New Word Sleuth mockup

* Made more a bunch of changes to the main menu button to make it look nicer.

* Adjusted the lighting on the notepad coils a bit to be more consistent with the rest of the art.

* Removed the text from the top right because with the score and timer text on the right there would have been too much text, and there's no sense in repeating the same logo I'm going to have on the title screen.

* Added the pencil to fill the blank space. Makes the overall background more interesting to look at.

* Added buttons to resize the window.

* Chose a new font and color for the grid text. Made the letters smaller. May make them a bit larger again for final game.




So, I've been thinking about the gameplay, and I think what I'm going to do is this:

I'll have the grid of letters, but there will be blank spaces where letters are missing. So instead of finding "sherlock" the player might instead circle "s erlock" or even " he lock". Not all blank spaces may be part of words in the list however, and not all words in the list may have missing letters on the grid.

The point of these missing letters is not only to make the puzzle a bit more difficult and interesting, but also the letters which are missing from the words in the word list will spell a bonus word when unscrambled, and the player will need to guess that at the end of the round for more points.

The player will also get more points for finding words fast. So if they find a word within 30 seconds, they get a bonus. This will probably involve some sort of timer which counts down, with time being added as each word is found, and bonus points being tallied at the end of the round based on how many minutes remain on the clock.

Would it not be easier to just take a photo of a desk with a pad and paper on it?

Don't get me wrong, what you've done looks quite pretty, but you've got some weird really thick parchment with edges that aren't really torn or cut. And looks like it's floating a couple of millimetres above the table. And with this rough look has a perfectly formed Times like font.

Then next to it you've got a cartoon notepad which has lines so clean it just doesn't match the rough of the parchment thingy. And yet has hand written style font.

It just doesn't 'fit' in my opinion, I think photographing the same scene and getting the computer to interact with it would be consistant to the hand written feel of the notepad. I don't know if the parchment is supposed to be printed or hand written, if it's printed then surely it wouldn't be a thick torn olde worlde thing...

It just seems a bit confused to me.

I think another small issue is the lack of consistancy with detail. The table has a table texture on it and the parchment has some nice texture on it, yet everything else is plain shaded.

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IMO it is OK but I agree the parchment seems odd. The font used is too clean, the edges are a bit uniformly rounded and the dropshadow does make it seem as if it is floating above the desk.
Having said that I don't know what the parchment is supposed to be.
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The pencil could also do with having a texture on it rather than being plain as it looks a bit flat.

I thought I was giving construcive critism not complaining about your artwork. Clearly it's upset you and I apologise. So here's my amended version.

Wow!! Amazing!! It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life, I can see nothing wrong with it what so ever. You are a god of all men.

I didn't ask for an art critique. I know the art isn't realistic. The look is intentional. I was mainly looking for motivation.

But hey, thanks for killing any motivation I did have going after my last post where the art had been well received, by basically saying my art sucks. Sorry I'm not Leonardo DavVinci.

Tonyg:
I'll consider doing something with the pencil texture and making the parchment thinner.

I never said your art sucked or any other vacuum cleaner function, I said it was 'quite pretty', and merely highlighted styling inconsistancies and oddities which I thought you would want to be made aware of. Clearly not.

it does look amiga-esque

Rob:
Well, the thing is... I was already aware of those inconsistencies, and I did them intentionally.

If I wanted to make it photorealistic, I could certainly do so, but that would result in a background which is too busy, and would require a lot more work. Also, having a score floating around doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Nor does a piece of parchment with a word search on it. Or a gold plaque conveniently mounted beneath the notepad with the words "Main Menu" on it.

And if none of those elements makes sense, then does it really matter if the parchment is thicker than expected, or if some things have texture when needed to convey what they are, while other things do not... as long as it looks pretty?

But anyway, if we're going to talk about people who can't take criticism, perhaps you should take a look in the mirror. There was no need for snide remarks just because I criticized your critique. And if I came off as being snide, I apologise. I didn't intend to. I was simply pointing out that the things you suggested were wrong were in fact, choices I made with good reason.

