8 ms·

I bet for most folks on HN the mechanics and programming are the easy parts. The art is really what makes or breaks games. Could anyone give advice on getting

by nubb 8y ago

I bet for most folks on HN the mechanics and programming are the easy parts. The art is really what makes or breaks games. Could anyone give advice on getting started learning some basic art concepts that are applicable to pixel art / game art?

jedimastert 8y ago
>The art is really what makes or breaks games. Quite a few rougelikes use strictly ascii art, kind of negating your point
- mouldysammich 8y ago
  Very few of the recent popular ones are if at all
  - hood_syntax 8y ago
    The recent popular ones (edit: assuming I am reading correctly which games you refer to) are all pretty much spinoff genres that borrow heavily from traditional roguelikes, but break from the classic design attributes in very important ways. Many of them are excellent games, but I don't think it's being nitpicky to distinguish them. Note I make this objection without wanting to wade into the tedious war over terminology.
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    cough dwarf fortress cough
    - 0xffff2 8y ago
      Dwarf Fortress has support for pixel-art tile sets and it's very easy to use them these days. I've played DF for close to a decade and never spent a significant amount of time looking at the base ASCII graphics.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  And dozens of us are playing them. Dozens !
- billfruit 8y ago
  With even that kind of 'character set art', things have got quite advanced, see Caves of Qud or Cogmind, which have a lot of visual flourishes.
wsc981 8y ago
When developing a prototype for a 2D rogue-like, I guess using the royalty Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup assets could be a great starting point: https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles
- xenihn 8y ago
  DCSS is my favorite rogue-like of all time, and I love the tileset.
  - hood_syntax 8y ago
    One of the few roguelikes I use tiles on, and my first roguelike ever.
Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
Art concepts vary significantly depending on the medium, 2D vs 3D, rasterized vs. vector etc. then there's significant variation stylistically. However, seems as you specifically mentioned pixel art, maybe the following are of interest: https://www.youtube.com/user/achebit/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/achebit/videos By the way, the author of those tutorial videos is set to release his game (Dungeon League) some time in the next 12 hours, after ~4 years of dev.
gavanwoolery 8y ago
A strong concept and implementation will overcome art limitations. Just look at the success of Rimworld for example, which has sold over 1m copies - or of course Minecraft (150m copies sold).
- bduerst 8y ago
  Or Dwarf Fortress, which inspired both Rimworld and Minecraft, and is free so the number of downloads are not tracked.
  - fb03 8y ago
    I am a long time (15y+) player of Nethack, incurably addicted to it. Do you think I could maybe enjoy Dwarf Fortress?!
    - bduerst 8y ago
      Probably not, since you'll just gain a new addiction that will ruin your life. Honestly though try adventurer mode in DF, it's like LOTR meets Nethack. Or try fortress mode, and have fun! [1] [1] http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png
    - jtolmar 8y ago
      Dwarf Fortress is more like if you liked Sim City but wished it was more like Nethack. It's quite a different beast, but you should give it a shot if that description sounds good. Also the UI is self-inconsistent and the learning curve is a cliff, so like... expect that going in. If you haven't played other traditional roguelikes besides Nethack, I'd recommend giving them a shot. Brogue and Shiren The Wanderer are both focused on resource management and exploiting monster/item properties, which you'll have seen some of in Nethack. DCSS is more about streamlined tactical and strategic decision making in a dungeon.
      - bduerst 8y ago
        >Dwarf Fortress is more like if you liked Sim City but wished it was more like Nethack. Only in fortress mode. Dwarf Fortress has two modes, and the second (Adventurer mode) is like an open-world nethack.
stcredzero 8y ago
I bet for most folks on HN the mechanics and programming are the easy parts. The art is really what makes or breaks games. This is true, but from what I've seen the gamedev community seems to generally take this adage too far. At a recent meetup, I spoke to a developer for a project updating a well known IP. Their multiplayer slows down then crashes. I started asking questions, like, do the synchronizing objects have an update cycle? He didn't know, and it had been going on for months. There's some big fraction of gamedevs who seem to think of programming as almost an afterthought. I see a parallel with the fraction of recent grads who think all they need of programming is the ability to glue libraries together. The medium really needs a balance of multiple abilities. Otherwise, it's like a musician who can write lyrics, but can't sing and play, or someone who has excellent chops on the guitar, but can't sing and write lyrics.
- crazypyro 8y ago
  You'll find this anywhere the entry barriers are slowly eroded. I think this is a good thing in most scenarios, because it means people can achieve equal or greater things with even less knowledge. While it does cause gaps in logic and nobody wants to be supporting a code base in a professional setting that was built with design/architecture as an afterthought, it's still cool that more people than ever can do something like make a website or a game.
  - clarry 8y ago
    > it's still cool that more people than ever can do something like make a website or a game. I really don't know if it is cool. Seeing the market saturated with mediocre (and worse) creations is more depressing than cool for me. And I feel like it's only lowering the bar, where people can't demand quality and those who create can't put in the effort because there's not enough demand for it.
    - Nzen 8y ago
      Any reply likely relies on our assumptions about how we derive quality product from ourselves others. I can spin a narrative whereby the app store fills up with fart soundboards, but famous artist (or team) is able to practice and later in life make really great app/game/art because they have a fresh, minority perspective. In the alternate narrative, said person (or team) wasn't able to build a portfolio enough for the first rung and pivoted to some other hobby/industry. Presumably we've already formed the assumptions that guide which narrative we value more.
