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Old Skies (Dave Gilbert)

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follow the link to his twitter account/post

     
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I’m guessing they felt pressured to “upgrade” their graphics style to HD by the “pixel art sucks” crowd. I can’t say that this particular style they’ve chosen is unequivocally bad because no doubt others will like it, but I can say it’s not to my taste.

     
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Luhr28 - 22 September 2020 03:11 AM

I’m guessing they felt pressured to “upgrade” their graphics style to HD by the “pixel art sucks” crowd. I can’t say that this particular style they’ve chosen is unequivocally bad because no doubt others will like it, but I can say it’s not to my taste.

Yeah. Of course the final graphics can still change or improve (the hashtags #stillnotfinal #seriouslynotfinal LOL! Laughing), but in some of those screenshots the background and characters don’t match at all!

At least in one of those screenshots the background looks like a water colour painting, with no strong lines at all, but the characters look bulky with very strong shades and everything. The classic pixel arts was good - backgrounds, objects, and characters all fit in seamlessly.

And just to point out, you can have pixel arts and still do it in HD, so if they just wanted to go 1080 there shouldn’t be a real reason to change graphical style just because of that. Just create pixel blocks instead of individual pixels, that’s what others are doing too.

     

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Luhr28 - 22 September 2020 03:11 AM

I’m guessing they felt pressured to “upgrade” their graphics style to HD by the “pixel art sucks” crowd. I can’t say that this particular style they’ve chosen is unequivocally bad because no doubt others will like it, but I can say it’s not to my taste.

I don’t mind, though their pixel art games look amazing. I’m going to get used to this art style, too. As long as the game is good, the graphics aren’t that important to me.

     
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GateKeeper - 22 September 2020 04:50 AM
Luhr28 - 22 September 2020 03:11 AM

I’m guessing they felt pressured to “upgrade” their graphics style to HD by the “pixel art sucks” crowd. I can’t say that this particular style they’ve chosen is unequivocally bad because no doubt others will like it, but I can say it’s not to my taste.

Yeah. Of course the final graphics can still change or improve (the hashtags #stillnotfinal #seriouslynotfinal LOL! Laughing), but in some of those screenshots the background and characters don’t match at all!

At least in one of those screenshots the background looks like a water colour painting, with no strong lines at all, but the characters look bulky with very strong shades and everything. The classic pixel arts was good - backgrounds, objects, and characters all fit in seamlessly.

It reminds me of anime, maybe because the background artist is usually a different person from the character artist, and maybe also because of the watercolor. But those artists are very skillful.

The character design in this is very simple and cartoonish and I think it would be more pleasing to the eye if the backgrounds were too. The closest I can think of to the characters is something like the King of the Hill cartoon series, where the backgrounds are much simpler. Maybe their intention was to keep a similar style to the Wadjet Eye retro games but in higher res, and they have achieved that to some degree.

     

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Wasn’t their original intention to make a “2.5D adventure” with 3D characters? This would explain why they ended up with pre-redndered backgrounds and high-res 2D characters which still look better than their original 3D models. I agree that pixel art looked way better.

     

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I like it well enogh

     
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His artist is currently working on another game. Those are early test images.

     

An adventure game is nothing more than a good story set with engaging puzzles that fit seamlessly in with the story and the characters, and looks and sounds beautiful.
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Doom - 22 September 2020 08:01 AM

Wasn’t their original intention to make a “2.5D adventure” with 3D characters? This would explain why they ended up with pre-redndered backgrounds and high-res 2D characters which still look better than their original 3D models. I agree that pixel art looked way better.

They were originally developing Technobabylon 2 in 3D but production was put on hiatus because of James Dearden’s health issues. From what I can see on James’ twitter he’s still working on it intermittently. It’s gone through a visual overhaul and might be 2.5D now but there’s not really enough media to tell.

Likewise Old Skies was also going to be a 3D production originally. I originated as a 3D game jam entry that Dave Gilbert created under pseudonym. According to his recent dev stream, him and Ben developed Old Skies in 3D for about a year but it proved too difficult with just the two of them. So they switched gears to a high res 2D game instead.

Looks pretty good so far imo. Backgrounds look phenomenal but the character art could use some sprucing up imo. The linework could be sharper and the hands look a bit off on some characters like the scientist at the bench.

     
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I really like the look, and as GateKeeper pointed out, it’s #seriouslynotfinal. The character art will get more work.

     

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PlanetX - 22 September 2020 01:30 PM

Likewise Old Skies was also going to be a 3D production originally. I originated as a 3D game jam entry that Dave Gilbert created under pseudonym. According to his recent dev stream, him and Ben developed Old Skies in 3D for about a year but it proved too difficult with just the two of them. So they switched gears to a high res 2D game instead.

That’s what I was thinking of, I remember Ben posting some screenshots of his 3D experiments. Anyway I’m glad they turned back to 2D.

     

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Doom - 24 September 2020 11:15 AM
PlanetX - 22 September 2020 01:30 PM

Likewise Old Skies was also going to be a 3D production originally. I originated as a 3D game jam entry that Dave Gilbert created under pseudonym. According to his recent dev stream, him and Ben developed Old Skies in 3D for about a year but it proved too difficult with just the two of them. So they switched gears to a high res 2D game instead.

That’s what I was thinking of, I remember Ben posting some screenshots of his 3D experiments. Anyway I’m glad they turned back to 2D.

Interestingly enough Dave just did a devstream showing off the initial 3D prototype for Old Skies.

     
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Luhr28 - 22 September 2020 03:11 AM

I’m guessing they felt pressured to “upgrade” their graphics style to HD by the “pixel art sucks” crowd. I can’t say that this particular style they’ve chosen is unequivocally bad because no doubt others will like it, but I can say it’s not to my taste.

I think it’s appealing at a glance. It fits the theme. However, the test lies in when stuff starts moving. I will find beauty in most styles, but what really grinds on me is if it doesn’t flow in animation. Does it clash with the background?

Thimbleweed Park was a neat game. With that said, I had an OCD meltdown with the way it moved. The scale of character. The background settings and how they accentuated the characters. I know it was intentional but as an OCD sufferer it hurt in my stomach.

     

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That’s a very apt point. Do you anticipate, looking at the screens, that the animations will be very good? The way the characters are drawn remind me of so many games which have only a few frames, maybe 2 or 3 for every action. So you see characters talking and there’s one frame for the mouth open and another for it closed. Compare this with some of the better pixel art where you generally get a lot more frames.

     
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The one animation Dave shared on social media has decently fluid motion.

It’s wait and see on the gesture, walk cycles, expressions, etc but it looks like they’re aren’t going for a 2~3 frame choppy style.

But again, wait and see.

     
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PlanetX - 25 September 2020 03:59 PM

Interestingly enough Dave just did a devstream showing off the initial 3D prototype for Old Skies.

That was a pretty funny video Smile But yeah, that 3D… wouldn’t work.

     

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