Month: February 2016

So, here we are again. A little refresher for everyone who just joined this small article series about pixel graphics:

In Part 1 and Part 2 I talked about things that really irritate me in a number of current games that use a pixel art style to appear more retro.

Today in Part 3 I’d like to talk about a couple of other smaller things that bug me, examples of games that do it mostly right and thoughts about my own games I’ll eventually get around to creating. *ahem*

Of course everything in these articles is my personal opinion and doesn’t extend to all games that use a pixel-art style.

Pixel Graphics for the lazy

I’m not criticizing small development teams with little or no budgets if they are honest and try their best. Not everyone can afford skilled artists or sometimes a single skilled artist, so the game probably won’t have any good graphics and that’s fine.

Continue reading “Pixel Graphics III Finale”

Last time we talked about how resolution and scale, as well as modern effects can make a pixel art games visuals look weird.

For me, consistency is very important. Choosing any visual style is a commitment to stick to that style and try to make all the elements fit together. While you want certain visual elements to stick out, you don’t want them to stick out because they don’t match the overall theme of the game.

In Part II of this article, I’ll talk about a couple more things that really bug me whenever I see them.

Continue reading “Pixel Graphics Part II”

For quite a while now it’s been the practice of many smaller/indie developers to feature low resolution pixel graphics. This is both an aesthetic choice and a matter of resources as a lot of developers can’t afford to create the visuals of big budget titles. So they go the pixel-art route instead.

In general, I really like the idea. I grew up with the 8-Bit and 16-Bit consoles and I get a lot of enjoyment out of this style. IF it’s done right.

Now, I assume that pixel graphics are chosen to emulate a certain level of technology, like the SNES, to speak to people like me, who like the style. I’m also talking specifically about games that use lower resolution graphics and not 2D in general.

Another disclaimer: Nobody’s perfect and while this, and probably the next, article talk about “mistakes” when making these games, I’m just speaking for myself and my personal preference. As a developer you can do whatever you like and I’m sure most people don’t mind the things I might complain about or maybe they even like them. A lot of developers might also have legitimate reasons to forego a more accurate style.

Here we go!

Continue reading “Pixel graphics: Do it right or don’t do it at all”

These days games are still improving their graphics and everybody involved is doing their best to produce better visuals every year. New GPUs get released on a regular basis, new console generations have much more graphics capabilities than the previous one and developers are doing their best to make games look more realistic by using better textures, shaders, animation, higher poly-counts and more.

So far, we didn’t reach a limit yet. Games still don’t look like real life and although it’s become much harder and especially more expensive to create the best visuals possible, we’re still making progress. Slower progress than 20 years ago, but still progress. When (or if) we finally hit the limit and if it’s photorealistic graphics or something else and what will happen then, we don’t know.

I propose a different scenario: What if graphics in games had already reached their limit long ago? Imagine if SNES 2D, Saturn 2D, PS1 3D or PS2 3D would have been the best we could ever dream about? I would like to explore that idea further.

Continue reading “Graphics and Games, “what if” and relativity”