I like the 16-bit look for the pixelated smaller sprite also but the bigger sprite has a good look too (kind of modern like a Gen IV Pokemon game). I would add that I think the bigger sprite's walk cycle looks better.

I am completely new to game art as well and I just finished a month+ pixel-art-per-day challenge. I learned a lot but I can't say I'm quite there yet. All that said, there are a bunch of good tutorials online and I really got a lot out of this walk cycle animation tutorial. Check it out.

http://manningkrull.com/pixel-art/walking.php

Thank you for your comments. Which walk cycle(s) specifically do you think need improvement?

That is actually the animation tutorial I found most useful as well. I just haven't spent enough time revising the sideways walk cycle and plan on it. I want to keep at 2 frames for now as am planning on having a lot of sprites for NPCs. Though maybe later I will make main character have more frames per animation. Like I mentioned in previous post I am happy with the walking down animation though - I modeled it after taking a look at Earthbound for SNES sprites.

Do you have a link for the pixel art challenge or is that something you did on your own? I have a lot to learn still. I am happy with these sprites at the moment but am struggling with making their environment (indoor/office floor tiles, desks, chairs, computers, coffee machines, copy machines, etc.)

I like the first one. Also, I really like the other characters in the same style

Thanks!

Honestly, any type of compliments are motivating at this point. Just a few months ago I was creating things like this: (literally, from 1/26/16)

Just wanted to share that in case anyone else reads this that likes art but doesn't think they are good at it - just keep learning and practicing. I don't think I'm awesome or anything but I went from loathing the art I made to being happy with it in a fairly short time. You can do it!

Any girl NPC's? It would make it more realistic if there were.

Yes, see above

Hello everyone.

First I want to thank you for this wonderful dialog system.

Just a quick question: I wonder how to display only particular discussion or dialog.

Let say I have sprite.. and on collision with this sprite I want to display discussion id=1

And then I have different sprite, so on collision with that sprite I want to display discussion id=2 etc..

Please give me advice how can I do this?

I usually would give them an instance variable then use the instance variable in the path. As per the discussion above I might change the system to using attributes/IDs instead of different tags but here is an example:

XML.StringValue("/content/"&Interactables.class&"/"&Interactables.name&"/message/text()")

So in this example Interactables is family (if you can't use family just make one object with different instances) an the class is either set to NPC or Sign, but works the same way, and the name is whatever name I give it. So my xml would be:

-content

--npc

---tom

----message Hello!

But planning on eliminating the tom tag and giving the npc tag an id of tom.

Magistross, I was going to ask if you can give an example of when you have used a for each xml node? I can't think how to implement it in any of my current situations.

In my opinion, in this case 2 frames is not enough for a walking animation.

I'm not happy with the walking left/right animation and plan on changing it. Probably somewhere in between my first two attempts, one looks like he has a limp and the other looks like bouncing in a full sprint:

I am happy with the walking down animation though:

Not planning on changing it to more frames though. Using 2 frames isn't uncommon and I feel that more would be unnecessary in this case.

Thank you everyone for the feedback ( famousgnu6 , — , Nagval333, icestorm30). The unanimous votes have made my decision easy!

I have started messing around with making other characters (npc) from his frame, just trying out whatever comes to mind for now so many are similar and touch-ups needed:

Just started on attempting females - I was reluctant at first as was worried about actually getting them to look feminine. Final result of first attempt:

...and purely for my own entertainment:

Also, IDs aren't indexes, we aren't numbering stuff, we're giving names per say. I don't see how it would force us to change the previous ones as we insert new data.

My initial post was asking why tutorials were doing:

Id=1

Id=2

Id=3

Etc

They also had the same path and tag, so that was my suggestion to use index instead of ID. I believe that was my only time recommending using index.

So I guess we are in agreement that using IDs to "number stuff" isn't a great practice?

A unique ID provides a way to associate a particular XML node to a particular Construct object. Yes you could assiociate an index, but indexes are volatile, they change as soon as you insert new data (unless you always append). IDs will stay the same until you change them, even if you insert new data right in the middle of your file.

Suppose you are interacting with an npc, and you know its IDs, reading the right XML with XPath is as simple as /root/npcs/npc—, and this statement will always return the npc node with id = "myId", even if its index changes.

I get that but I don't get why using ID would benefit over doing this:

root

-npc

--tom

---scene1

----message hello there /message

----message can i help you /message

---/scene1

---scene2

----message welcome back /message

---/scene2

--/tom

--john

---scene1

----message

etc.

Would you really want to have IDs that long? id=tomScene1Message1; id=tomScene2Message1; etc.

And the indexes being volatile was actually the benefit I was initially pointing out. What if you have 20 lines of dialogue in a scene to tell a story then want to insert another line after the first—you will have to change 19 IDs. Not horrible . . .until you change your mind again ...

Are you talking about posting an image to facebook or pulling an image from facebook?

Not sure I can answer but I just recently noticed that when I have posted small images to facebook they have pixelated the hell out of it. So could be same issue if Facebook treats all small images the same.

Hi there, I am trying to create a sub-game within my game. I would like objects to fall from the sky when the player comes into contact with a bin which will then be used to catch those objects. These objects falling will only last 20 seconds or so then it will stop. I have attached the bullet behavior to the objects but don't really know where to go from here.

Any suggestions?

Using bullet behavior will make them move forward, which is defaulted to the right (I believe, when creating a new sprite it's angle is 0 which is to the right). So you can just change the angle to 90 but bullet behavior is really only necessary if they are moving fast. You can use platform behavior or physics behavior. If using platform behavior be sure to turn of "default controls" in the settings (or else the player will control them). If using physics behavior the objects will bounce off other physics objects. But beware with physics objects if you use a ton it will slow down.

You could even not use a behavior and make an event that moves the objects down every tick, or something similar. Can put that event in a group and disable it when minigame not in use.

So many options . . .

scirra.com/tutorials/1461/how-to-use-the-localstorage-plugin

Yes, — are you using any method to save the game? If not it will return to default every time opened.

Magistross It's not that I don't understand how to use them, I am just trying to figure out which method is efficient in different situations. I am still not sure how I can make use of IDs if they are unique, but I can see how attributes can be used effectively—something like this:

Guard1 NormalMessage

Guard1 SpecialMessage

Guard2 NormalMessage

Guard2 SpecialMessage

So you can search for multiple attributes to narrow down the result?

I guess if using nested tags is similar to using folders then using attributes and ids is similar to a search function?