Jake
Administrator 
Playtesting the latest build of the game
Posts: 385
Home Planet: Jondd
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1988
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Post by Jake on Apr 4, 2015 23:32:32 GMT
One of the main goals I had when doing the graphics for this game was to be as faithful to the original Atari ST graphics as I could while making them fresh and new. This way, old Sun Doggers coming back will feel at home here, but new players will (hopefully) think the graphics are not too shabby, even if the remake's use of the original's oblique projection is dated. For fun, I'll post some side-by-side comparisons for you to see.   |
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Jake
Administrator
Playtesting the latest build of the game
Posts: 385
Home Planet: Jondd
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1988
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Post by Jake on Apr 4, 2015 23:33:45 GMT
  I am not sure why the thumbnail for the locked pod graphics is not showing up. The full sized image works fine, tho. |
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McBern
Beta Tester 
Posts: 27 
Home Planet: Snowball
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985
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Post by McBern on Apr 5, 2015 8:55:25 GMT
Nice work! The pod lock is pretty cool!
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plasmabubble
Beta Tester
waiting for Star Citizen alpha 3.0
Posts: 4
Home Planet: W'orrad
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari 1040STf
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1987
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Post by plasmabubble on Apr 7, 2015 9:12:37 GMT
Very nice graphics ! It is funny how the old graphics look soooooo shabby... in my memory they where a lot better  Probably that our expectation has grown a lot along the evolution of video games. Anyway you are doing a great job upgrading the quality without compromising the spirit ! keep it up !
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Zeus
Beta Tester
Posts: 4
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Post by Zeus on Apr 7, 2015 23:16:40 GMT
Man, I love it, especially that first shot. I love the combination of bright cartoony colors mixed with ultra detailed little pixel art. It makes me wanna explore.
The "overworld" is looking pretty cool, too. I really appreciate all the green.
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Jake
Administrator
Playtesting the latest build of the game
Posts: 385
Home Planet: Jondd
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1988
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Post by Jake on Apr 9, 2015 21:05:11 GMT
Yes, that's something I tried to keep was the colorful palette of the Atari ST. In many cases, I took the exact RBG color from the Atari and used that in the new artwork. I did tweak the color schemes a slight bit for certain situations, like Banville. The city building tiles and interiors of Banville have a heavier representation of purple, brown, and greens (giving it an earthy, rich feel) than the rest of the game. Likewise, Enlie has a higher percentage of reds and yellows to reflect the violent culture there. I used to have exact numbers somewhere, but according to my memory the original ATARI ST version of the game only had about 110 or so city building tiles for the entire game - that includes rare ones only found on Banville, Enlie, etc. I replicated each of these and then added nearly 600 more tiles, drawn in the spirit of the original. Drahew and other more familiar cities that the player might easily remember are close to the original tile layout, but other cities use many more new tiles to give a sense of exploration and to reduce tile repetition. I'll attach another comparison file, this time of Drahew, the first city you explore in the game. The tiles are very close to the original game, even including a few repeated tiles, but you can see a few new ones in there. Hopefully, you'll feel at home. :-) There are political zones in the game that are represented by emblems on the star ports and will be explained in more detail in your Sundog ship's computer. Each zone has city tiles ONLY found on the planets aligned with that zone, so each zone will have a unique cultural feel, and as you explore the 'verse you will continuously discover new graphics.  |
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McBern
Beta Tester
Posts: 27
Home Planet: Snowball
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985
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Post by McBern on Apr 10, 2015 7:32:31 GMT
Wow, very nice! Good work!
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plasmabubble
Beta Tester
waiting for Star Citizen alpha 3.0
Posts: 4
Home Planet: W'orrad
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari 1040STf
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1987
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Post by plasmabubble on Apr 10, 2015 14:05:26 GMT
Can't wait to play the mini-golf !!  |
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Modoc
Beta Tester
Posts: 17
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
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Post by Modoc on May 12, 2015 2:42:48 GMT
Memory Lane I tell ya! Thank you for your work on this!
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MegaAlex
Fresh from the Glass Mines
Posts: 1 
Home Planet: Kala
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Arati ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1984
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Post by MegaAlex on May 27, 2015 5:06:12 GMT
This is great I love it!
I hope the random encounters will be improved, or overhaul entirely, I remember them being terrible and difficult to make out/understand.
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER 
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 427
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Sept 5, 2015 17:25:49 GMT
I remember reading somewhere that one of the future plans of the original authors was to make NPC interactions more robust, so that you'd have more variety to the random encounters and maybe even different shopkeepers who had more diverse personalities. I don't remember where I read that, but I'm fairly sure I did.
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Jake
Administrator
Playtesting the latest build of the game
Posts: 385
Home Planet: Jondd
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1988
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Post by Jake on Sept 7, 2015 20:22:36 GMT
The NPC conversations are close to the original's flow, but there is more diversity. For instance, the range of NPC responses is WIDE, where instead of always receiving just one reply to a certain action, you will encounter one of 20 or 30 replies. This makes the dialogue seem fresh. If you get an NPC shopkeeper mad at you, he will remain mad at you for a set duration of time. So, if it's the only bar in town... you better just move on! There are other features too, such as the ability to get gifts from strangers and beg for money in the bars. But people don't like to give their money out without some good conversation first...
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 427
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Sept 8, 2015 21:15:40 GMT
That sounds great to me. That was one of the things that I found was slightly immersion-breaking in the original, especially when I'd sit down in one of the booths to talk to someone in a bar and the guy I talk to tells me the exact same thing as another guy in another bar on a different planet in a different system entirely. Having more potential responses will be a lot of fun. You know what you should do? (IMHO) Have the people on this forum think up and send you some ideas or scripts for what you should have some of those NPCs say... That way you don't need to come up with it all on your own, and it will have a more varied feel since the conversations will really be originating from the minds of different people?
(Talk about going way off-topic, this thread is supposed to be about graphical differences. Sorry about that!)
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Jake
Administrator
Playtesting the latest build of the game
Posts: 385
Home Planet: Jondd
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1988
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Post by Jake on Mar 3, 2016 5:00:56 GMT
I was re-reading this thread and I want to point out that the 20-30 diferent NPC replies I mentioned earlier is quite outdated. In the current version, some NPC conversations have literally hundreds of possible replies. I think there are 8000 lines of dialogue right now!!!! Yeah. I go big or go home.  |
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 427
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Mar 3, 2016 8:17:46 GMT
Nice! That's going to really be cool. Are some of the responses tuned to appear only on specific planets or planets in a specific system or government? Like, people on Shoot being more likely to treat you like dirt or use slang/profanity or something than someone on a squeaky clean planet? I still think you might get some cool ideas if you take input from people on the forums about ideas for conversations / responses. But, I know you're limited on time and I think that everyone would be way more excited to be able to try out the beta than anything else, at this particular stage. |
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Probably that our expectation has grown a lot along the evolution of video games.
