You might have seen the Crazy Gravity game I'm working on.
It's sprite sheet is a mostly auto-dithered version of a color version of the game. The result could do with some improvement.
In this example, you can see some stray pixels while the plane is rotating:
I'm looking for a pixel artist to touch-up that spritesheet. There is no budget at the moment, but I could help out with some lua coding challenges you might have.
No commercial plans for the project at this moment, but who knows what will happen in future playdate Season / Store developments If you want to know more about an entirely hypothetical revenue split, let's talk in private.
The original color spritesheet is available for those interested.
The current dithered spritesheet is available at GitHub
Since the entire game can be downloaded from GitHub, you will be able to test-drive your results in the actual game as you work.
My graphics todo list looks like this. If you want to take any of these of my hands, it would be appreciated. Please let me know. I'll add you to the credit roll of the game.
touch-ups
improve visibility of the dark key. Compare the pretty well visible grey key
with the dark key:
in a similar vein: Rethink the cannon balls. Should they have an outline?
Improve the twinkling stars for the game card in the playdate system menu. Twinkling stars are currently too subtle, 1 or 2 px squares. Note that the animation frames are not played in order, it's mostly frame 1 that's shown. The other frames are shown briefly, where each frame has a single added star; thus a twinkle effect is achieved. The stars hould be made bigger and more interesting.
Assets here https://github.com/ninovanhooff/Crazy-Gravity-Playdate/tree/main/Source/SystemAssets/card-highlighted
inspiration
Mission Control center: static 400x240 px full screen interior scene of a space launch control center seen from the operator's perspective, but compact: desk in the foreground with big red "launch" button. digital display countdown clock at the top, rocket launch poster on the left etc, tv-screen on the right. Only a "frame": by far the biggest part is a fully transparent rectangular window through which the actual rocket launch is seen.
Redesign the level select screen. For starters, is black-on-white while the inverse probably matches the rest of the game better. I'd also like the shapes in this screen to be reminiscent of a sci-fi starship control dashboard. Perhaps more angular buttons?
Current:
Inspiration
Oh for sure, I can see a couple things, definitely the control panel, I have some thoughts on the hard to see sprites too, as well as on how to maybe achieve a different twinkling effect taking advantage of the 1-bit graphics and the refresh rate that may be able to give it more of that real starlight through an atmosphere shimmer, shimmer and a spinning twinkling out effect of larger stars when you move, that would/could be dynamic?
Great stuff, feel free to use your own judgement to to make adjustments. I'll mix and max the spritesheet with parts that people come up with.
Style-wise, I'm going for sci-fi; cartoony wouldn't work, I think.
Would this be a good layout?
Oh yeah, I forgot: it would be nice to have rotatable crank there. If animation isn't your thing, I could ask someone else to add that detail. Another nice to have would be that there is a version of the launch button with the cover closed and another with the cover open.
The TV will show live-action video of another operator who will urge you tor turn the crank.
The crank is labeled "air lock"
Sure thing I'm happy to hop on a Zoom (or whatever platform) to discuss further and review the components that need to be represented. PM me and I can share contact details. Thanks!
If you want to know more about an entirely hypothetical revenue split, let's talk in private.
I'm happy to hop on a Zoom (or whatever platform) to discuss further and review the components that need to be represented. PM me and I can share contact details. Thanks!