codetrotter 8y ago
Regarding pixel art I find /r/pixelart on Reddit to be a good source of inspiration. If you want to learn pixelart, study how pixelart pieces you like were put together. Some tutorials are occasionally posted there as well. DeviantArt used to have a good pixel art community. Don’t know if they still do these days but either way there are a lot of tutorials that have been put up there by pixel artists over time. Find the good ones. Another option you might consider is to team up with an artist to take care of the artwork. If you find the right person then working together can be a lot of fun. And start small! Don’t become another victim of feature creep. With fewer art assets and less code to write you can focus on making something that looks and plays great. If your idea is too big then either quality will suffer, or you will never finish it. Make small, good games first. And small, bad games too — it’s a learning experience :) Make a team with an artist next Ludum Dare game jam and make a pixel art roguelike with very limited scope together.
msla 8y ago
> The art is really what makes or breaks games. Yes, it's so much more important than gameplay. /s
mikepurvis 8y ago
This is true to the point where unless you have a really novel mechanic, it's likely that to build a 2D dungeon game, you probably need a game designer and artist far more than you need a programmer. Look at the number of shipping, cross-platform titles made with GUI-based game maker type tools: https://www.yoyogames.com/showcase https://www.yoyogames.com/showcase https://rpgmaker.net/games https://rpgmaker.net/games
- vvanders 8y ago
  Yup take a look at Nuclear Throne and other really cool indie titles built on tools like that. Also if you're building your own engine it's really easy to get sucked into that than the actual gameplay/development. As they say: "Help a man to build a game and he'll ship a title, teach a man to build a game engine and he'll never ship anything"
simias 8y ago
For roguelikes IMO the "make or break" part is the world generation and gameplay balance. After all most old-school roguelikes work fine with ASCII symbols so there's no real "art" involved besides arguably the shape of rooms and maybe the colors used. Even those who actually use pixel art tend to have rather primitive sprites, including popular roguelike-likes like FTL or Rimworld. I think it's one of the reason roguelikes are often so deep gameplay-wise. You want to add a new species of trolls who can fly to your game? Just implement the logic and associate a "T" character or whatever. Want to destroy a wall? Remove the "#". Want to make a lava pit? Display a red "~". You don't have to worry about having to create new models, new textures, new shaders, new sound effects etc... Meanwhile generating interesting levels and tweaking the Random Number God to make the game interesting and challenging without making it unfairly difficult is pretty tricky. Good roguelikes have a good mix of human-made "scripted" elements integrated in randomly generated worlds. Too much of the former and the game feels repetitive and predictable. Too much of the latter and the game feels soulless and aimless.
- VectorLock 8y ago
  >Good roguelikes have a good mix of human-made "scripted" elements integrated in randomly generated worlds. Too much of the former and the game feels repetitive and predictable. Too much of the latter and the game feels soulless and aimless. This is great advice that extends well beyond Roguelikes.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >After all most old-school roguelikes work fine with ASCII symbols so there's no real "art" involved besides arguably the shape of rooms and maybe the colors used. I prefer ASCII in Roguelikes. And while yes, I do enjoy old roguelikes that were very plain, I'll also say that creative use of ASCII, and colors, and ASCII "animations" can make a game much more pleasurable (and if done poorly, much less pleasurable). Saying there's no real "art" in these ASCII graphics is having a rather limiting view of what art is. Making aesthetic games with ASCII definitely involves art. The tiled/sprite based Rogues - I never liked them. They always restricted my imagination, and had poor graphics.
  - 8y ago
Impossible 8y ago
One of the major selling points of making a traditional (ascii) roguelike is that development is all mechanics and programming. I understand that this isn't the current mainstream view of the genre, but its a great approach to making a game by yourself if you don't have much experience with art. Mechanics are also much harder than they appear on the surface, and art, once you're well practiced, is usually pretty straight forward in comparison to programming or game design. I also understand that on HN games are mostly viewed as commercial opportunities, but if you're asking about basic pixel and game art concepts your art will probably not sell your game. Most roguelikes are hobbyist projects, or at least started as hobbyist projects, and the point of this talk is to foster hobbyist development. If art is a bottleneck, make a good game without art and then partner with an artist. That said, Chris Hildenbrand's tutorials (http://www.2dgameartguru.com/ http://www.2dgameartguru.com/) have been popular among the HN crowd. There are some good free roguelike tilesets on opengameart.org (Dawnlike is great https://opengameart.org/content/dawnlike-16x16-universal-rogue-like-tileset-v181 https://opengameart.org/content/dawnlike-16x16-universal-rog...) and oryxdesignlab.com has some good cheap tilesets. This reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/comments/436sop/roguelike_tilesets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/comments/436sop/roguel...) is more comprehensive and includes both of those resources.
- wild_preference 8y ago
  This is also why telnet MUDs are a great place to dabble in networked games. The lack of art + an easy networking model (no hard stuff like client-side prediction and interpolated animation) and you can spend almost all your time on the fun technical stuff.
- screature2 8y ago
  This totally brought back memories of drl (the DoomRL) evolution. 1. First built with an ascii tileset focusing on very tight mechanics and borrowing everything else from Doom (including sound set, music, setting, and theme). https://github.com/ChaosForge/doomrl https://github.com/ChaosForge/doomrl + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRL_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRL_(video_game) 2. Then Derek Yu (of Spelunky fame) comes in with a gorgeous tileset that replaces ascii as the default as of drl 0.9.9.6 https://twitter.com/mossmouth/status/806211094960189440?lang=en https://twitter.com/mossmouth/status/806211094960189440?lang...
Kiro 8y ago
Extremely misplaced comment considering this article is about roguelikes.
castlecrasher2 8y ago
If by art you mean presentation, then I agree. One of the reasons I love Slay the Spire so much is how darn fluid the card play is; they react in pretty much the exact way I expect them to, and that's no small feat for games. The dev said he spent about two weeks perfecting it, and I believe it.
drharby 8y ago
Replicate art you enjoy with modifications. I do megaman inspired art by simply cloning the megaman sprite sheets, then modifying things like palette and form. Do it enough you get good and learning shadowing and other techniques
city41 8y ago
I disagree that art makes or breaks games. I think it's really the design: difficulty balance, right number of mechanics, good progression, clever challenges etc. My most successful game to date was when I copied as closely as possible an existing franchise. Whenever I've tried to strike out with my own ideas I've never come up with a game that's very good at all. It's no wonder that successful indie game devs usually find that success by making a ton of games.
vkou 8y ago
Art is important, but having a rewarding, fun gameplay loop is more important. Nailing that in a rogue-like is really, really hard. What does 'rewarding' mean? Your character getting stronger? Your player gaining mastery over the game? How do you square that with perma-death? Do you allow level-scumming? If not, how do you not put the player in an unwinnable position (too frequently)? I am pretty sure I could learn how to do good pixel art, with a few months of training. I am pretty sure I could not strike gold with a cohesive set of compelling, fun roguelike gameplay mechanics in that period of time. (In the way that games like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, Angband, FTL, or Nethack (I despise Nethack) struck gold.)
deleted 8y ago
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tln 8y ago
Especially with this genre, you can make a great game with basically zero art. My favorite rogue-like, Hoplite, originally came with pretty basic tiles. Then after it took off, newer tiles were made. The game mechanics were so good though that I'd love that game regardless of whether the art is "great".
hellomrjack 8y ago
There are a ton of great resources that people that have have suggested here but the advice I would give is that, like most things, making games is a communal process so you can focus on what you do well and make some friends that do the other bits.
screature2 8y ago
Oops sorry for posting somewhat of a non-sequitur. I'm definitely not a designer (pixel art or otherwise), but Gamasutra often has solid community content and interesting deep dives across game design issues (like in the parent!). See: Basic pixel art tutorial: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KennethNg/20151211/261577/Pixel_Art_Tutorial_Part_1_Basics__Tools.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KennethNg/20151211/261577/Pix... Deep dive into Crawl's pixel art https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300004/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_Creating_the_striking_pixel_art_of_Crawl.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300004/Game_Design_Deep_... Another collection of pixel art tips (and examples) https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176663/5_tips_for_making_great_animations_for_2D_games.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176663/5_tips_for_making...
shahar2k 8y ago
so, I'm an artist. I've done pixel art, I'm a professional 3d artist, I can draw sculpt and imitate various styles, tend to work in low detail 3d field (previz) where speed and readability are the top priorities. my advice for learning art naively (without significant outside help) is imitate and iterate, start by re-making pixel sprites from games. When making variations on these imitations, think of your art as an information and communication problem, what information are you looking to encode into your asset, what are you trying to convey to the player. enemy power, level behavior so on, try and encode it in the least amount of "noise" and then add in the noise to encode mood, style, other things, see if your original information still reads through. as for the actual skills of art, there are dozens of tutorials out there for various styles, i'd say just learn to draw a bit, and examine your symbols, your visual grammar. if you draw an eye on a character a specific way all the time, try changing and examining why you do it that way. I know this is vague information but a lot of artistic ability is just practice * time * good criticism. but even with great skill a lot of artists I've worked with dont think of the purpose of their art in the grand picture of things. you do that and you already have a leg up on the competition!
- nubb 8y ago
  Thank you for this advice.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
The emphasis on art in games frequently goes way too far these days. There is frequently a very heavy investment in art assets to a degree that is pointlessly excessive or even actively undermines the quality of game play. "Less is more" When cartoons became a well established business and newcomers couldn't compete, some professional artist left the established studios doing things like Bugs Bunny and created Droopy The Dog which had a great deal less animation involved, yet did not fail to tell a story and amuse audiences. Consider what information actually needs to be conveyed visually. It probably doesn't have to be anywhere near as elaborate as the art in games coming out of more established studios.
- platz 8y ago
  what do you think of a game like Cuphead?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I'm not personally familiar with that game.

