Large update; there's something I've been considering changing for a while now, but didn't get the willpower to do so. After seeing that in 4 colors, that some beautiful tiling I did is wasted because you can't always tell differences between close-gray colors, I decided to change some things around. Here's a hint of what's basically going on (*pssst, it has something to do with colors*):



This large change affects the sprites, and I think gives them a lot more potential personality. Yes, it changed Trio from having tights and a mullet to wearing shorts and an orange hoodie. Looks a lot less like a douchebag, and admittedly a lot more like me Any opinions, or ideas on the palette choices (It's an original blend of colors inspired by the GBC's native palette)

Coding is also going great, and a lot of other ideas have changed. The screen size is now a bit smaller; 14*21 tiles for the screen is just obscenely large and distracting, not to mention a lot of work to produce nice-looking maps. I think the size is most likely going to be 320*480 now, with 8*15 tiled large screens (which leaves 16 "virtual pixel" rows for the HUD at the top), with an actual virtual screen size of 80*120 that is scaled up at 4x magnification. This is close to 50% smaller than before, which actually should look nicer for the intended postclassical-retro feel of the game's mood.

Additionally, until JustCause returns to our ranks, music will be mostly at a standstill, because his music skills are far superior to mine when it comes to composition, and therefore I will designate myself to the tasks I am best with (graphics, coding, stortyline/character development).

As for an equally important but less tangible portion, the storyline is being worked on by me; no play-by-play script has been written yet, but I have started on the main overview summary that will tie it all together. I intend it to have a top notch storyline, rather deeper than Link's Awakening's/ALTTP's, but similarly paced and simple enough to allow the player to not have to think about it too much, except with some various points in the game where one may have to infer significance of events (have to throw some philosophically enriching things in there to make it a-1 super!)

My main focus until late summer will be primarily this; I will likely still be making games/utilities for the Prizm, and will be constantly updating Raptor, but there will be no major spikes in activity during TaNF development.

Edit: for general clarification, since some were wondering if it shifted to the prizm or something, this isn't a Prizm project, it's for the PC.

With my incredibly limited experience, I would simply recommend you change the white color on the water tiles to a lighter blue. The white is really distracting to me.

That's actually a decent idea I didn't think of; will do for sure, now that you mention it

I second that suggestion. You have 64K colors to work with; why not use them?

He's using SDL, I'm pretty sure he's got 16.5 million colors to work with. Though he said it's based on the GBC, and that was 15 bit, so only 32K colors. But he can pick from the full range.

Indeed, I pulled the 64K number from assuming he was trying to imitate lower-capability hardware such as Gameboys or Prizms.

Remember, the GBC could at one time only show up to 56 colors at once, though usually they used only 10 or 32 maximum, therefore to give the same color-deprived feeling, I must not take advantage of too many colors at once.

The point of having the ability to use more than 56 colors is to use it to your advantage. In this case, using more could make it look better.

Talking to ashbad in IRC yesterday, it sounded as if he wanted to retain most of the look and feel of some of the 8-bit games, and he felt as if he was taking a pretty big step with the addition of color. Correct me if I'm wrong, ashbad.

Exactly correct Kind of hitting on an 8 bit graphical feel, but honestly a lot of the inspiration comes from ALTTP as well, but more so for map structure, storyline, and seriousness of the mood intended.

Well, I've colorized about 50-ish tiles, now, so I'm about 10% done with the entire process... after 4 hours already. I did however add some new tiles during this, so some extra product out of it too. I'm guessing a possible 60 more hours ahead of me for the rest of the tiles in the game to be colorized, adding additional ones, etc. Then 100 hours after that for sprites. I think it's realistic to say this might be 2 months' work to go, but it's totally worth it -- I think that everything looks a lot better now. A small sample, complete with Trio and WIP-HUD layout, in color like it would appear in-game:



I would love suggestions, constructive criticism, or even questions if you have any; if you do, please throw them my way here! I want to get a general critique on the new colors, the palette, the map layout in this, small little nuances (and large ones if you see any, though I hope you don't), etc.

It looks like Zelda. I like it. I'm not too fond of the 0, though--the dot in the center off to the side. It makes it look like two eyes looking at me.

Thanks I actually didn't notice that until you mentioned it; I think I originally did that for somewhat of a scripty-feel, but it does look awkward. I shall change that.

I agree with merth, I like the colors. Sounds like a pain to color all of that. More painful than figuring out the networking to my game

Meh, maybe, but it's actually rather fun I have no qualms doing this, and in fact, it's probably going to be my most favorite part of developing this game, so I shall try to enjoy it as much as possible.

EDIT: zzCorrode has also pointed out that the two stones in the picture also suffer this "look like eyes" syndrome; I'm not in as much agreement as with the 0s, but I do see where he's coming from. I'm going to try and fiddle with them more and see how I can make them look more like stones I'm going for a feel like the stones in ALTTP, FYI.

That map is looking cool! Now you just have to start and make the RPG 3D....

Uh, yeah, sure

Just to make an excuse for an update, I'm now up to about 100 tiles done, 40 or so are new, rest were colorized and tweaked.

Edit: for an actual question, what do people here think about moving water? I'm thinking if I implement it, it would be 2-3 frames with a .8-1.0 second delay between each, and tiles would have a masking color to determine render-time sprite melding, or possibly even layering. Thoughts?

Do it. You heard that from me already. Hear it again. Do it. And again. Do it.

I might have to say adding moving water with the current tiles might add distraction. Personally I would enjoy it more being still.

I think that's a fair point; with mixed views on it, I'm going to conclude that I need to test it out first. I'll try to eventually post some gifs of moving water in action, once I more importantly finish all of the tiles (so, I'll be popping it on almost randomly in about 2 weeks, since I actually might be done with tiles sooner than I thought)