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Posted: 02 Dec 2007, 12:19
by Saphy
Platyna wrote:
Saphy wrote:
Platyna wrote: That, actually was the issue I was talking about, but your and Crush's posts sounds like: "we can either have chaos and sucky stuff that looks from taken from other games or design by comitee".

Oh my, oh my, all our characters and NPCs has to be based on that big eye anime alien, because otherwise the world will collapse!
Well, the NPC should be changed if they stand out like sore thumbs among other objects.
I think they are nice.
That's why I said "if".
Platyna wrote:
Platyna wrote: Does it? So, what do creates the illussion of fantasy world for you? Reality taken from Orwell's 1984 or this one taken from "Equilibrium" movie? Filthy unitarism.
This is pseudoscientific gibberish. Is it supposed to prove, that if I wear victorian style jewelry to modern Matrix-like clothes (and I love doing so) is wrong?
How does 1984, Equilibrium, Matrix and Victorian relates to your points?
I hoped that I have stated my points clearly even when I dared to use some metaphores and parallels to do so.

Regards.
Metaphors aside, I couldn't really understand what is your position. You don't seem to disagree with Jetryl, yet you are calling things gibberish and flithy? I don't get it.

Posted: 02 Dec 2007, 15:36
by Rotonen
Wow, some heavy and relevant stuff here.

Firstly, I understood the question as being about a theme as "style" and not "a set of pixel art techniques we should set in stone and use for consistency". People seem to be understanding this differently and this is causing some friction here. Clarification from all involved parties would be appreciated.

Yes, AFAIK we have agreed on some guidelines for the set of techniques and major stylistical issues and these should be refined further to allow greater efficiency in our working environment. This should not limit the creativity in any way nor create clone-stamped environments.

The critical mass for concentration on talent has been reached and there are enough active people these days to start to organize ourselves better. We should have a task tracking manager who would have more time than I do these days. Some actual competence beyond strong opinions and the always negative "manager from hell" approach would not hurt either. We could also just finally start to properly use the web based task tracker.

Sorry for the relevant-ish off-topic.

Posted: 02 Dec 2007, 20:28
by Dave
What is the unified theme of Mana World's art intended to be? What makes it uniquely Mana World, instead of %insert name of existing CRPG/MMORPG here% ?
It's ridiculous that this (..interestingly worded :? ) question turned in to such a quote-slinging argument.
Okay. I won't worry about fitting into any particular style when I create some sprite examples, then.
The guy just wants to show off his ability. At this point, I figured the thread would have stopped upon its own momentum, but it was allowed to turn in to this squabbling mess? Instead of allowing such a degradation of focus, trash-talking the current playerset's appearance and simply taking things WAY too personally, why not make some productive suggestions for how the "theme" of the game can be improved?

It's been long established that we all have different opinions about how all of this should look, but something that was also established some time ago, is that we don't want the game-world to reflect a lack in cooperative vision.

The mantra for the design of the official server should be, "You can never please everyone."

Posted: 02 Dec 2007, 21:18
by Matt

Posted: 03 Dec 2007, 01:40
by Dave
:lol: one of the things that I removed from my last post before submitting it, was a line that read: "Ignoring graphical consistency is how we end up with cruddy game-worlds like Stendhal and most of the Graal playerworlds."

..but boy am I glad someone else pointed it out. ;)

Posted: 03 Dec 2007, 01:46
by Crush
MY EYES! MY EYES! RIP THEM OUT! RIP THEM OOOOOUUUUUT!
*ahem*
I mean the visual quality leaves room for improvement. My favorite screenshot: http://arianne.sourceforge.net/screens/ ... endhal.jpg
There is just nothing that works on this screenshot. Some kind of wall/hedge combination seen from a 45°angle perspective next to trees seen from side perspective. The almost photorealistic tree surrounded by mono-colored grass and walls. A building that got an average level of detail at the sides of the roof and the windows but has a mono-colored front as if the artist were just in the middle of adding detail to his rough shape and then suddenly lost interest in it. Blatant mapping errors where the wall/hedge abomination meets the wall of the building. And in the middle of all this some tiny 8bit generation sprites upscaled with HQ2x so that at least their size fits into the surrounding.

But it would be unfair to the Stendhal guys when I would not mention that this screenshot is quite old. When you look at the more recent screenshots of Stendhal you will notice that they improved their selection of graphics: http://arianne.sourceforge.net/

Posted: 03 Dec 2007, 14:09
by Dave
Crush wrote:But it would be unfair to the Stendhal guys when I would not mention that this screenshot is quite old.
That's a good point. Something else that's relevant to the end of this discussion, is that the basic goal of the Arianne/Marauroa project is similar to TMW's; something free, designed by volunteers. Their slowly improving quality of graphics could be seen as a sign at how gradual the entire process can be.

The similarities should probably end there however; Stendhal has taken the better part of a decade to "accumulate" its graphics.

Posted: 03 Dec 2007, 16:51
by AxlTrozz
IMHO I say may be we drag our time in this topics and if you pay good attention just really a few contributions in graphic development has been done, my concern is that while we are so deep involved in this matters just a few of us are really trying to contribute to the real pixelart evolution of the game (pixelart, suggesting, helping others), So I would suggest something more like a "Show your talent" thread instead of this, and that thread could help a lot to put our skills together and see how to combine these skills or improve them