| Author |
Message |
Mats W (Kålroten)
| | Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 3:44 am: | |
I think that many developers put too little effort in the graphic design of their games. The graphics is uninspiring. |
Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt)
| | Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 8:27 am: | |
>> I think that many developers put too little effort in the graphic design of their games. The graphics is uninspiring. <<
It could be that many of the submitters consider themselves formost to be game developers rather than graphic artists. For similiar reasons, it's not uncommon for software product development companies to have a dedicated graphics department.
That said, I agree that good graphics add to the enjoyment of a game. It could be that in some cases too little effort is put into the graphics, but I also think that there is some natural/learned ability involved. Would you have some suggestions for how one should go about creating more inspiring graphics and do you have in your mind some standards for what constitutes them as well? |
Mats W (Kålroten)
| | Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 11:41 am: | |
Developers should just learn the fundamentals of a graphics program like PaintShop Pro, for instance. It's fun. |
Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt)
| | Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 12:10 pm: | |
I'm curious about your comment. I view the issue as being mainly about one's artistic ability and not necessarily the specific tools that one uses. Are there specific shortcomings in the graphics that you are witnessing that would lead you to believe that using a tool such as PaintShop Pro would correct? |
Matti Wirkkala (Mwirkk)
| | Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 2:09 pm: | |
There's nothing preventing anyone with a little bit of artistic talent themselves, who may be dissatisfied with the graphics they have in the ZoG-hosted games they play, from inserting replacement graphics of their own. They may even want to pass along their work so that others may more enjoy the games as well. We all as creators and players have certainly benefited from the works of others, and will continue to do so... |
Keith Carter (Keithc)
| | Posted on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 12:55 am: | |
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to help some ZoG submitters put together their graphics. In every case the game's developer had already put together graphics as best as they were able (as more of a chore than a joy) and were looking for a graphics boost they could not provide themselves.
A lack of good software was frequently an issue. In a few cases the limitation was knowledge of how to use software they already had. By far it was most often the case that the developer was not sure what direction to graphically go in to get the boost they wanted. Software was not the issue. Their lack of knowledge of and experience with color theory, the RGB color model, shape psychology, graphic filters, vector art tools and raster art tools made a big difference. |
Fergus Duniho (Fduniho)
| | Posted on Saturday, March 18, 2006 - 10:37 pm: | |
I happen to be a ZRF developer who has always cared about good graphics, and I have found that poor graphics can leave me uninterested in playing a ZRF. I focus on Chess variants, and what I've done is make nicer pieces than what come with Zillions and made various boards out of wood, marble, and synthetic textures. I've designed some of my pieces from scratch and made others from fonts, particularly Chess fonts. I normally use Ultimate Paint, an excellent graphics editor that has proven very useful over the years. Beautiful boards are not difficult to make. The trick is to begin with a solid colored template, select a color as transparent, copy the template onto a background image, lift the modified template from the image and copy it back, then repeat until finished. I have used images of wood and marble downloaded from websites for companies that sell wood or marble. I have also used synthetic backgrounds I have created by playing around with the program's filters and some filters of my own design, as Ultimate Paint lets you program your own filters. One good example of what I've described is my marble board for Mortal Chessgi. Some other good examples of what can be done include Eurasian Chess, Storm the Ivory Tower, and my graphics update for Chinese Chess. |
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