- Registrado
- 23 de Ago, 2018
I'm trying it at the moment. And by that, I mean I've been trying it for over a year I think.
One thing I felt helped a lot was the one hour asset challenge, and more recently messing around in Pico8.
The challenge is exactly what it sounds like. You can only spend one hour or less on an asset. This isn't practical for rigged and animated characters, but most things, it really helps get past perfectionism. I've brought it up to other struggling devs, and some (perhaps jokingly) try to game the system. But sticking to the spirit of the challenge helped me just get things done. Yes, you can come back later, but it's surprising how much I just left as is, or did a small bit of cleanup on.
Pico 8 is kind of similar in that it's 8x8 sprites with a fixed 16 colour palette. This doesn't leave a lot of room for finely detailed assets. You just have to go with what you can and hope it works. Not only that, each sprite only takes a few minutes. Less once you've got it down. It also teaches you short cuts for detail. eg. A health pack is a square with a cross on it, but maybe remove one pixel from the corners to round it off a bit. Maybe add a small handle. Or some gray and make the cross off centre to give the impression of depth.
And again, Pico 8 has an option for larger sprites, but don't use it. Stick to 8x8 and see if you can make it work.
A somewhat related challenge was a texture atlas challenge. This one wasn't as formal as the other examples, but some advice for the 1 hour challenge. Make an atlas or collection of stock textures, and use nothing else unless you absolutely have to. And you guessed it, it's amazing what I let slide or would reuse to imply something else with no one noticing. A soil texture made greyscale made a convincing stone texture. A generic "metal" texture was used for everything from plastic to dry wall.
Kenney assets and Screaming Brain Texture Pack are two I used for these challenges.
Off topic, but related, recently I've been doing a daily doodle challenge inspired by a PewDiePie video of all things, and I'm putting serious thought into the 5 hour/24 hour comic challenges.