by nubb 8y ago

jedimastert 8y ago

>The art is really what makes or breaks games. Quite a few rougelikes use strictly ascii art, kind of negating your point

mouldysammich 8y ago
Very few of the recent popular ones are if at all
- hood_syntax 8y ago
  The recent popular ones (edit: assuming I am reading correctly which games you refer to) are all pretty much spinoff genres that borrow heavily from traditional roguelikes, but break from the classic design attributes in very important ways. Many of them are excellent games, but I don't think it's being nitpicky to distinguish them. Note I make this objection without wanting to wade into the tedious war over terminology.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  cough dwarf fortress cough
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    Dwarf Fortress has support for pixel-art tile sets and it's very easy to use them these days. I've played DF for close to a decade and never spent a significant amount of time looking at the base ASCII graphics.
johnchristopher 8y ago
And dozens of us are playing them. Dozens !
billfruit 8y ago
With even that kind of 'character set art', things have got quite advanced, see Caves of Qud or Cogmind, which have a lot of visual flourishes.

wsc981 8y ago

When developing a prototype for a 2D rogue-like, I guess using the royalty Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup assets could be a great starting point: https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles

xenihn 8y ago
DCSS is my favorite rogue-like of all time, and I love the tileset.
- hood_syntax 8y ago
  One of the few roguelikes I use tiles on, and my first roguelike ever.

