RP's Scenery

[ronpepper]

Yeah, I do enjoy kinda putting them in their place, Nikumanman of Tokyo. (did you mean 筋肉まんマン?)

Ya know this being my thread and all I figured I'd put my "mural" up here while I'm here.

[肉まんマン]

Yeah, I do enjoy kinda putting them in their place, Nikumanman of Tokyo. (did you mean 筋肉まんマン?).

Well then it`s good that you don`t take it personally and become frustrated.

No, I mean Nikuman as in the Chinese meat buns (肉まん）hahaha.
It`s a cheap, popular food sold in every convenience store and I made it my username since I often buy them.

[Reaver]

i really like the temple and the bar

[Liz]

I LOVE the forest scenery makes it look like a wide open area

[Gregdgreat]

These look good guys, Id like to see em used =]

[kuja]

I LOVE the forest scenery makes it look like a wide open area

I totally agree. The bg really gives the impression of an open area. its practically my favorite, second only to the tavern.

[Trevor_Belmondo]

Looks like awesome.

[IrrelevantComment]

Looking at some of those backgrounds, does anyone think it would be a good idea if you could press up rather than just left and right to travel in that direction for a less linear map? ie, 3rd row, left picture. Pressing up while in front of the stone path would take you to 4th row middle picture. Makes more sense that way.

[trunks2585]

Looking at some of those backgrounds, does anyone think it would be a good idea if you could press up rather than just left and right to travel in that direction for a less linear map? ie, 3rd row, left picture. Pressing up while in front of the stone path would take you to 4th row middle picture. Makes more sense that way.

That's the plan actually, we'll probably have some indicator flash onscreen to show you can in fact go that way.

[IrrelevantComment]

Up could also be used to interact with background objects, like the bed.
Anyway, here's how I would map these backgrounds out. Criticism welcome.

[trunks2585]

RP already had a layout that we'd agreed on.

[ronpepper]

In some ways it's similar to a layout I did before, but now the layout is a lil more complex than that:)

@ Ikechi, Kuja, Greg, Trevor, and I/C, thanks, I'm still lurking these days and I do appreciate the comments. I really hope the guys taking up the torch now for the project finish.

[Alcander]

The backgrounds are really good, and judging my the desing and effects I'd say I can make similar ones. I even have a few minor ideas in mind to add to the current stuff.
Well, exept for the hot springs one, I have no idea how that blurry water effect is done, so I take my hat to you RP.
Anyway, if you people want 3d-movement in some places, you'd have to make all the sprites for it. after that movement is a piece of cake to implement.

[ronpepper]

The water effects were just taking a simple white brush stroke and using a blurry edged smudge tool. It took a bit of playing with, but it was fun:) Same for the waterfall, lots of smudging and 3 or 4 different layers. It was a bit of learning-as-you-go there, and in the end when it didn't look *real* enough (for the purposes of a cartoon, I wasn't shooting that high at first) I flattened the layers of rock behind it, copied that into a layer, and gave it a few strategic up and down smudges to give it the faux displacement look. For the billowing steam, I had to use the liquify tool because it was too processor intensive to use a giant (900 diameter) brush on such a large layer using such large strokes. But since it's hard to work with white in Liquify, I did it in black, hoped for the best, and then inverted it. There must be a better way to do that, lol...

[ronpepper]

Oh and Alcander by the way I don't think I've seen much of your stuff (or none really) yet but given your matter-of-fact confidence in your abilities, I have high expectations and look forward to your presenting your work -- when you're ready. Just keep in mind that if you plan to collaborate in order to get it done (as I did) then you know, um, well, you always gotta consider the pros of collaborating sooner than later. Whereas the feedback and critique process can really slow you down, working on your own might result in a lot of work that those who are willing to collaborate on some stuff may not accept. So that slows you down on the back end. It's a two-edged sword. I collaborated early when my first bits were pretty much rejected outright. I think the collaborative effort was much more productive. While I don't have a game to show for it, I think other factors played into the eventual failure.

If you have ideas to add to my works and you wish to work directly with the PSD files, that's doable as well however they are big files and I don't want to just upload them to the board. Lemme know, pm me with your email and let me know which one you'd like to mess with, and I'll send it to you with my ronpepper email account.

[Alcander]

Wait, you used photoshop? This looks like vector art, for the most part.
The ideas so far are for the real-time stuff, like animated background parts,and a few effects. All of that I can achieve by using layers directly in flash.

I didn't show a lot of my stuff for a few reasons, but for the most part I have this 'high standard' complex that doesn't let me show off anything that is (in my oponion) anything less than perfect, however I know how to recreate everything used in the images(with that 1 exception).

I'm confident I can recreate most of that, like I said, and maybe add a few things of my own. Plus since this is a 1 piece background I'd have to make the foreground bits too.
More so, if you take the original LOK it seems there are a few maps/areas that are either missing or could benefit in existing, like a map that shows the doors of the places which you enter(Such as the house and bar) Plus the full throne room could be usefull, since I imagine kings always sit with their backs to a wall, and on some sort of elevaled place, like a platform with steps.

Oh lastly there would be no other choice other than 'early collaboration' for a number of reasons.

[ronpepper]

Yeah, I used Photoshop, it was hell.

You spotted how the throne room itself was not done, only the front half of it..

[TheDaughterOfHades14]

Looks very good, hope you develope something with it.

[Mo_xD]

some of these look pretty good. Cant wait for them to be made into something

[TedFallenger]

Do you intend to use parallax scrolling in these backgrounds? Are they made in Flash or PS?

Considering the high-vertex nature of backgrounds, I think it would be best to keep them as simple as possible in order to make the game easier on the user's PC. The best way to do this is to make anything that can stand it be an image file instead of a set of vectors.