswalk, I never sprited anything big before, and I don't know how to tackle shading this thing.

Btw: It's for a Zelda Fangame

 

I just so happen to have problems figuring shading for a road myself, I am not sure what's the best thing to do is, but I had an idea and decided to input it to your picture, tell me if you think this is ok

if not I was thinking of maybe making the road less empty, maybe add some small rocks or cracks in the ground

 

Based this off of the one Baraksha did (hope you don't mind). Not my best work, but I'd tried a 3D perspective.

Edit: I guess you could just remove the 3D perspective and have the shading on the sidewalks.

 

Animemaster, I'm pretty sure those are supposed be sidewalks, not walls, since there are crosswalks there.

 

Oh haha derp my bad, disregard then.

 

Music help on this track

Files (FL and midi, mid2smps driver settings included)

 

I have some collision issues with the solidarity on a few types of sloped chunk pieces for Socket the Hedgeduck, and could use some help in improving it.

Attached are files for the level layout for High Speed Zone 1, which will replace over GHZ1 and over GHZ's other level data in a clean Sonic 1 Github disasm. Also attached is a speed booster to replace object $19. Do note that the first set of HSZ levels have more chunks than stock Sonic 1's chunk limit (due to my hack using Big ROM chunks), so you will need to remove many chunks when testing the solidarity in-game to prevent crashing. The collision for the sloped sections of the certain types of problematic chunks are noted in the "Chunk_Templates.txt" text file.

All I'm asking for is help in improving the template text file for each chunk type, so I can use this template file for a reference to improve all of those types of sloped chunks in my other levels.

 

If you provide me an SMPS of this tune, I'll have a go...

 

Here you go, converted with haste, volume goes up at loop start so watch for that. This also made me realize that FLStudio didn't put the loop point correctly in the midi file, so if anyone still wants to jump in on this, make sure midi controller 111 is set to 1 at the end, not 0

 

That SMPS file doesn't appear to resembled the ".m4a" recording you showed previously, the PSG specifically...

Either way, I had a go at remaking just the first bit, and just using FM, I didn't bother with PSG/DAC http://mrjester.hapisan.com/VadaMusic.ogg I could give you the SMPS file, though, I have no idea how you'd incorporate it into your project (if you even want it of course...).

 

So...

 

The recording was done with FLStudio's preview, I've noticed that the midi2smps driver does PSG volume differently from Fusion (to be fair, PSG seems to differ a lot between emulators).
Speed is inconsistent due to the conversion process.
DAC is at a different format entirely, so pitch won't match in-game.

The least I could take from your version would be the patch settings and incorporate those into my project files. I've been having really bad luck when it comes to creating my own patches and I don't know of any other games to take good patches from.

 

Define "Patch Settings", I'm not sure I understand.

Just to clarify, I made that in SMPS using a hex editor, from ground up. Unless I'm missing something?

 

Patch settings, as in, the FM instruments themselves, or voices.

I'm clearly inexperienced with music, sorry for the confusion.