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago

Art concepts vary significantly depending on the medium, 2D vs 3D, rasterized vs. vector etc. then there's significant variation stylistically. However, seems as you specifically mentioned pixel art, maybe the following are of interest: https://www.youtube.com/user/achebit/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/achebit/videos By the way, the author of those tutorial videos is set to release his game (Dungeon League) some time in the next 12 hours, after ~4 years of dev.

gavanwoolery 8y ago

A strong concept and implementation will overcome art limitations. Just look at the success of Rimworld for example, which has sold over 1m copies - or of course Minecraft (150m copies sold).

bduerst 8y ago
Or Dwarf Fortress, which inspired both Rimworld and Minecraft, and is free so the number of downloads are not tracked.
- fb03 8y ago
  I am a long time (15y+) player of Nethack, incurably addicted to it. Do you think I could maybe enjoy Dwarf Fortress?!
  - bduerst 8y ago
    Probably not, since you'll just gain a new addiction that will ruin your life. Honestly though try adventurer mode in DF, it's like LOTR meets Nethack. Or try fortress mode, and have fun! [1] [1] http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png
  - jtolmar 8y ago
    Dwarf Fortress is more like if you liked Sim City but wished it was more like Nethack. It's quite a different beast, but you should give it a shot if that description sounds good. Also the UI is self-inconsistent and the learning curve is a cliff, so like... expect that going in. If you haven't played other traditional roguelikes besides Nethack, I'd recommend giving them a shot. Brogue and Shiren The Wanderer are both focused on resource management and exploiting monster/item properties, which you'll have seen some of in Nethack. DCSS is more about streamlined tactical and strategic decision making in a dungeon.
    - bduerst 8y ago
      >Dwarf Fortress is more like if you liked Sim City but wished it was more like Nethack. Only in fortress mode. Dwarf Fortress has two modes, and the second (Adventurer mode) is like an open-world nethack.

stcredzero 8y ago

I bet for most folks on HN the mechanics and programming are the easy parts. The art is really what makes or breaks games. This is true, but from what I've seen the gamedev community seems to generally take this adage too far. At a recent meetup, I spoke to a developer for a project updating a well known IP. Their multiplayer slows down then crashes. I started asking questions, like, do the synchronizing objects have an update cycle? He didn't know, and it had been going on for months. There's some big fraction of gamedevs who seem to think of programming as almost an afterthought. I see a parallel with the fraction of recent grads who think all they need of programming is the ability to glue libraries together. The medium really needs a balance of multiple abilities. Otherwise, it's like a musician who can write lyrics, but can't sing and play, or someone who has excellent chops on the guitar, but can't sing and write lyrics.

crazypyro 8y ago
You'll find this anywhere the entry barriers are slowly eroded. I think this is a good thing in most scenarios, because it means people can achieve equal or greater things with even less knowledge. While it does cause gaps in logic and nobody wants to be supporting a code base in a professional setting that was built with design/architecture as an afterthought, it's still cool that more people than ever can do something like make a website or a game.
- clarry 8y ago
  > it's still cool that more people than ever can do something like make a website or a game. I really don't know if it is cool. Seeing the market saturated with mediocre (and worse) creations is more depressing than cool for me. And I feel like it's only lowering the bar, where people can't demand quality and those who create can't put in the effort because there's not enough demand for it.
  - Nzen 8y ago
    Any reply likely relies on our assumptions about how we derive quality product from ourselves others. I can spin a narrative whereby the app store fills up with fart soundboards, but famous artist (or team) is able to practice and later in life make really great app/game/art because they have a fresh, minority perspective. In the alternate narrative, said person (or team) wasn't able to build a portfolio enough for the first rung and pivoted to some other hobby/industry. Presumably we've already formed the assumptions that guide which narrative we value more.

codetrotter 8y ago

Regarding pixel art I find /r/pixelart on Reddit to be a good source of inspiration. If you want to learn pixelart, study how pixelart pieces you like were put together. Some tutorials are occasionally posted there as well. DeviantArt used to have a good pixel art community. Don’t know if they still do these days but either way there are a lot of tutorials that have been put up there by pixel artists over time. Find the good ones. Another option you might consider is to team up with an artist to take care of the artwork. If you find the right person then working together can be a lot of fun. And start small! Don’t become another victim of feature creep. With fewer art assets and less code to write you can focus on making something that looks and plays great. If your idea is too big then either quality will suffer, or you will never finish it. Make small, good games first. And small, bad games too — it’s a learning experience :) Make a team with an artist next Ludum Dare game jam and make a pixel art roguelike with very limited scope together.

