Dungeon Crawler - C++/SDL/C# - Representing Stairs Challenge

So, the game, at the moment is totally top down 2D, there are no camera angles, no isometric perspective, it's just all looking straight down at the canvas below.

So, one challenge is how to represent depth, I've seen some art styles showing walls rising from an edge of a square and away to the centre, so it looks as though it's a wall climbing up towards the camera.

And, this effect is built in, not by the game, but by loading the pictures/images from disk, so anyone can draw like that.

One thing I can't do however is I can't draw, not very well, not on a computer.

And the next challenge facing me is how to represent stairs, if I can't do it easily with a single tile, do I need to make stairs which take up several tiles and have isometric effects to them, or do I need to increase the size of the tiles?

You see, there are options, which work to represent top down stairs...

That looks right to me, but it's done with shadows, alpha and importantly to work it all needs more than 70x70 resolution...  The same trick for me, using gradient brushes, at 70x70 comes out like this:

It's not the same is it?... No, I didn't think so.

Other options are to make stairs as I would with a biro on a table top map:

But, again this needs more pixels per tile, and definitely needs more than one tile.

Stairs going down are also a challenge, they need just as good a resolution which my tiles don't provide:

From http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=22407

Suggestions on a postcard please.

Booby... Sorry, I mean, Character Modelling

I stumbled over this, an interesting and informative video about 3D character modelling & art.

However, I could not get over the character in question having those silly boobs and bikini bottom on... So annoying.

Also Hai Phan... get a pop filter, I was a little tired of hearing your cheeks slapping on your teeth after a while!

Banksy Mate Be Altruistic

With the day I've had I could really do with a break, suffice to say its a costly day, and I've love a shining light to pop my way...

For instance, I could do with winning the lottery...

Or I'd happily swap Mr Banksy £38 a few times - maybe five would be good - for some pictures... I'd even let him pop all reclusive like into the back yard and do them whilst I put the kettle on and he tried to avoid spraying the dogs maybe.

I just need a break, a chance to see my head above water.

This isn't a misery of povery thing, I'm not poor in the classical sense, I just don't ever seem to get a break at the moment, not one good thing has really happened to spark a smile in so long.

Hey ho... Wish I was in New York I'd have had the pneumatic drill equipped rat... and for irony sake the sign saying "$60", who else could say they got $60 off of Banksy?

Art Critque - Great Detail

So, earlier in the month, on the 8th, I posted about some images released by the BBC.  I complained that the artist was not actually very good that they had put "detail" in to make up for a basic lack of originality.

I just want to revisit this topic, firstly to say, I think I know where the artist vaunted by the BBC may have gone wrong.  I think they were wrong to use what appeared like a digital photograph of a part of Manchester as their starting point.

And secondly, to show them how I'd appreciate their art being produced... No, I'm not going to get Pencil or Paper out... I'm not going to start up GIMP or go buy Photoshop... I'm simply going to send you to a link to watch a video... its 11 minutes of mesmerizing attention to detail.

Here is that link.

Art Critique... Apocalypse Manchester

So, the BBC have done their usual and brought attention to something not very good... They're pictures created by an artist of Manchester in post apocalyptic style... personally I believe Manchester would be fully populated and a hub of any enterprises remaining after any apocalypse.  The people might have an extra finger from radiation, or they might not be able to get full signal on their iPhones, but they'd be there...

So, looking at these images had me a bit skewed towards the, not very good opinion straight off.  Looking at the detail in them though, I was impressed, the inner seven year old inside was like "whoa this is a great picture, look at all the detail"... then I realised all I was looking at was the detail, the amount of things the artist has flung shit at and scratched down walls...

Then I started to look with my thirty year old mind... and I came to the conclusion the art isn't very good... it looks like someone has snapped a picture on a decent high-res digital camera and then spent a good few days dirtying the pictures in Photoshop... the effect of decay is just taking walls and structures and scratching them away, best exemplified in the picture of the big wheel, if that structure had lost that segment, the weight of the upper standing arc would have pushed it down and collapsed it.

The railway viaducts, made of bricks, scratched away... bricks don't scratch away to leave brittle stagalmite like structures, they break off... well like bricks, and scatter... even in a nuclear blast.  And they don't erode like portrayed, they round and the pointing fails and they fall out as oblong whittled blocks, not splinters.

This simple relation between what is portrayed and what real-life presents is very stark in the images, the images clearly are not trying to convey real situations of decay or desolation, but instead a stylised one.  They are effectively abstract art, meeting modern art.  But with the artist clearly not wielding an eye for reality is this art?

The Jackson Pollock brigade clear would say yes, I myself however am more dubious... its fine photoshop work, worthy of any game developer out there, but I don't think its art in the "hang on the wall sense" its less in the art category from that perspective than a Pollock, and I think they're pretty off the scale of art in themselves.

But above my critique, why has the BBC brought attention to it... I wonder if the poster at the Beeb has let their seven year old mind run away with them going "WOW" before their adult brain went "ah, not actually that good".

So, in summary, massive detail does not define good art, and if you're going to aim for detail, make it realistic, make it stun even after the second glance.