Artwork and Conversations

Over the last month, I've taken to reworking much of the artwork in the game.  It's not because I was unhappy with the artwork that I had at hand, but rather because I didn't have enough of it.  So, I was forced to find other ways to come up with art.

Replicating the style of artwork I was using wasn't going to be easy.  And I need all the artwork to be similar in theme so that the game has an art style of it's own.  So, I decided upon a new style that provides me with the most flexibility and looks better.  Sadly, it abandons some of the "old-school" look that I originally wanted, but I think that it's okay to update some things.

So, take this picture (which I've shown before) of a woman being held captive by the goblins.  This is what the original screenshot looked like:

The original old-school artwork.

The updated artwork is a little more appealing, but less simple to the eye.  While I loved the simplicity of the original art (and I think the artist is brilliant), there was no way I could easily replicate his style.  So, I had to do something in my own style, which looks like this:

Updated art style.

Now, I'm sure some won't like the new style as much as the old one (and vice-versa), but it is actually easier for me to create pictures that way than attempt to match the way that the artists drew his.  I won't explain why, but anyone who is familiar with Poser 9 and Photoshop should be able to figure it out.  Despite the way some of this art looks, it's not hand painted...but the effect is nice.

Moving away from that, the other major change is that I have gone away from the old-school dialogue and conversations where you read what happens in a box at the bottom of the screen.  Whereas I loved the way that the old Gold-Box games did this (games like "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and "Pool of Radiance"), it didn't leave you a lot of options.

A woman talks at you and doesn't give you any options to respond.

Maybe it's not very old-school (and I may have to stop calling the game that now), but I would rather give a player some choices.  Later games like "Baldur's Gate" gave the player options of how to respond and what to say, sometimes allowing them to unlock information through questions that would have been force-fed to them in the old style.

So, the same encounter with the woman above now looks like this:

It's all about choices.

Whenever the player is engaged in a conversation, the main screen changes to one like this so that they can properly respond and find things out as they wish.  This means that they don't have to read everything if they don't want to.

But, another nice thing about this option is that I now have far more room for text to tell the story.  It is a less clumsy interface for reading the prose, I think.

I would love to hear what you think.  Drop me a comment.