/v/ - Video Games

>Maybe that way he can focus on coding or music or story.

But pixelshit indiedevs don't do that either, because pixelshit indiedevs are barely employable as designers or programmers.

Because most of the times they haven't focused on music, story, coding or gameplay just like they didn't focus on the visuals, and the entire game was made in a disposable manner to get a few bucks out of the least work possible.

>>16008476

That's quite a generalization, Pixel Dungeon uses that sort of style and although it looks bad it's certainly competently programmed

Theres a place for 2d games still if their well made. It's just the amount of shovel ware that makes people generalize the style. Metroidvanias are having a good era. But for every good one theres 5 bad ones. It's still unfair this is true of every genre with more than a handful of entries

>>16008479

>That's quite a generalization

Sure but so far I haven't been wrong.

>>16008473

I don't care about how lazy the game developer is. I want a fun game.

Because it looks like and is low effort shit.

My programmer art looks better than this.

Also

>Maybe that way he can focus on coding or music or story

>coding

Guaranteed to run in Game Maker, Love2D or at "best", Unity, at 60fps, and be written in pajeet-tier spaghetti code. I know of a game that looks like this, it's called Celeste. Have you seen the fucking player handling code for that? This piece of shit was nominated for Game of the Year, don't forget.

https://github.com/NoelFB/Celeste/blob/master/Source/Player.cs

>music

I guarantee you, at best, they paid Rushjet1 50 bucks to shit out some arpeggio-filled "Mega Man-styled" VRC6 thing, and at worst, it's aids in music form.

>story

Most of these people can't write for shit. Think of the overgeneralizations and oversimplifications they make of complex issues like immigration and foreign relations, that's going to be their approach to writing. Evil man is evil because he's evil. He does the evil thing of being a bad poopyhead. Insert some deep allegory about abortion in there and you have a (((game))).

>>16008991

Per sprite or BG tile. NES limitations are 3 colors and one transparency value per sprite tile, and a maximum of 4 colors per BG tile, but BG tiles normally must be grouped together. Other people could explain it better than me; I just learned it all from hacking a few NES games.

>>16009098 if you are making realistic nes music the triangle wave looks like a sawtooth pattern

>>16008485

I don't know any good pixelshit games.

>>16009430

Monaco.

>anchored

?

>>16009430

Undertale

>>16008473

it looks really ugly

>>16009616

>forgettable game with pixel artstyle that directly makes the game harder to play

Bad example.

>>16008479

<That's quite a generalization

>implying stereotypes are never true

>>16008473

People dismiss that shit because it's lazy. It's perfectly possible to make a good looking game while still restricted by technical or self-imposed limitations or while using a retro art style. That isn't what your pic does though. There's almost no detail, all of the background tiles are copy pasted with no variation in a blocky, linear pattern making it very obvious that the entire thing aligns to a grid.

If a designer doesn't put effort into their creation, they clearly don't give a fuck. If they don't, why should I?

>>16009836

Is there a story behind this?

GOOD pixel art is all about trying to create the best result possible within a set of limitations, whether they were mandated by the hardware or adopted by choice by the artist. SHIT pixel art uses it as an excuse to crap out some barely coherent art assets with minimal time investment. In your example,

>the screen is very low res (120x160), less than even a game boy, yet has a wide range of colors. this odd resolution was obviously chosen by taking a standard 320x240, rotating it, and cutting the dimensions in half to be lazy

>the colors are chosen at random, no attempt was made to keep a consistent palette

>the sprites appear to be around 8x8 to 10x10, leaving the characters so small that they have no faces. this lack of expression is one of the hallmarks of "pixelshit" laziness. who even is the main character? i guess it's supposed to be the guuurl but without knowing how these faggots think, she barely stands out from the "skeleton." in contrast small Mario's sprite in Super Mario Bros. was 16x16, which is about as small as a recognizable character's sprite can be, and they managed to pack an iconic character design into that space

>all of those things aside there is no artistic coherency or style at all. it feels exactly like some retard tried to make his uninformed idea of what a retro video game looks like rather than honestly trying to create a particular manga/western comic book/cartoon/etc. style within his chosen limitations. he didn't even do what most do and copy the style of some actual old games directly and get a derivative but mostly coherent look that way.

He could have used a standard 320x240 or 240x320 resolution and attempted to cram some ok designs with a coherent style into 16x16 or 24x24 sprites. Instead he shat this out in an attempt to get shekels and attention from tasteless no-nothings that only see SO RETRO. It's a fucking casualized roguelike, if he honestly cared about gameplay over presentation he would have used ASCII.

tl;dr it's fucking lazy, it looks horrible, it taints the reputation of a variety of art forms at once, and it makes me angry that retards lap it up.

See vid related for an example of a modern NES homebrew game that uses 8x8 sprites for real technical and gameplay reasons (they wanted to have 4 player co-op and a large playing field, the NES can only display 8 8-pixel wide sprites per scanline) yet looks good because the characters have a recognizable design with many frames of animation, and they went up and beyond to cram as much as they could into the 8 kilobytes of graphics data that their real NES cartridge format restricted them to.

