Pixelated Art in Online CCGs

[Malagar]

Yeah, I know I posted those pictures already in the main thread about my game. But I would like to gather some general thoughts/oppinions about the style and layout of cards - besides the rules/backgrounds.

So generally spoken: Are pixelated artworks a No-Go in online CCG design? I for myself think: NO! It enables me to rip all my old console game and feed the GFX to my CCG with wonderful effects. A myriad of graphics at my hand - and they all share the "good old style". And to be honest: being a 100% open-source/freeware game, no company ever will care about copyright - will they?

[Tokimo]

I think you should use a - instead of a # for the unit seperator.

I think the 8bit color depth provides an interesting look to it that's not 'per-se' bad. That being sad, the art is CCGs is so fundamentally important. If other people think it looks bad they will discard your game before looking at the rules.

I don't think ripping old games is a great idea (Is that last card a Wily's Castle from one of the Megamans?), but if it's the only way you're going to be able to get art done, go for it.

[Malagar]

well the main reasons why I am going the pixelated artwork route is

1. economical - i dont have a staff of artists at my hand, past ccg projects failed because of the lack of artwork

2. design freedom - take a look at the sprite sheet below. just by re-arranging sprites i can create various artworks/battle poses/events from scratch. it does not take a artist at all.



BTW: All the sprites are from Super Robot Wars / Super Robot Taisen

it will take me a few days to prepare new stuff to show - until then!

[Cyrus]

I really, really dig the art from the first card, but the others fall a little short for me. That being said, art is only important to me as a quick identifier in a ccg, so even if I don't like how it looks, as long as its unique enough to remember so I don't have to read the whole card (or even the name) to know what a card does, its good enough for me.

[reelhotgames]

More pressing than the art in my opinion as a starter is the text - quirky fonts such as this don;t play well on cards per se, look at the original Doctor Who game, it used a similair style and was trash in its format layout because of the font selection - makes for wicked headaches trying to move quickly with such a kooky font - use it more sparingly, maybe for flavor text only or such, something non game imperitive.

As for the spirtes, if it fits the flavor of the game, okay, if its used to be used, and it's sort of meh... then that's how the entire game will come across.

I think under the circumstances you have to go completely kitschy in flavor of the game to make it work... Best of luck

[Malagar]

@reelhotgames im still working on the fonts. everything has to look pixelated. i dont care if it looks strange: this is just a hobby and it will never exist outsite lackey (not being printed).

Here is another mockup of a unit card. the battle system is coming along well, so the most cards i have to show are unit cards.

* Changed a few fonts
* Removed the radar symbol on top left (as seen on the old cards)
* Changed Background (each card type will get its own background)
* removed the brightly colored faction symbol (just unnecessary)




Top Left: Card Cost in Metajoule
Top Right: Card Name
Middle: Picture
Lower Middle: Type, Subtype, Keywords
Right Lower Middle: Set/Expansion Icon
Bottom Left 1 (top icon): Speed Attribute (no icon yet)
Bottom Left 2: Power Attribute (bomb icon)
Bottom Left 3: Armor Attribute (no icon yet)
Bottom Left 4 (bottom icon): Integrity Attribute (no icon yet)
Bottom Right Middle: Rules Text & Flavor Text

Comments welcome! Im out for a few days, Job, RL and working on the rules of this game.

-Malagar

[Tokimo]

The smaller type text and rule text is currently more legible than the card name. Otherwise, looking good (I think this is caused by some of the vertical lines only being width of 1 while others are width 2)

[Cyrus]

I would just change all the fonts to Courier

It looks pretty old-time computer graphics-like to me. And is easily legible. For the card titles just switch on the Lower-Case-As-Caps option (I assume you're using photoshop? I also don't actually know what that button is called) so that the whole card title is in caps, but the letters that would not be capitalized normally are smaller than the first letters.

Other than that I actually really like it. Especially the Super Metroid green super missile logo for power.

[reelhotgames]

Looking pixelated and impossibly hard to read don;t have to be mutually exclusive - the latest itteration looks better though. Cheers

[Malagar]

just mirroring the layout part of my other thread here - latest progress:

* removed a bit of the 2.0 scale pixel artwork, now its a mix of 1.0 & 2.0 scale
* redid the title font (wich will also be used to display attribute values)
* all icons got new backgrounds, nicer ones as i think
* removed the pixelated artwork as i got my hands on a source of real good and high quality artwork now (I am NOT SURE about this one - it is really hard for a hobby game developer like me to get a relyable source of graphics, i could change my mind again depending on the amount of resources i am able to extract)
* 0-9 attribute icons are visible depending on the type of card, so not all templates will be so cluttered like this one (this one shows the maximum amount of attribute icons possible)
* added small frame to the artwork
* and some other changes

[Tokimo]

I like what I see so far. I'd love to see a version with the icons all explained.

[eyerouge]

What you might want to try out, depending on how you rip the graphics, is to use a video filter in the console emulators. I know that for example snes9express (gui for snes9x) allows you to use SAI, Super Eagle etc, which would result in a pixel-free and very smooth looking "moderner" game, with no additional time wastage for you.

I think its used in >> http://xahoithongtin.com.vn/images/diembao/2008_06/14859_1.jpg  and http://www.emunova.net/img/actu/b0bb11fce6ab9241eed448d1d6b589ef.png  ...not very good examples, but the settinsg can be tweaked and ednd result would look much more appealing to most normal players than pixe-graphics (even if i myself love pixels).


Edit: My bad, just saw you ditched the pixels for Homeworld (great game, even in solo mode, and good story telling)