Spriting Contest

[CherryPie]

I'm currently working on an own mmo, written in C# with XNA game studio 4.0. Most of the major features like gravity, collisions and other engine based stuff, aswell as the hud and camera are already working fine.

here's a little preview:
http://img41.imageshack.us/i/020111.png/

The problem is, graphicswise, I did only the background + hud myself. I really do not have enough time (and talent) for creating high quality sprites, so currently I am looking for talented spriters and I thought to myself, "hey why not checkout some people from SO, there may be some talented guys".

To make it fun for everyone & not drag it to the "advertising own games"-direction, everyone who is interested, will have to compete in the following spriting contest.

Spriting Contest:
You are given a backgroundimage without any content.
The goal is to create a visually appealing jungle setting using your own style.
You do not have to use the complete 1920px width, but we should get a nice idea of your qualities.
Afterwards you create an enemy sprite, that isn't bigger (and also not alot smaller) than 64x64 px & put it in the scenery.
Lastly post your result here.

Empty Background screen resource:

[krele]

Such approach often yields failures. Do not mix backgrounds like that with the sky. Sometimes you would need players to go high or low, and making a map 2000x40000 in size is killing your memory.

Also, a suggestion. From my experience, there is no better tool in making 2d mmo's than game maker (SO is made in it). I literally can fart a really well written server in matter of hours (5-6), while you would spend days coding one in C#... Sure, C# is faster, but you won't really need your game to run on more than 60fps. That speed can be achieved with a low-end machine, if your coding is not messy.

Plus, don't start coding "big projects" until you have a decent idea of what your game is going to offer. If we all asked you what is your game about, I'm 80% sure you would say "well it's sometime like SO"... Sure, making your game unique is tough, but game's that don't offer anything new, or don't have a matching storyline often end up uninstall-ed day one.

Also, if you can't sprite, and you can't find a willing spriter, don't start something big. I have like 2 really well planned games, fully coded servers, physics, etc. but my characters are un-animated and ugly. Who wants to play a game that has one sprite for running, attacking and so on?

Finally CherryPie, "Spriting Contests" like this only attract people that don't sprite at all. So your results will be not even close to what a casual 2d mmo is screaming for.

~ Best of luck though!

[CherryPie]

uh thanks for the criticism, even if it's off topic and not what I wanted to hear. As for the background thing, I have different gamerooms connected with portals, so there is no memory killing problem, also XNA is really intuitive and it took me only 2 months to get my platformer engine to work properly, even if I had no experience with XNA before.

The server code is written in a different Windows Forms Application with a library called Lidgren, which is also very intuitive, fast & easy to learn.

You shouldn't really tell me, that I would have problems, if there aren't any at all :P

Everything I need are talented spriters, if you are interested, okay, but if not, please stay out of this with your hints, that aren't needed.

I am not creating this game to be perfect from the start, but I am really enjoying learning new things and seeing how things work together & by the way, just take a look at StickOnline. It is ways away from being perfect or "completed", still it has aquired a fanbase of over 1000 players. :)

Thanks for your time, though! Now back on topic, guys.

[Yankyal]

uh thanks for the criticism, even if it's off topic and not what I wanted to hear. As for the background thing, I have different gamerooms connected with portals, so there is no memory killing problem, also XNA is really intuitive and it took me only 2 months to get my platformer engine to work properly, even if I had no experience with XNA before.

The server code is written in a different Windows Forms Application with a library called Lidgren, which is also very intuitive, fast & easy to learn.

You shouldn't really tell me, that I would have problems, if there aren't any at all :P

Everything I need are talented spriters, if you are interested, okay, but if not, please stay out of this with your hints, that aren't needed.

I am not creating this game to be perfect from the start, but I am really enjoying learning new things and seeing how things work together & by the way, just take a look at StickOnline. It is ways away from being perfect or "completed", still it has aquired a fanbase of over 1000 players. :)

Thanks for your time, though! Now back on topic, guys.

Try asking Ceroblitz