"Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

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Fahnn
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Fahnn »

Joefish wrote: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:40 am Thanks.

I know what you mean - there isn't much contrast between white and cyan. But blue on white is too dark.
I love the screen (lower half), but I think blue on white for the logo in the upper half would be fine. I guess you must have tried it but does it really look that bad? I'm only imagining it but I think it could look pretty cool, especially as it's all fairly bright in the lower half.
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Joefish
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Blue on white is such a high contrast it's hard to tell that it's not just simply black - particularly for just the thin outlines and stipples I've used so far. You need big patches of colour to tell it's blue, when the background is so bright.

Blue on cyan works but as I say, a big patch of any colour in the background messes with any chance of shading gradients. As has been suggested, it needs re-doing, probably with clouds, and/or some sort of geometric background coloured patch behind the text.

If I make it so that it looks like white clouds start along the horizon and bubble up, I could maybe then switch fairly sharply to cyan in the central region of the screen and do the logo in blue on that... But I think re-drawing might still be the better option.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

As for the game, I think I've drawn too many sprites now - I think there's some 12K of sprite data, and no proper levels in yet.
They can't all have 8 frames of animation, as that's 720 bytes for one sprite. I need to cut down! Rely more on the ability to re-colour sprites on-the-fly for variety.

In the top 32K of memory I've got around 9.5K of screen maps and buffers, 1K of variables, 12K of sprites and 8K of code (which is a lot; quite inefficient of me, but then that's down to semi-unwrapped copy loops and all those different firing modes), which only leaves a few K still to go. The background graphics are all copied down to lower memory when it gets going, and I think the level data and enemy path programming will have to go there too. That's another 9.25K of memory of which I've only used a couple of K so far.

At the moment I'm trying to work out if I can afford custom code for the bosses, or whether to implement them as just pathed baddies. I can already cluster sprites so they move in unison, but I'm not sure if that's enough to make for a good boss fight. It'd be neat if the boss can change its pattern of behaviour as it gets near to exploding, or spawn new enemy sprites as a way of attacking you, but I don't know if I can afford the code space. Then again, adding too much complexity to the baddie pathing so it can do bosses may take up more memory than just writing custom boss code... :geek: :?
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by redballoon »

Joefish wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 2:15 pm 'Ghibli'? Nope, can't say I've ever heard of it, nor been influenced by it in any way whatsoever...
Ahem. :mrgreen:
:D

Anyway, home now. So yeah, to allow me to have things in the foreground that also overlaps the sky (as well as used as a framing device and look good ;) ), clouds starting on the horizon was the way to go.
Image
Image

But I do like that effect (and as said before, being a big fan of the Ghibli background art), I use it in non-Spectrum pixel art, this one being an example.
Image

But if you don't want clouds on the horizon then if you don't go for sky banding and stick to solid colours, then you can try the following
Image

I'm not a big fan of uniform dithering anyway though I did try it in both the Pixel Quest and Fairlight art and hated it even more then tried non-uniform dithering which I liked but felt that it was unnecessary for the illustration.

Ach, anyway, just some cloud suggestions/ideas for you :)
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Yep, the Fairlight one is brilliant. It's a tad blatant around the rocket, but still a great pic! :D
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Yep, the Fairlight one is brilliant. It's a tad blatant around the rocket, but still a great pic! :D
The background graphics from the start of OutRun strike me as similar.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Ast A. Moore »

You don’t always need to have a gradient in the sky, and the cyan can start right on the horizon. Now, this may not be what you’re going for mood-wise, but for what it’s worth, for Yankee, I went for a solid sky with a few clouds thrown in here and there. Granted, it’s supposed to represent the Iraqi Desert, and I imagine clouds are few and far between there. Still, it did give me an opportunity to use high-contrast colors for the title:

Image
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

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and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by redballoon »

Joefish wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 11:59 pm Yep, the Fairlight one is brilliant. It's a tad blatant around the rocket, but still a great pic! :D
The background graphics from the start of OutRun strike me as similar.
Thanks! Haha yeah, if I was doing the Pixel Quest loading screen now, I’d probably change a few things, the clouds being one of them.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Stefan »

redballoon wrote: Sat Aug 10, 2019 10:40 am
Joefish wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 11:59 pm Yep, the Fairlight one is brilliant. It's a tad blatant around the rocket, but still a great pic! :D
The background graphics from the start of OutRun strike me as similar.
Thanks! Haha yeah, if I was doing the Pixel Quest loading screen now, I’d probably change a few things, the clouds being one of them.
So you're saying that it's not the hilt of a sword embedded in a rock?

Which rocket ship is it then supposed to be exactly?

Bloody artists... ;-)
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by redballoon »

Stefan wrote: Sat Aug 10, 2019 3:58 pm So you're saying that it's not the hilt of a sword embedded in a rock?

Which rocket ship is it then supposed to be exactly?

Bloody artists... ;-)
No. No it’s not.

It’s the rocket ship that I made up! Cos, y’know, that’s what artists, y’know, do... ;)
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by patters »

Joefish wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 2:23 pm The biggest problem I have with it is the inconsistency of colours between emulators and renderings of ZX Spectrum graphics, and across different monitors as well.
I loaded up IK+ the other day and I was wondering why on earth they used bright blue right near non bright blue in the sun's reflection on the water. It appears to spoil an otherwise impeccable bit of artwork but then I remembered that the difference between these colours via a real ULA is hard to even see, and even harder via RF picture on a 14inch TV :)
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Ast A. Moore »

There’s also the fact that the 48K Speccy displays color intensities completely differenly from all the later models. The darker the color, the less of a difference there is between the bright and the non-bright version.