msla 8y ago

> The art is really what makes or breaks games. Yes, it's so much more important than gameplay. /s

mikepurvis 8y ago

This is true to the point where unless you have a really novel mechanic, it's likely that to build a 2D dungeon game, you probably need a game designer and artist far more than you need a programmer. Look at the number of shipping, cross-platform titles made with GUI-based game maker type tools: https://www.yoyogames.com/showcase https://www.yoyogames.com/showcase https://rpgmaker.net/games https://rpgmaker.net/games

vvanders 8y ago
Yup take a look at Nuclear Throne and other really cool indie titles built on tools like that. Also if you're building your own engine it's really easy to get sucked into that than the actual gameplay/development. As they say: "Help a man to build a game and he'll ship a title, teach a man to build a game engine and he'll never ship anything"

simias 8y ago

For roguelikes IMO the "make or break" part is the world generation and gameplay balance. After all most old-school roguelikes work fine with ASCII symbols so there's no real "art" involved besides arguably the shape of rooms and maybe the colors used. Even those who actually use pixel art tend to have rather primitive sprites, including popular roguelike-likes like FTL or Rimworld. I think it's one of the reason roguelikes are often so deep gameplay-wise. You want to add a new species of trolls who can fly to your game? Just implement the logic and associate a "T" character or whatever. Want to destroy a wall? Remove the "#". Want to make a lava pit? Display a red "~". You don't have to worry about having to create new models, new textures, new shaders, new sound effects etc... Meanwhile generating interesting levels and tweaking the Random Number God to make the game interesting and challenging without making it unfairly difficult is pretty tricky. Good roguelikes have a good mix of human-made "scripted" elements integrated in randomly generated worlds. Too much of the former and the game feels repetitive and predictable. Too much of the latter and the game feels soulless and aimless.

VectorLock 8y ago
>Good roguelikes have a good mix of human-made "scripted" elements integrated in randomly generated worlds. Too much of the former and the game feels repetitive and predictable. Too much of the latter and the game feels soulless and aimless. This is great advice that extends well beyond Roguelikes.
BeetleB 8y ago
>After all most old-school roguelikes work fine with ASCII symbols so there's no real "art" involved besides arguably the shape of rooms and maybe the colors used. I prefer ASCII in Roguelikes. And while yes, I do enjoy old roguelikes that were very plain, I'll also say that creative use of ASCII, and colors, and ASCII "animations" can make a game much more pleasurable (and if done poorly, much less pleasurable). Saying there's no real "art" in these ASCII graphics is having a rather limiting view of what art is. Making aesthetic games with ASCII definitely involves art. The tiled/sprite based Rogues - I never liked them. They always restricted my imagination, and had poor graphics.
- 8y ago

Impossible 8y ago

One of the major selling points of making a traditional (ascii) roguelike is that development is all mechanics and programming. I understand that this isn't the current mainstream view of the genre, but its a great approach to making a game by yourself if you don't have much experience with art. Mechanics are also much harder than they appear on the surface, and art, once you're well practiced, is usually pretty straight forward in comparison to programming or game design. I also understand that on HN games are mostly viewed as commercial opportunities, but if you're asking about basic pixel and game art concepts your art will probably not sell your game. Most roguelikes are hobbyist projects, or at least started as hobbyist projects, and the point of this talk is to foster hobbyist development. If art is a bottleneck, make a good game without art and then partner with an artist. That said, Chris Hildenbrand's tutorials (http://www.2dgameartguru.com/ http://www.2dgameartguru.com/) have been popular among the HN crowd. There are some good free roguelike tilesets on opengameart.org (Dawnlike is great https://opengameart.org/content/dawnlike-16x16-universal-rogue-like-tileset-v181 https://opengameart.org/content/dawnlike-16x16-universal-rog...) and oryxdesignlab.com has some good cheap tilesets. This reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/comments/436sop/roguelike_tilesets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/comments/436sop/roguel...) is more comprehensive and includes both of those resources.

wild_preference 8y ago
This is also why telnet MUDs are a great place to dabble in networked games. The lack of art + an easy networking model (no hard stuff like client-side prediction and interpolated animation) and you can spend almost all your time on the fun technical stuff.
screature2 8y ago
This totally brought back memories of drl (the DoomRL) evolution. 1. First built with an ascii tileset focusing on very tight mechanics and borrowing everything else from Doom (including sound set, music, setting, and theme). https://github.com/ChaosForge/doomrl https://github.com/ChaosForge/doomrl + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRL_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRL_(video_game) 2. Then Derek Yu (of Spelunky fame) comes in with a gorgeous tileset that replaces ascii as the default as of drl 0.9.9.6 https://twitter.com/mossmouth/status/806211094960189440?lang=en https://twitter.com/mossmouth/status/806211094960189440?lang...

