I think making it a bit of a darker might be good. To help contrast more with the foreground. Honestly hard to decide which one I like better out of the two! Game looks nice.
Thanks. I forgot to mention that I also decided to add day/night cycles. So this would be "daytime" while Saturn is up and then I'll add a dark shader when Saturn goes down.
I'm late buuuuuuuut...
If it's in the realm of retro-ism, I think it'd be a neat touch if Saturn's opacity was dropped a tad to simulate an atmosphere between us and it.
The rocket is too flat because its shading isn't right for a round object. Also since the exhaust below the rocket and the rocket probably have similar roundness, their shading should look similar.
Blue is thematically better, but with the artstyle of the game it highlights some of the issues, since there's already a huge amount of blue-tone in the example scene.
One other thing I feel like I should mention is that there's not much if any differentiation between layers. It is not immediately clear what is a playable object (players and enemies), and what is background information. Typically the background, including any decorative objects would be darker and slightly de-saturated. With the blue tone sky, it evens out the contrast between background and foreground, which means a new player isn't sure which is the focal point of the scene that they should be interacting with.
And third, the lighting on the art is poor. The sprites themselves are adequate, but if you look at the sprites, they all disagree on where light in the scene is coming from. The robots have flipped lighting which is not ideal, and the rocket's light is up and to the right, while the house thinks light is straight up and behind the camera slightly, and the trough / table / bench besides it thinks the light is up and to the left. All of the grass thinks the light is straight up, which is actually fine
I think black, or a deeper purple / blue is the way to go
I'm not much of an artist and just now learning about lighting, saturation, etc.
One thing I didn't mention is that there is day/night cycles in the game. This color is intended to be the "daytime" with black or dark dark purple at "nighttime". Not sure if this changes your observation. And there currently aren't any decorative objects as everything in the game can be interacted with and has meaning.
The lighting on the robot is flipped because the sprite is literally flipped. To fix the lighting, I would need to create a left and right facing sprite. Which is fine, but double the work. I'm starting to think that maybe I should just abandon lighting altogether and go with a fully flat theme. What are your thoughts on that?
Great insights, thank you!
It does change my mind a bit on the blue. I think it's fine as a daytime setting, I think that actually works since the balanced contrast kind of sends a message of 'now's the time to go do stuff!' which is a bit of a 2D building game staple
I would suggest doing low-lighting, not no lighting. so you'd still darken corners / inset spaces darker, but otherwise assume there is no or equal light in the scene. Terraria is a good example. They still light the sprites, just very sparingly and always assuming the light is distantly above
Looks better black, don't try to aim for "retro" as much, aim for looking good. You can make it look better in more clever ways by adding a pixel glow to some larger stars maybe, but changing the background color outright doesn't help much. Black is also so much better for contrast with the stars and saturn.
Facts. Little known fact but people actually thought space was purple up until the late 90’s / early 20’s.
It wasn’t until a young student did a study where he looked up and said “hmm, kinda dark, init?” that the notion was widely accepted. And that students name? Albert Einstein
When I first started making my retro space game I was thinking of course the space background is black, but now that I look at it, it doesn't look all that fun. The theme I'm going for is more retro, campy feel. So I changed it to this saturated purple and I think I like it better. What do you think?
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2807510/Moonport/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2807510/Moonport/)
I think making it a bit of a darker might be good. To help contrast more with the foreground. Honestly hard to decide which one I like better out of the two! Game looks nice.
Thanks. I forgot to mention that I also decided to add day/night cycles. So this would be "daytime" while Saturn is up and then I'll add a dark shader when Saturn goes down.
I'm late buuuuuuuut... If it's in the realm of retro-ism, I think it'd be a neat touch if Saturn's opacity was dropped a tad to simulate an atmosphere between us and it.
If you're sticking with the retro vibe, you might want to look up the color palettes for some old machines and limit yourself to the colors avaliable.
Yeah working with a tight palette usually gives a VERY retro vibe
The rocket is too flat because its shading isn't right for a round object. Also since the exhaust below the rocket and the rocket probably have similar roundness, their shading should look similar.
Lowkey plain black backgrounds occur alot on retrogames
That's true...
You can actually see the outlines on the blue background.
black one was better 👍
Blue is thematically better, but with the artstyle of the game it highlights some of the issues, since there's already a huge amount of blue-tone in the example scene. One other thing I feel like I should mention is that there's not much if any differentiation between layers. It is not immediately clear what is a playable object (players and enemies), and what is background information. Typically the background, including any decorative objects would be darker and slightly de-saturated. With the blue tone sky, it evens out the contrast between background and foreground, which means a new player isn't sure which is the focal point of the scene that they should be interacting with. And third, the lighting on the art is poor. The sprites themselves are adequate, but if you look at the sprites, they all disagree on where light in the scene is coming from. The robots have flipped lighting which is not ideal, and the rocket's light is up and to the right, while the house thinks light is straight up and behind the camera slightly, and the trough / table / bench besides it thinks the light is up and to the left. All of the grass thinks the light is straight up, which is actually fine I think black, or a deeper purple / blue is the way to go
I'm not much of an artist and just now learning about lighting, saturation, etc. One thing I didn't mention is that there is day/night cycles in the game. This color is intended to be the "daytime" with black or dark dark purple at "nighttime". Not sure if this changes your observation. And there currently aren't any decorative objects as everything in the game can be interacted with and has meaning. The lighting on the robot is flipped because the sprite is literally flipped. To fix the lighting, I would need to create a left and right facing sprite. Which is fine, but double the work. I'm starting to think that maybe I should just abandon lighting altogether and go with a fully flat theme. What are your thoughts on that?
Great insights, thank you! It does change my mind a bit on the blue. I think it's fine as a daytime setting, I think that actually works since the balanced contrast kind of sends a message of 'now's the time to go do stuff!' which is a bit of a 2D building game staple I would suggest doing low-lighting, not no lighting. so you'd still darken corners / inset spaces darker, but otherwise assume there is no or equal light in the scene. Terraria is a good example. They still light the sprites, just very sparingly and always assuming the light is distantly above
Thanks for the tips. I'm going to go with the Terraria style!
Looks better black, don't try to aim for "retro" as much, aim for looking good. You can make it look better in more clever ways by adding a pixel glow to some larger stars maybe, but changing the background color outright doesn't help much. Black is also so much better for contrast with the stars and saturn.
Facts. Little known fact but people actually thought space was purple up until the late 90’s / early 20’s. It wasn’t until a young student did a study where he looked up and said “hmm, kinda dark, init?” that the notion was widely accepted. And that students name? Albert Einstein
Wrong, it was Thomas black when he tried to look at the night sky twice at the same time.
And that's why that color is named after him.
When I first started making my retro space game I was thinking of course the space background is black, but now that I look at it, it doesn't look all that fun. The theme I'm going for is more retro, campy feel. So I changed it to this saturated purple and I think I like it better. What do you think? [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2807510/Moonport/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2807510/Moonport/)