Re: [Enigma-devel] New graphics - reply to Ronald

[Jen]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald Lamprecht" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Cc: "Raoul" <address@hidden>; <address@hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Enigma-devel] New graphics


> The new fl-leaves look very nice. I have never been fond of the old ones
> that show up the grid boundaries where nothing should be visible.


I'm glad you like it.  I may still make a tiny little change to it...
there's one area where I can just barely see a line, and where the pattern
looks a little too repetitive.  But I think there are plenty of other things
to work on first.

One of you mentioned that some items don't have their shadows.  Can you tell
me which items you're referring to?  I'm finding the shadows a bit
confusing, mainly due to the inconsistencies... I understand that most of
the "it" items (banana, coins, key, document, umbrella, etc.) - which can't
be moved without picking them up, and which the marble can't move under,
only over - can have their shadow built into their actual graphic.  Anything
that can be moved, like a ball or a stone, or anything the ball can go
underneath, like the grate, needs a separate .png file for their shadow.
Correct?

For the latter group - the ones that need a separate .png file for their
shadow - how should the shadow be placed?  Should it be centered in
the graphic, or should it be placed slightly down and to the right of where
the actual item would be?  Or is the placement of the shadows in relation to 
the stones and other items built into the code of the game?


> The current set of items is not very consistent concerning perspective,
> shadows and quality. Concerning the size of the items we should take into
> account that a marble picks up a non-static item only if it approaches the
> center of the grid up to 0.3 grid-units (center marble - center grid).
> Thus it may look strange if a marble rolls over a large item image without
> picking it up. I did not check if the current graphics take this feature
> into account.


I haven't found that to be a problem.  Maybe someone else who has been 
playing the game longer would have a better idea.


> Another topic would be the marbles themselves. Have a look at the black
> marble. Its boundary is really not a circle. The white marble looks like
> some one tried to enlarge the marble by a fuzzy white ring. The small
> white marbles look even worse. The shadows are a subject of improvement,
> too.
>
> Please note that the actors should fit the physical radius. The 1.00
> images do not always represent the real size of the actors. Furthermore
> the actor images have to be centered. Me and Raoul did some minor
> improvements on the development trunk concerning the last topic. But
> improved images would be really nice.


I've already started working on these.  If you can send me any information 
that might help me regarding size, placement, padding and so forth I would 
really appreciate it.  I should mention, though, that I already have new 
fg-blackball, fg-whiteball and fg-whiteball-small images that I'm testing in 
my game, and I'm quite happy with how they look.  The only problem I've 
noticed is that my fg-blackball.png seems a little too small for its shadow, 
even though I made it the same size as the existing fg-blackball.  But it 
functions very well in the game, and really looks good, in my opinion.  I 
haven't done any of the variants yet - fall, jump, shatter, etc.  Those will 
be a bit harder, I think.


> The worst misfit between image and physics is the ac-horse. Its physical
> diameter is 48/64 units. The image diameter is about 42/48. That is the
> reason that horses can overlap. Please note the motif of the horse has to
> be maintained. It is a platform on which a marble can ride with a border
> that keeps the marble from falling off the horse as long as the
> acceleration is slow enough.


I don't seem to have an ac-horse graphics file.  Is it the fg-horse.png?  If 
you'll send me all the information on it, I'll see what I can do.


> Please note that we may introduce higher resolutions in future. The next
> image size would be 64 pixels. I guess it would be usefull to generate
> directly this resolution for all new and improved images.


It was about a week ago that you sent this email, and in that time I've 
completed several items and begun work on several more.  All of them will 
have 32, 40, 48 and 64 pixel sized images, as well as larger images - 
usually about 200x200 pixels - that could be sized down in the future if 
needed.  I've made it-banana, it-key, it-ring, and it-brush and I'm 
currently working on it-pin, it-sword and several of the other items.

Regarding the it-key, is it necessary to have it both as an individual file 
(it-key.png) and included in the items.png file?  I can easily do both, but 
I'm wondering if both are needed.

I think that's all of the questions I have for now.  I'll be sharing some of 
the items I've finished very soon.

Jen
=========================================
Jen Robertson
California
address@hidden
=========================================
Go outside.  The graphics are incredible!