Kiro 8y ago

Extremely misplaced comment considering this article is about roguelikes.

castlecrasher2 8y ago

If by art you mean presentation, then I agree. One of the reasons I love Slay the Spire so much is how darn fluid the card play is; they react in pretty much the exact way I expect them to, and that's no small feat for games. The dev said he spent about two weeks perfecting it, and I believe it.

drharby 8y ago

Replicate art you enjoy with modifications. I do megaman inspired art by simply cloning the megaman sprite sheets, then modifying things like palette and form. Do it enough you get good and learning shadowing and other techniques

city41 8y ago

I disagree that art makes or breaks games. I think it's really the design: difficulty balance, right number of mechanics, good progression, clever challenges etc. My most successful game to date was when I copied as closely as possible an existing franchise. Whenever I've tried to strike out with my own ideas I've never come up with a game that's very good at all. It's no wonder that successful indie game devs usually find that success by making a ton of games.

vkou 8y ago

Art is important, but having a rewarding, fun gameplay loop is more important. Nailing that in a rogue-like is really, really hard. What does 'rewarding' mean? Your character getting stronger? Your player gaining mastery over the game? How do you square that with perma-death? Do you allow level-scumming? If not, how do you not put the player in an unwinnable position (too frequently)? I am pretty sure I could learn how to do good pixel art, with a few months of training. I am pretty sure I could not strike gold with a cohesive set of compelling, fun roguelike gameplay mechanics in that period of time. (In the way that games like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, Angband, FTL, or Nethack (I despise Nethack) struck gold.)

deleted 8y ago

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tln 8y ago

Especially with this genre, you can make a great game with basically zero art. My favorite rogue-like, Hoplite, originally came with pretty basic tiles. Then after it took off, newer tiles were made. The game mechanics were so good though that I'd love that game regardless of whether the art is "great".

hellomrjack 8y ago

There are a ton of great resources that people that have have suggested here but the advice I would give is that, like most things, making games is a communal process so you can focus on what you do well and make some friends that do the other bits.

screature2 8y ago

Oops sorry for posting somewhat of a non-sequitur. I'm definitely not a designer (pixel art or otherwise), but Gamasutra often has solid community content and interesting deep dives across game design issues (like in the parent!). See: Basic pixel art tutorial: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KennethNg/20151211/261577/Pixel_Art_Tutorial_Part_1_Basics__Tools.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KennethNg/20151211/261577/Pix... Deep dive into Crawl's pixel art https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300004/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_Creating_the_striking_pixel_art_of_Crawl.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300004/Game_Design_Deep_... Another collection of pixel art tips (and examples) https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176663/5_tips_for_making_great_animations_for_2D_games.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176663/5_tips_for_making...

shahar2k 8y ago

so, I'm an artist. I've done pixel art, I'm a professional 3d artist, I can draw sculpt and imitate various styles, tend to work in low detail 3d field (previz) where speed and readability are the top priorities. my advice for learning art naively (without significant outside help) is imitate and iterate, start by re-making pixel sprites from games. When making variations on these imitations, think of your art as an information and communication problem, what information are you looking to encode into your asset, what are you trying to convey to the player. enemy power, level behavior so on, try and encode it in the least amount of "noise" and then add in the noise to encode mood, style, other things, see if your original information still reads through. as for the actual skills of art, there are dozens of tutorials out there for various styles, i'd say just learn to draw a bit, and examine your symbols, your visual grammar. if you draw an eye on a character a specific way all the time, try changing and examining why you do it that way. I know this is vague information but a lot of artistic ability is just practice * time * good criticism. but even with great skill a lot of artists I've worked with dont think of the purpose of their art in the grand picture of things. you do that and you already have a leg up on the competition!

nubb 8y ago
Thank you for this advice.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

The emphasis on art in games frequently goes way too far these days. There is frequently a very heavy investment in art assets to a degree that is pointlessly excessive or even actively undermines the quality of game play. "Less is more" When cartoons became a well established business and newcomers couldn't compete, some professional artist left the established studios doing things like Bugs Bunny and created Droopy The Dog which had a great deal less animation involved, yet did not fail to tell a story and amuse audiences. Consider what information actually needs to be conveyed visually. It probably doesn't have to be anywhere near as elaborate as the art in games coming out of more established studios.

platz 8y ago
what do you think of a game like Cuphead?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I'm not personally familiar with that game.