Looks okay, and I'll take it if the game is good.

The game is good, right?

>>16009430

That's because pixelshit is a nonsense term that people apply only to games they don't like.

Everyone who tosses that phrase around has at least one "n-no that one doesn't count though", be it Hotline Miami, Risk of Rain, FTL, whatever.

>>16009802

the artstyle is trash through and through and it legit is hard to get your eyes used to it, I'll give you that, but I'll debate you on the gameplay, the game is actually pretty fun, especially with a full party. I had loads of fun myself.

>>16009966

>reverse granny fetish

My problem is that it's never consistent. Take Shovel Knight where most of the characters look 8 bit, but some obviously have a lot of effort put into them(Larger Sprites like the griffons) and seem like 16 bit characters

I feel like the whole "8-bit" emulation was fine for a few games that were trying to do it as their own unique thing, but now it's just an excuse to be lazy. Why wouldn't you want your game to look like an SNES game?

>>16009934

Those games all have coherent artstyles and look acceptable if not great. They "break the rules" in various ways but it isn't bothersome because none of them are trying to look or play like an actual retro console game. It's a different story when you have shit like OP that is trying to look like a retro game but the dev can't be assed to learn how to do it right and put in any effort. Not to mention the lack of any style or inspiration outside of video games.

>>16009988

There is nothing wrong with "8 bit" if you actually try to make it look good.

>>16010005

How do you know OP's game is trying to look like a retro game though? Pixel art is just it's own art style at this point, I don't think people even think of it as being retro anymore.

>>16009996

I want to smack her right in the bloomers.

>>16008473

I don't dismiss it when it's top-scrolling, but pixelshit + side-scrolling is oversaturated.

>>16009855

I'd argue guilty gear's 3D is pretty convincing though. They even animated them frame by frame like sprites which is pretty impressive.

>>16010029

>I'd argue guilty gear's 3D is pretty convincing though.

I wouldn't, it looks like shit compared to the XX games and I'm tired of the dicksucking around it.

>>16010029

GG's sprites were just pre-rendered/rotoscoped anyway, dunno why they get so much praise.

>>16010047

My mistake, that was KoF I'm thinking of.

>>16009430

Gunpoint was fun

>>16010012

Do you actually believe that OP's game isn't trying and failing miserably to look like a retro game or are you playing devil's advocate?

Because they usually usually such games do not have good music or good story or even good gameplay to substitute for the shit artstyle and uses pixelart only to play off of nostalgia and because the author cannot do any better.

>>16009996

If they're traditional as you say, where is the hole in the middle?

>>16008473

Guilt by association there have been to many low effort cash grabs use this style to bait in nostalgia fags.

>>16008486

Actually not the worst code I've ever seen, aside from the gargantuan number of members, but I can actually see it from a design perspective – many programmers believe that you shouldn't put code in a function or object unless it's used more than once. John Carmack actually believes this. I empathize with it to an extent, but this is the extreme side of the spectrum that starts to seriously impact the readability of your code. It needs some encapsulation or generalization on the ridiculous number of members.

>>16010317

The details of the answers to those questions are all wildly different depending on what you are developing for and in some cases what kind of game you are making. You need a rich understanding of software and in some cases the platform you're developing on. There isn't a magic bullet that will teach you exactly everything you need to know. Making games is disproportionately difficult compared to other forms of software because you need to interact with every single piece of hardware in a computer, and additionally you need to understand the hardware and how it is interacted with well enough to control it efficiently.

>>16010317

>>16010338

This pretty much. It's all about experience and effort. Video game programming techniques are not exactly well documented, easily accessible or simple to understand. You study various languages and engines and experiment yourself to see what works. Peer reviewing is invaluable because two heads are better than one hence why open source projects or teams are often necessary for optimization number crunching, unless you are an autistic savant with a vision like Carmack.

>>16009934

Bullshit. People are perfectly capable of acknowledging that an aspect of a game that they otherwise like was shitty. Especially when it comes to something like the pixelart since it meant they had to look past an initially bad first impression.

>>16010080

No. I think it's made by people who like the simplicity of the pixel art style, but aren't necessarily interested in recreating something from the past.

>>16011252

People generally don't criticise the art in those games. At worst they'll say it's unimpressive but fine. No one is calling Hotline Miami pixelshit, because people like Hotline Miami.

>>16011313

>No one is calling Hotline Miami pixelshit, because people like Hotline Miami.

Hotline Miami is pixelshit. It fails one of the most basic goals for art in games which is to successfully convey what it is you're supposed to be looking at. Granted the important shit, like what are enemies and what are weapons, are recognisable enough so it's at least playable. But the levels are none the less filled with sprites which are undecipherable due to the top-down view.

>>16008986

>complaining about rotated pixels on the SNES

>Maybe that way he can focus on coding or music or story.

But the coding, music and story in indie games is complete fucking garbage so that's clearly not it.

>>16011252

>People are perfectly capable of acknowledging that an aspect of a game that they otherwise like was shitty

>Implying the reverse, that people are capable of acknowledging that aspects of a game they don't like are good

>He says on a board where there are designated "good games" and "bad games"

Nigga. I can derail this entire thread into shitposting by mentioning one game infamous for being "pixelshit". Don't be stupid.

