This isn’t so much a technical issue as it is as request for suggestions. I love the game I’m making so far but I feel like it lacking the visuals department. Below I have the title screen (ignore the red line at the top, its meant for my camera tweening between it and the settings menu) and opening scene which is basic to say the least, and I want to improve its eye catching nature. That way players are more visually enthralled. Any ideas?
You have some really nice looking trees, characters and objects. But the ground images are the complete opposite, being very bland, and there’s a fair amount of it. Could you crop the scene so there’s a lot less of the ground and maybe push the dialogue box to the top part of the screen? Something like:
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I agree with MrMen. Additionally, in the opening scene the shop keeper is talking to the player but the player is quite far away from the shop. You could place the player next to the shop and zoom in for the dialogue.
The title screen is indeed a bit boring. I would definitely make a title logo with a distinct font and maybe some graphical elements, something that basically all games have. The background could include something that comes up in your game and you could even animate it a bit. You could also just blur a background of one of your game scenes and display your menu over that. If you search for game title screens you will get a lot of inspiration.
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Hi kingflames113 , as well as the other suggestions, something you could look at is the ‘value’ of the colors. If you squint your eyes narrow and look through your eyelashes you’ll see in your game pic that there really is only dark and light and most of it is dark. Even though the trees have different colors, all those colors are of similar value in terms of light and darkness.
If the leaves on the foreground trees were lighter and brighter and the wood trunk parts darker then there would be more contrast. When colors are of a similar value they can look ‘muddy’. Which would work well for a far away background like your purple background trees.
You could also think about scale and if in fact such big trees is what you want or would you have smaller trees with mountains in the background for example. Or have the character, shop etc bigger.
Like MrMen said, the ground is flat looking so with or without moving the dialogue, you could give it some texture.
Your title scene could go from very dark to dark to light. And in the lightness you could have a dark silhoutte of your character in an interesting pose. This is a pic I found through a search that does something like that.
You’re on the right track and you’ve had some great suggestions here already, but a few thoughts:
As Drona says, a logo would help your title screen to come alive. A logo would also help you when it comes to listing your game and with any promotional stuff you do (trailer, screenshots etc.).
As MrMen said, the ground is bland. It would look more interesting if it was grass or rocks - just generally richer. You have those lovely detailed trees in the background, but a bland ground and large blocks under the ground of solid colour that feel empty.
The goblin in your dialogue box looks like an enlarged version of one from an actual level perhaps. It’s a little blurry. How about portraits specifically made for dialogue? Or put the images you have in a frame of some kind, so he’s not floating around in the box. The white text might look better with a 1 pixel black outline. The font has very tight leading (line spacing) that makes it a little uncomfortable to read. It’s a shame you can’t control leading in GDevelop, as far as I know. It’s down to personal preference, but I would maybe experiment with some other pixel fonts and see if there’s one with wider leading built in. If you are using a bitmap font, you could add spacing yourself.
I love the autumn vibe. How about some leaves floating to the ground using particle effects? Maybe you have lots of animation - I can’t tell - but small animations like that will make the game world feel alive. Maybe the occasional bird flying past and insects flying around the lamp posts. Particle effects could be used for the insects. I use particle effects to make dust motes in my game. Particles are easy to set up, but breathe so much life into an otherwise static scene.
Thank you everyone for the suggestions! I have been taking them all into account! The only thing I have left is sort of wanting to add something to the top corners to reduce the empty space.
There was a javascript method given here. テキストまたはbbテキストの「行間」調整についての質問 - #4 by PANDAKO
And a feature request for it to be included in bbtext here Allow line spacing customisation for text objects
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