Trying to polish a game, I need an artist's eye.

[smith1302]

Hey, Ive never posted on the design and graphics section of the forums but I think some of you may help me. Ive made a game and iam really trying to make it look nice and polished and was wondering you guys can give me some tips on ways to make it look nicer. I would have put this post on the games section but I wanted art suggestions in specific.

You can look at it here:

www.freewebs.com/smith1302

Thanks!

-smith

[RUSHVision]

I like the gameplay, but if you are looking for 'nice and polished' I would suggest an overall upgrade to pretty much all the graphics. I made up a quick example to show you what I mean. The new towers and castle were made in Swift3D.

To add some more visual interest, I made each of the 3 towers different. I would recommend doing the same thing for the structures that represent the troop and upgrade menus. Since those two look so similar there are no visual cues that tell the player which is which. To further make it clear which structure represents which menu, I would suggest labeling them as I did in the image below.



And this is just my opinion, but you might want to consider losing Chuck Norris and PacMan. Neither one of them fits in with the theme of the game, and I believe they only serve to contribute to the cheese factor. If you want some uber things like that I would suggest keeping them in line with the theme.

In regard to the troop graphics, if you refine the look of the buildings, you're going to want to refine the troops as well. Otherwise they are going to look out of place.

[smith1302]

Wow that screenshot of the game with the new graphics is amazing. I really appreciate it! The good thing is I have swift 3d so I can make the graphics and stuff, I’ll just have to learn how to use it first . Also the making the towers looks different was a great idea. And I was planning on changing the graphics of the troops anyways because they do like wayyyy to simple.

Thanks again though, the way you set up the tower menu is probably my favorite thing you did, it’s a lot less crowded now and looks 20x nicer, I wouldn’t of ever thought of it if it weren’t for your pic. And I’ll probably delete the chuck and pacman partly because of the reason you said but also because I heard I could get sued :/


Ps: That font that you used is really cool, what is it? It looks awesome.

[sandyrivers]

Congratulations, you've been RUSHed! It's at once a profound and humbling experience!

-Sandy

[RUSHVision]

sandy ~
Lol, that's funny.

smith ~
The name of that font is 'Binner'. You should be able to google it for a free download.

Some additional general suggestions for polishing up your games...

> Shoot for consistency. Every element in your game should look like it is part of the same presentation. Notice in my example that I placed a black outline around all the elements that I added. This fits the style of this game and helps tie things together, presenting a more cohesive visual appearance.

> Choose appropriate fonts. You don't want to get too crazy and use overly decorative fonts, but choosing one with the right 'flavor' goes a long way towards giving your game a more professional look. Also be careful about using too many different fonts in a single project. The part at the bottom where it says 'Build your army now.' could be a different one or could be given some type of special treatment for instance, but the font that you use for the menu and the info bar at the top should be the same.

[smith1302]

Lol yay ive been "RUSHed" I feel so special

Thanks alot for all the help and tips, not only can I used them on this project but on any other I might do!

Hopefully when I get done with this it won't look like a 8 year old drew the graphics anymore.

Thanks Again,
Smith

[RUSHVision]

No problem. Be sure to keep us updated on your progress.

[Black_phoenix]

i cant get on there, connection reset...