Art Specification Document

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Revision as of 05:01, 14 December 2010 by Alexandre (Talk | contribs) (Characters)

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Art Specs

At a Glance

When creating new brick sprites for Open Surge, please use the following export settings:

Bits-per-pixel 24
Transparency None
Transparent color #ff00ff    
Output format PNG
This document describes what it takes to make sure your artwork looks its best in the Open Surge game engine. While it is not complete, it should serve as both a good starting point and a valuable reference for all Open Surge artists.

We can and will replace the "ripped" content with original user-made resources.

Introduction

This game is NOT tile-based. It's brick-based. Bricks are blocks that are placed freely on the scene (examples: platforms, ramps, trees, plants). Some bricks can be animated, while others are obstacles (floor/walls). Furthermore, bricks can be passable in front of the players or behind them (decorative objects).

Bricks can be of multiple sizes, even in the same level. Your designs can combine a rough layout of large pillars and platforms with the detail of small rocks and bushes. The game engine recognizes level bricks as either rectangles (floor, walls) or triangles (ramps). We can even create classic circular loops by combining a few triangular bricks.

Loops.png

Specifications

The general idea is to recreate the look of a SEGA CD/32x game, including vibrant, saturated tones and an emphasis on pixel art. The original platformer style must be maintained.

Keep the following in mind:

Desert Brickset made by Celdecea
  • The engine supports portable network graphics (PNG) format. Think 2D pixel art; the PNG format handles that job well.
  • The color mode is 24 bits per pixel
  • The standard magenta (rgb 255,0,255) is used for the transparent color.

GUI

  • Acessibility is everything
  • Symbolic, minimal text (if any)

Level graphics

  • Please read the detailed brick mechanism. REALLY.
  • The sizes of the bricks are diverse. The image to the right shows several different-sized bricks which are used to create a level.
  • Please read the detailed background mechanism.
  • The game supports Parallax Scrolling. Backgrounds are usually large in width (about 500~1000 pixels wide) and have diverse heights. We attach the backgrounds to different layers (having different speeds) in order to create the parallax effect.

Items

  • The items are diverse in terms of animation and size. Examples:

Checkpoint orb.png Spring pads.png Item boxes.png Switches and doors.png

Enemies

  • The enemies are also diverse, but they tend to be "small" in size and have few animation frames. Example:

Lady Bugsy and Slime Bullet.png Sir bugsy.png

Characters

  • Characters have many animations and many frames. Each animation frame must fit roughly in a 50x50 area.
  • Available animations:
    • stopped
    • walking
    • running
    • jumping/charging/rolling
    • crouch down
    • look up
    • pushing a wall
    • death
    • getting hit
    • spring pad jump
    • breathing underwater (air bubble)
    • braking
    • death
    • hold the ceiling
    • flying (only for "Neon" the Squirrel)
    • climbing (only for "Charge" the Badger)
  • Example (this is Charge):
Chargex.png

Visual References

  • Knuckles Chaotix (SEGA 32x)
  • Sonic CD (SEGA CD)

Please follow the links:

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3955/visualref1.jpg

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/8153/visualref2.png

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/2227/visualref3.jpg

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8260/visualref4.gif

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/6457/visualref5.jpg

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/7159/visualref6.gif

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/2167/visualref7.gif

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2757/visualref8.gif

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/1176/visualref9.png


Testing your art on the game

Let's say that you want to replace the main character by some original character you've made. In order to do so, you can either:

  1. Replace the sprites at the images/player.png file, respecting the configuration (size and animations) of the original sprite. Example (the animations of the original character were made by Constantin)
  2. OR you can create a new PNG file (example: images/mycharacter.png) with any configurations you like and update the corresponding .spr file in the sprites/ folder accordingly (it's a simple text file).

The .spr file tells the game engine the configuration of the sprite. It specifies the dimensions of the spritesheet, the size of the frames, how the animations are composed, etc.

You can replace other sprites using the same mechanism.