>>16012780

Cave Story is pixelshit though.

A pact with a demon has given you super dev powers for a limited amount of time. You can make one excellent looking game or 10 pixelshit games. Gameplay is generally not affected beyond the visual aspect.

Which do you pick /v/?

>>16012787

I won't make a pact with a demon over such silly things

>It seems to me that is easy to make and allows a good indie guy to make more art at faster rate, so is a good solution.

That's exactly the problem. Doing it fast and doing it right are two completely different things. The whole point of using pixel graphics is to evoke a sense of playing on an old console, which requires paying attention to what graphics on the old systems looked like and what their limitations were. Making your own shitty low-resolution style completely defeats the purpose, and now your game just looks crappy for no reason other than you're lazy.

When done right pixel graphics are beautiful and your game will be perceived as high quality because of it. People are more forgiving of flaws if you do something exceptional, and you're less likely to make mistakes if you're good enough to do that kind of work anyways.

>Focus on coding/music/story

Go fuck yourself. Coding is necessary for every game that exists. Music is nice but not required. Story is definitely not required and is ubiquitous across all mediums. If your game focuses more on story than gameplay you are not making a game, you are making a shitty choose your own adventure novel.

>>16012962

>Music is nice but not required

Name a good game without good music big man.

>>16012997

Castle Wolfenstein.

>>16012787

10 pixelshit games, patch the graphics later

>>16013007

Wolfeinstein is repetitive as shit and worthless if you've played Doom first because it's the same game just improved in every way

>>16009906

>GOOD pixel art is all about trying to create the best result possible within a set of limitations, whether they were mandated by the hardware or adopted by choice by the artist. SHIT pixel art uses it as an excuse to crap out some barely coherent art assets with minimal time investment.

>>16012962

>The whole point of using pixel graphics is to evoke a sense of playing on an old console, which requires paying attention to what graphics on the old systems looked like and what their limitations were.

Please stop with this limitations meme. That is only for people trying to score retro hipster points to boost the sales of their otherwise completely mediocre game. We have no such hardware limitations today. We are able to make pixel art at any size and quality level as we choose, with the only limitations being our own skills and budgets. Today, pixel art is a lost art, and indies have no budget, thus, the pixelshit shoveled onto us. Anyone is free to make a pixel art 2D game as drop-dead, mind-blowingly gorgeous as they want, but they don't. They either: can't, because they have no artistic or technical skill. Or, they don't believe they will recoup the cost of the fantastic pixel art with their hamfisted SJW writing, cringey amateur voice acting, and sterile, dumbed-down gameplay, and rightfully so. It has nothing to do with colors per sprite, or number of bits, or screen size, or any of that shit.

>>16012997

Pac-Man

>>16013068

>in order to properly emulate a console's graphical style (like say, the NES)…

Well there's your problem. Why are you doing that, chief? Developers back then didn't want to make 2-color 16x16 characters or whatever the fuck, they made the most realistic and good-looking depictions of their designed characters and settings with the tools and budgets at their disposal. You can argue that blue-haired plumbers on pink platforms is not very realistic, but it's a gameplay choice, meant for recognition and to pop out on black CRT backgrounds. You often only have to look as far as the box and manual art to see what the devs were really going for. Can pixelshit devs say that today? "We made the best 2D pixel art game we could with the technology available to us in 2016-2019 and the tireless efforts of our world-class team of artists." No. What we do get is shovelware and excuses (and apologists like yourself). Because to do more would be TOO HARD.

>>16008473

That looks like generic trash made by untermench. It's insulting.

>>16013066

How can you be this illiterate?

>>16013066

Anon is talking about "Escape castle Wolfenstein" which is an old and lame stealth game.

>>16008479

>That's quite a generalization

That's not the point. There's just so many shitty ones that people expect them all to be shit and consider good "pixelshit" games to be exceptions. It's like asking /pol/ why they hate niggers.

>>16027541

Damn, the flag didn't detach.

>>16010079

who knew a game journo, of all people, knew what a fun game could be?

>>16008473

I'm an artist, and if you (the game designer) are too much of a cheapskate to invest in the aesthetics of your game, then I (t.artist) am too much of a cheapskate to invest in playing your indie trash.

Quid pro quo

>>16008473

Because if the art is trash then the scale tips for the music and game to be fantastic, but usually people will make this short "aesthetically pleasing" experienced with absolutely no thought put into it. Devs should have a design document before they start production, they should have a whole story thought out in their head, and they should have how everything should at least look in universe; the game doesn't even have to reflect that necessarily as long as the key points are hit. Usually people will try this minimalist style, and therefore the gameplay and story that could come of it suffers for it, so what you get is a thirty minute experience and because it's so unappealing to look at and offers nothing new in way of combat systems, you basically just toss it away after one run.

It's indicative of devs who have a good vision for their game to put more than that level of effort into the looks of things, because usually a good dev will care about every aspect of their game's design and push out a fully fleshed out concept if not a completely fleshed out experience.