Can someone make my balls better?

Or do you think that these look ok? It's the third time I've tried to revamp them. I like the Yellow ball with the TnT and think that maybe all the other balls should be of the same style.

What do you guys think?

Let me know if you need the template psd file.

I dunno. What are they for?

They're for my game BubblePop. Think Zuma, it's along those lines of gameplay.

[edit] They don't have to be the same graphics just something different for each ball that looks good. I need the TnT and Danger balls as they are needed for gameplay elements like explosions and contamination. Just some different pixel graphics that I can use on them to make it more pleasing to the eye is needed.

They look ok

The gaps around your balls are pink!

> They look ok

Well obviously they're fine. He just wanted to post a topic that sounded rude cos it makes him feel clever.

I do feal clever. :)

Anyway, I don't want them to look ok. I want them to look teh Bizznes.

The pink background will be masked out when loaded in to BlitzMax. I always use that as the mask color.

Look! Me and Dave have examined your balls already, even the radioactive one. So kindly put them away young sir.

This is what the last ones looked like.



Should I go back to these ones?

They look a big jagged.

I just had to come here and lay my fears to rest..phew!

Both sets or just the second set? I can't make the outline of the balls any less jagged without it affecting the Mask.

I could add a tiny blur to the balls though.

Why do you have to mask them? I thought you were using BlitzMax, in which case you can use the alpha channel instead of a mask.

Also, if you made them at 2 or even 4 times the size you want them to be and resized them down when you're finished, they would (a) Probably look better and (b)automagically be less jagged ( assuming you use the alpha channel, as mentioned above. )

I like the top two rows of the second set best, BTW.

The inner-bevel/drop-shadow can do some tinkering methinks, it has a bit too much depth too it, taking away from the detail for me.

Regarding TNT, whenever I think of TNT with regards to something iconic, I always think of those red-square boxes with the handle on top with the curly wire that all the old-cartoon characters used to use to blow each other up with.

It might seem silly but I don't know how to do that. Didn't know you could :/

Mini description on how to do it?



But when you rescale the images don't they become antialiased and affect the MaskColour? Or does that not matter when you use the alpha channel like yoiu said?

I noticed the jaggies on the yin yang the most. Also on the first set there are too many dark areas on the actual icons themselves, making them sorta hard to see imho.

Get a decent paint program (I use Gimp now). Go into it and put one of your circles on it's own on a purple background. Select by colour and click on the purple. Then invert the selection so only the shape is outlined. Then use "feather selection" on the border and copy and paste it back into another image with a transparent background (checkerboard effect). Draw in BlitzMax with the SetBlend AlphaBlend setting. Easy when you know how. Oh and buy my framework too ;-) You know you want to.

Yeah, when you use the alpha channel instead of the mask, it just softens the edges and removes the jaggies.


You use Photoshop, right? Delete the background layer ( probably the bottom one in the layer pallette ) and save it as a 32bit PNG. When you don't have a background layer you'll see grey and white checks behind your images.

Or when you create the image, pick a transparent background in the background dropdown. And again, save as 32bit png.

Photoshop is handy this way because it doesn't require you to work directly with the alpha channel. You just paint your pixels and it works out the alpha channel when you save. You can paint in 100% opaque pixels, then resize your image down to 1/2 or 1/4 size before exporting and some of those pixels will have moderate transparency because they've been interpolated with the completely transparent pixels when the image was resized. It requires no effort, it just works.

Also starting bigger and scaling will anti-alias the whole image to remove jaggies inside the circles as well.

Here you are, Its Blitzmax use ALPHABLEND :)

And the difference is between this :



And this :




The background is there only to show the jaggies and is not actually present in the image.

Or just use the AntiAlias Action in Photoshop, and a bit of tweaking.

I like smooth balls better. My girlfriend said she also likes smooth balls, but maybe a little bigger than yours.

bah, I was looking for an option just like that in gimp earlier, but no luck. Should have scaled up and scale down 1 pixel out or something.

Indiepath:

My antialiased balls are better than yours!

you have problems in naming your thread. But it certainly draws people in.

Just bought Bmax a week ago.... this is a very interesting thread on how to make smoothies.....

its difficult to get balls from my gimp

I think my gimp is pretty good at polishing balls to a professional standard so that I feel good about them and other people like to look at them and play with them.

You just couldn't help it, could you? :P



Scarily, No women.

Cyg: lol, no I just couldn't stop myself haha. I'm still a little kid inside.

I think you should let people choose their balls... you know, have more than one set of balls.

I personally like two sets of balls when going in to ask for a raise from the boss. (OK I could not resist that comment)

nuts...

yeah... nuts... instead of balls...

why don't you make em nuts instead...


what!!!???


--Mike

Added a bit of highlight to make them look more spherical.

looks good.

I can't find that in PhotoShop CS. Even checked the help file.

I like what Rob Farley did with the highlights, looks good. I'd like to do that to all the balls.

I've tried Greys Idea of scaling them up 1 pixel then down 1 pixel but they end up a little blurry.

What tool was used to add the highlight?

Thanks Guys. :)

I used paint shop pro, added a layer and drew a highlight, added a layer, and drew a lowlight. Then tweaked the power of the blends until it looked about right.

I like the look of Rob's version, they have much more of a 3D feel to them than the original images.