When I was finalizing the loading screen for Yankee, I was doing it on a real Spectrum hooked up to a CRT TV. Boy, was I in for a surprise. Had do rethink a lot of dithering and color/brightness choices.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

OK, latest rework. Removed the title completely for now and tried to add in the other two pilots. This is more like what I had in mind originally. I've detailed the suit and hair in the foreground a bit more too. Struggling with the smaller faces though. Drawing the rockets at angles was really hard too. The white blocky area is roughly where I plan to put big white fluffy clouds, though I'll firm that up once I've had another crack at the logo. If anyone wants to try some pixel work to improve the two smaller faces I'd be glad of any help!

Image
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Ersh »

It's a nice picture! I had a quick go at the faces, couldn't resist laying a few pixels on their hair and bodies as well. You're of course free to keep/modify whatever you like. :)

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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Ersh wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:28 am couldn't resist laying a few pixels on their hair and bodies
Dang it. That’s pretty brilliant!
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Oh that's much better, thanks! Those faces are brilliant; the lowered fringes are a great improvement, as are the way you've done the eyes. The smaller yellow body is a lot better but I know I needed to work on that anyway; it looked like it was turned to the left instead of the right! The magenta suit may have been a bit too shiny at the front on mine so I'll take a closer look at what you've done there this evening. I really wanted the hair to be green there though as that's the character design in-game, but the lack of contrast with cyan is pretty poor compared to the blue. Anyway, the smller of those two rockets is green in the game, and her hair is cyan, but I don't think that's going to happen with attributes, nor on a white background!

I really should have spotted they needed a fringe based on all the animé faces I've tried to find for references, but thanks again, that's great!

Actually, I just noticed that you've given the magenta pilot short sleeves; that's how they are in game, the arms are mostly bare. And it looks much better than my trying to outline coloured sleeves. So it's the girl lying down at the bottom that I've drawn wrong! But I think I'll leave that. I might try it with white for the arm, but I quite like the patches of colour for shoulder / elbow pads for a bit of variety - and the ability to use BRIGHT on and off for shading these parts.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Much as I want to keep this game strictly 48K for original Speccys, I think I'm going to need a bit of code that detects a 128K model and saves the loading screen to flash up as an attract mode...
And make it so the title part is entirely within the cyan background area, so that it can be faded in and out via attributes...
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Ersh »

Great! :) Yeah, I took some liberty with the short sleeves, thinking that it would provide greater contrast between the arms and body, but if that's how they appear in-game then that's even better.

I think you're allowed some liberty with your own work when it comes to colour choices (options really) and the like on the spectrum, so I'd say, just go with what ever you think looks best and it'll be fine.

The girl on the bottom looks great as she is! Perhaps she's sporting a long sleeved suit on her day off. ;)
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Noticed a couple of bits of illegal colouring around the attributes when I imported the changes to ZX-Paintbrush. One pixel in the hair which was easily covered, but the ankle is a bit tricky. I changed a few pixels in the shoulder so there was less magenta in the 'hair' area. But I think I need to re-work the ankle around the attributes. Maybe by adjusting the rocket fin on that side somehow...

I tried green hair and it really doesn't show up, so instead I've changed the other girl's to black. They don't match the in-game characters, but at least there's a difference between them on this screen.

I found that by moving the flying creature up a pixel I could add another character square of white paper, which makes his eyes a bit clearer.

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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by llewelyn »

I wondered why she had a crucifix sticking out of her head! Those are ears? A bit linear sort of straight, hard edged for rabbits ears, aren't they? But then I don't know the game so perhaps they are meant to be like wood. Colour is a bit dark too.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Yep, moved the leg down a pixel and shortened the calf to avoid the corner of the character square with cyan paper. Not perfect but I think it's passable.

Image

llewelyn wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 10:39 pm I wondered why she had a crucifix sticking out of her head! Those are ears? A bit linear sort of straight, hard edged for rabbits ears, aren't they? But then I don't know the game so perhaps they are meant to be like wood. Colour is a bit dark too.
I thought it was clear it's some sort of technical headband with sensor antennae? (I got the idea of angling one down from the two aerials on a Wi-Fi card). They're the latest in Battle Update Navigation Equipment - BUN-E ears.

(I've thickened up the line below where they cross, to maybe make it a bit clearer they're not joined. That's right on the edge of what's possible with the attributes though as there are four colours vying for that space!)
Last edited by Joefish on Thu Aug 15, 2019 11:54 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

I did try and make the Hoon (the Pokémon-thing) bigger, based on a teddy-bear, and covering more attribute squares. But I think it spoils the overall look if it's too big. And it pushes the character further to the right, meaning less room for a title.

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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by llewelyn »

I beg your pardon. Actually they're jolly good now I know what they are.

(I particularly like the girl on the vibrator chasing the teddy bear genie!) GRIN

Don't get mad Joefish I'm just having a leg pull is all. Its better than I could have managed considering the Spectrums graphical limitations.

I think your artwork is bloody excellent, especially the rocket blasting off, the Fairlight and the clifftop scene is my favourite because of the composition and colour.

I am an artist too so those are genuine appreciation.
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Joefish »

Um - those others weren't mine! :? :mrgreen:
(My ZXArt link in sig).

And anyway, they're rockets! This isn't Parodius you know!
Earthworm Jim never had to suffer this kind of bawdy insinuation! :lol:
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Re: "Go-Go BunnyGun", first screen grabs.

Post by Ersh »

Sorry about the illegal pixels, should've double checked before posting. Your modifications are spot on though, looks really good to me.

The big Hoon looks good but I think the size of the smaller one works a bit better. Also like its new eye-spacing and the use of white for its face features.
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