GB Pixel Art Jam 2023 Submission - 192
A downloadable Art Jam Submission
"An Awesome Discovery", the theme of the first ever GB Pixel Art Jam, for me, immediately sparked the emotion found when a game developer explores the possibilities in front of them and discovers their own awesome path.
By virtue of its limits, crafting games for the Game Boy is a process of stretching out and being adventurous in translating an idea or feeling into a 160x144p dot matrix screen. One pixel in an 8x8 tile can make all the difference! And with pixel art traditionally being an electronic medium, we have the benefit of quickly adding and subtracting pixels and tones. With this rapid testing, we can slowly but surely sculpt out and find the final form as a fellow artist might chisel down a piece of marble to release its imbued subject (but those folks don't have Crtl + Z). And when new ideas come, testing new techniques is a natural next step!
192 was both an emulated and bonafide process of loading up a blank canvas and discovering what can be done on the handheld. From dithering techniques, to testing contrast, to setting up palette tricks, my submission includes real uses of this from my game dev journey as well as legitimate discoveries made during the process!
I had a lot of fun making something that really holds the spirit of "an awesome discovery" to me and I hope others find some joy in it too :)
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This is quite inspiring, the use of optical illusions has always caught my attention, this image filled me with ideas for how to execute them.
I had several problems using only 192 tiles, to be honest they almost made me give up. Seeing such a well-detailed image where each tile has its place is something really cool all in all.
Good work!
Thank you!
Originally, I actually wanted it to be a totally linear succession of unique tiles starting at the top left and then having the remaining 168 tiles be just a blank bottom half. That would've really hit home the "192" idea. However, since the point of the piece was to push to the limit with what new techniques I could discover, I took that opportunity to make the two large sections of plain/dithered tiles to explore how they would look blending into one another.
The limitations of GB/C can be a lot of fun to max out though. The gorilla face on the left is from my game DE '22 and you might have noticed that some of his face is dark green instead of light green. This is because I needed a different color palette to help show the buildings in the background too. So in the final game, his face is all one solid color. That was a technique a lot of GBC devs will come across and I first discovered it for myself on that game hence its inclusion here.
Working within 192 is certainly tough! It can be frustrating and take some patience and testing, but I think it's very rewarding to have the final product.
This is really interesting to know, I haven't tried to create a game with colors for Gameboy Color yet, so I don't know the limits faced by projects like this. The effect in just 4 colors is great, so using these effects with more colors sounds very exciting.
I took a quick look at your DE '22 game, and it's really well produced, the cutscenes are quite impressive. When I'm done, I'd love to tell you what I thought.
I appreciate the interest, that game was a lot of fun to make. Limitations were higher in GBS 2b5 but now with GBS 3.1, so much more is possible! (Still need to do that palette change though haha)
Such a clever play on the theme as a whole and being a GB dev as a whole!
I love that because of the nature of tilesets you've absolutely crammed the canvas with so many varied tiles one can use, and then you've wielded them to paint just enough to leave room for more.
Truly sometimes it can feel 192 is too little, but sometimes you realise it can also be so much space if you know where to put them.
And I love that sneaky 192 tile at the bottom right, an entire tile just to show you had one left ;D.
Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you like it!
The 192 is admittedly one of my favorite tiles :) At one point I went over the limit and had to decide what to cut out but I was def keeping that one haha
I love this! Its got a mysterious quality to it like you're not supposed to be able to view the game like this. Like peeping behind the scenes of an old game using a graphics editing tool like YY-CHR. I used to screw around with NES games graphics and insert pixel art portraits of myself into games like Donkey Kong. This reminds me of viewing the graphics and trying to work out how I can edit tiles in the game to make a picture that shouldn't be there.
Thanks! I've never heard of YY-CHR, going to look that up.
Tilesets have a mysterious aesthetic to them I feel - like seeing the garbled mess that you know is played out so cohesively in game
This is awesome, I love the concept of it as well as the execution ^_^
Thanks howdy! Much appreciated to hear from a fellow GB dev ^u^
^_^