In closing; If you want to critique my work, that's fine... but don't expect me to just sit back and let you take pot shots without defending the choices I've made.

SSwift can't you please just accept Rob's feedback as well intentioned constructive criticism? Let's face it I don't think he'll be bothering you with any more.

I'm sure his initial criticism was well intentioned. That doesn't excuse the snide remark he made after I questioned his wisdom however.

FWIW, I think it looks great and I can't find anything wrong with it. I wouldn't change anything about it.

Hmmm, you did describe what you agree was well-intentioned constructive criticsm as I would have been a bit miffed at that but never mind.
Anyway, good luck with the game.

1280x960, that's a big resolution!

Not really. My LCD is 1920x1200. :-)

I think this looks damn cool, very beautiful art and if I was swift I would definitly continue working on this game. I like the screenshot and would even try playing this game so do contunue working on it swift

Damnit, now I can't tell if people are trying to be funny. :-)

Latest version:


I attempted to reduce the apparent thickness of the parchment, but doing so by simply reducing the width of the bevel or removing it entirely made it look crappy at lower resolutions. So instead I increased the brightness of the shadow half of the bevel, and I think that helped a bit, without affecting the appearance for low res screenshots.

I also adusted the color of the plaque a bit, and increased the bevel size on the screws while reducing the interior shadow on them to make them appear a bit larger.

I fixed up the window buttons a bit to make them less noticable.

Finally, I made the middle shades of the pencil a bit darker. Also added texture to the pencil tip and made it a bit darker. And added specularity to the lead, band, and eraser.

I'd try decreasing the brightness on the highlighted edges, too. The thickness of the bevel makes it look more like a lump of cardboard.

Also, I'd do something about the drop-shadow. A piece of paper lying flat on a desk doesn't cast a shadow like that.

Oh, and add a coffee cup stain!

I tried that, but it doesn't look as good in thumbnails. Or in the full version for that matter.






Also tried that. Reduced the shadows on that, and tried reducing the shadow on the notebook as well. Looked bland.

Also, if you think about it, a paper can cast a longer shadow if the light source is off to the side. I'm not sure why it looks like it's floating. Maybe because of how the drop shadow is just a copy of the layer's mask, and a real shadow would be connected to the paper at the top right and lower left corners. But really don't want to have to draw all my shadows manually. Makes it a lot harder to adjust them.




Hm... maybe I'll try doing that to the desk. I have some stains handy that I made for a texture CD a long time ago. As for the paper, the whole things gonna be covered in letters and so I think you wouldn't be able to see it there really, and if it was dark enough that you could, it would probably affect the readability. But on the desk is a possibility.

i like the look and style of it all, i like the way things kinda jump out at you.
its a game sometimes in games depending on the graphical style imo it looks better to have certain things exagerated a bit and jump out at you like the feeling i get in the above pictures. personally with this paticular game, i'd rather play with graphics like this then graphics that look like a photograph.

Latest version:


Here is a comparison with the latest version on the right, compared to a version a couple iterations ago:


Note how this version pops a bit more. I removed a color cast on the parchment and brightened it up a bit. I also made the lighting on the table a bit more contrasty which also increased the color saturation of it a bit. The main menu button also got a bit of attention. I tried adding those coffee stains GFK suggested to the desk but they didn't really work well.

At first glance, it seems easier to read the grid letters now and the red outline stands out more, but I may have overadjusted it a bit. I'll have to take another look at it later and compare it the last few versions to see if I went too far. It's so hard to adjust colors. When you're doing it it'll look fine, but you go back to look at it later and it's really obvious you screwed it up badly.

Then again it may be just fine. I just noticed that the colors I'm seeing here are not the same as what I'm seeing in photoshop exactly. They're more saturated. I thought I'd fixed that problem with photoshop's export, but I guess not. :-(

Test:

Ah. there we go. I had to turn off "convert to sRGB" in the save for web diaglog AND convert the image which was in sRGB format in photoshop to my monitor's profile before saving: