So many pixel art games

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The Sentient

Guest
well it's certainly not 3D, so i'm guessing it's going to have to be 2D.
Sounds like you have dodged the question.

Most of the time when people say "I am making a 2D game", the next question asked would be "what style".

That was the question. What 'graphical style' do you personally think is most common with GMS creations?
 
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Joh

Member
I dont think game maker pushes to pixel art as much as someone using game maker is more likely to use pixelart.
As many have said, pixel art is the easiest art style to do. To be fair, GOOD pixel art, is quite hard perhaps as much as 3d,vector or non-pixel work.
thing is all of those done bad look AWFUL (like really bad) Bad pixel art can go unoticed more easily. The undertale shot kinda proves that point. some say it looks great, didnt look bad nor good to me, but Nocturne pointed out some of the flaws and all I can think is how did I not see them.
Now imagine a 3D game with BAD models, or just someone with no skill behind it. I would not get a pass, it would be flagrant and offputting. Hell, these days even super good model with bad animation might be offputting.
(before someone points out minecraft: first off, at least it was coherent. second, Once people found this "Easier, acceptable" 3D style, a lot of people are co-opting it. Kinda pixelart 2.0, the appeal is reduced since If you first need to cross the 3d game "level" but its growing (as does minimalist 3d models).

Game maker has a lot of young, inexperienced users that just want to make a game. paying a proper is often not an option, thus all high level, time demanding styles are off limit. Theres pretty much either pixel art or non-pixel raster. both are pretty much the same but at least pixel art has that nostalgia (why??!! most pixelart of today is an a whole other ballpark) and some respect. The other is "like pixelart, but OBVIOUSLY doesnt take care of pixels" making it look like a mess.

The showcase tend not to be pixelart because... showcase worthy people & games tend to have made use of budget/team/artist allowing them to reach more unique & appealing styles. even some of the pixelart games there are "unique/high production" styles.
Sounds like you have dodged the question.
To be fair your question doesnt seem to be goodwilled. not the person you asked but Id still say pixel art (proper or not). Wether those game end up complete and make it to the showcase or any store is another question. (Yes most "established" GM games are not pixelart) But we still SEE the attempts, clouding perception.
 
T

The Sentient

Guest
To be fair your question doesnt seem to be goodwilled.
Why not? This doesn't seem like a fair assessment.

I can't say I have really used any other game engine other than GMS. (Maybe an hour or so of the other major engines, but that is it - I don't particularly like the other engines). For me GMS is the fastest engine I have used to get games up and running on, and is by far my most favorite engine out there.

There is no agenda going on here. But for people to try and say that the most common graphical style produced by GMS users is not pixel art. Then I strongly disagree.
 

Joh

Member
Why not? This doesn't seem like a fair assessment.
My mistake, misinterpreted the question as trying to say that Pixel art was NOT the most used in GM. I do think theres an argument for it, when looking at showcase games, but I feel using that is "bad willed"(Lets look at the exceptions, instead of the whole package).
 
G

Guest User

Guest
Sounds like you have dodged the question.
ack. i really do hate being accused of things i didn't do.

if we take into account ALL gamemaker games released (or even just the "hits" displayed in the Showcase), we can see that GMS favors 2D artstyles heavily. if we attempt to narrow the particular style of 2D artwork, however, it's very difficult. instead of taking every single released game into account i am instead taking a sample of every major game made in GMS, which includes many of the games shown on Reddit, the Showcase, and Made in Gamemaker forum. since the question seems to be pixel art v. non-pixel art (a la "this has aliasing so its pixel art!" ), then that gives us two categories to put games in.
in the end, i determined that neither group had a significantly larger amount of games in it than the other.

when we assess GMS itself, then again 3D flies out the window and we're stuck with 2D graphics. otherwise, GMS simply doesn't push you toward using any particular artstyle. now, it's true GMS cannot handle hi-res art in general, but...that doesn't really have to do with artstyle or technique.

so, i've come to the conlclusion that GMS, as a software, isn't really anymore inclined to one 2D artstyle over another. developers, on the other hand, i could have a few more words about but i don't want to be impolite given my utter disdain for most styles of pixel art. that and i don't really feel like putting forth the effort to write a whole ranty dissertation on the matter.

now, i've answered your question, i've shown proof of my work, and i'm going to consider myself absolved of the crime.
 

True Valhalla

Full-Time Developer
GMC Elder
if we take into account ALL gamemaker games released (or even just the "hits" displayed in the Showcase), we can see that GMS favors 2D artstyles heavily. if we attempt to narrow the particular style of 2D artwork, however, it's very difficult.

in the end, i determined that neither group had a significantly larger amount of games in it than the other.
Pixel art is undoubtedly the main 2D art style used across the majority of GameMaker projects, it's not even up for debate. Even a brief glance over this thread says it all...

 
G

Guest User

Guest
Perhaps the respondents here don't know that there are other 2D art styles aside from pixel art ;) It would certainly prove your point.
1) unless i'm grossly misunderstanding the intent of this post...this is rude as šŸ’©šŸ’©šŸ’©šŸ’© and seriously uncalled for.

Pixel art is undoubtedly the main 2D art style used across the majority of GameMaker projects, it's not even up for debate. Even a brief glance over this thread says it all...
2) my avatar is ANSI characters, not pixel art. it doesn't matter too much but i thought i'd point that out because i like to spread awareness that it exists whenever i can. :)

3) i did allude to this but i do agree i should really clarify. i don't disagree that most 2D developers use pixel art as that's an undeniable fact regardless of what engine you go to. when it comes to Gamemaker games though, it doesn't seem to be implied that you must use pixel art to be successful or anything given that there's a pretty even distribution of pixel art and non-pixel art games. so nobody is forced to use it to stay on top.

but most importantly, OP was asking about whether GMS can handle non-pixel art. this is the only part of this thread that i actually care about and i believe that the answer to that is yes, it can. it does have limitations, but i don't agree that these limitations restrict GMS to being "mainly" for pixel art.
 
T

The Sentient

Guest
If the question is now "can GMS handle non pixel art games?". Then yes absolutely, very much so.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
....Death's Gambit looks nothing like Undertale and only 12 out of 29 games on the first page of the Gamemaker Showcase have "visible pixels", with pixel art becoming less and less common on further pages. where's the fire? o_O
For sure they are very different pixel art direction... but still pixel art.

For the GM website, I think they praise more the diversity in their showcases than other thing... They need to sell that GM doesnt only do pixel art games ;) .

And as I said... there is no fire. Pixel Art is cool and i Like it....
But just go get the majority of the successful 2D games today... They are pixel art.

EDIT: Also the majority of games on the forum too.
 
Z

zendraw

Guest
i think some1 is misunderstanding a style, with a direction for appeal.
 

Niels

Member
Yes, but the point I was getting is that all games tend to look "[insert_engine]'y".

You can generally pick a GMS game a mile off.
You can generally pick a Unity game a mile off.

It's the unique looking games that tend to catch my eye.
I can tell what game is made in unreal
 

DesArts

Member

I usually choose pixel art because it's the fastest way to get something looking a certain way. Even if that certain look is complex or detailed.

I certainly wouldn't lump all pixel art together, there are varying 'sub-styles' and reasons.
- Some people just want to rush out something fast regardless of quality, or are a sole programmer who wants to do their own art and pixel art is the obvious choice. 'I'm not an artist... but I'm gonna do some crazy HD painted and vector style' isn't something that is going to happen much. Pixel art is easy to make look good because it's an excuse for simplistic stylisation.
- Others, like me, want something very specific - but still as fast as possible. So it's again the obvious choice. Even though it could be achieved in other styles. I could do what I'm doing by painting in HD but it would take me 4x the amount of time. No thanks, looks pretty good as is.
- Nostalgia. It's a good card to play, and I guess acts as an excuse to be lazy. Definitely not pretending pixel art isn't easiest - it is.
- Others just really like clean simplistic styles or something really stylised, subjective, and up for interpretation. Making pixel art for the sole reason that pixel art is cool, dude.

There are many more reasons. I think a lot of the reasons for doing pixel art outweigh the reasons for doing other art styles, especially if you are the one doing it! It looks cool too.
 
A

Anomaly

Guest
I don't think of unity vs gms2 as a "better" or "worse" comparison... Per se.

One can do so and so..
The other can do so and so "easier"...

We all know GMS' s limits,
...so use it to its limits!
Its all about CONTENT.. And how it's presented right?

So whatever that may be, and if one works better FOR YOUR NEEDS and ABILITY...

...Do What Thou Will.
...
 

hogwater

Member
The art in Undertale is fantastic. But a lot of it is the kind of thing the logic hammers can't appreciate. If you have boring brain disease you miss out on most of the best things.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Undertale's art may not be all that consistent, but at least the style gets the point across. I do agree that the art can look rather horrific at times but I feel Undertale keeps an impressive balance during the experience. You can cringe at a poorly drawn sprite yes, but something else is bound to make up for it. For example, I can not stand Frisk's sprite no matter what angle I'm looking from, but I can look past it with the gameplay and the music because they are more fully fleshed out. Plus I think the "bad" art is what inspires artists to make the art look "better" from their perspective, hence way I believe there is so much fan art based around the game. If something looks ugly, it's natural for an artist to make it look better or to draw it the way the creator had originally intended. At least, that's how I perceive it anyway.
I think the art in Undertale is intentionally bad so you let your guard down; the game tries to subvert your expectations a lot (like the final boss attacking the game itself rather than the characters in it, for instance) and it gets much easier to do that if they're set low early on.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
I admit I suck at art. Well, most of it is just laziness, like, you could tell me everything that is wrong with this image:



...but I'm already aware of it. I'm just too lazy to fix it. Plus, the flaws make for a more comical look.

I mean how serious can a game about candy corn man boobs be, anyway?

I think if you are a skilled artist, you can make pixel art and HD art that looks good.

If you aren't a skilled artist, you can't do either.

I can't do either, which is why I'm now working with a guy who makes a living with his art.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
In my experience, working in high res with GM is perfectly possible. Just take care to organize your texture well, and fetch and flush your memory efficiently.
This is no different than if you worked in pure Ogl or DirectX. (Actually GMS does batching and all for you so its faster, unless you put significant effort in).

Of course, dont expect to be using layerd full HD textures as backgrounds, etc. You will be hitting hardware limits, rather than GM limits. (Mostly because of bandwidth an memory usage).
 
About the circlejerkers here that glorify HD art, there will Always be a pixel art game ****ting on your work...
Heheh. It's true. Most people here are fine, but I don't think I've ever seen an artist with any skill disparage pixel art.
Pixel art is undoubtedly the main 2D art style used across the majority of GameMaker projects, it's not even up for debate. Even a brief glance over this thread says it all...

Mine's from Chrono Trigger, unfortunately. Your point still stands, though. I do love good pixel art above all other styles for 2D games. =)
 
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B

basement ape

Guest
Everyone in the thread seems to forget that there are so many different pixelart styles these days that we can hardly say that all pixelart games use the same style.
Yeah. While pixelart encourages certain techniques and solutions over others you can't call it a style any more than you can oil-painting. Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dali, Edvard Munch... were they all painting in the same "style"? Hell no.
 

YanBG

Member
In "proper" pixel games the art should look like drawn. This example is even isometric:

I actually like less flashy games but in order to make sales, the majority of players want it to look good. Check Antharion on steam, it's dead now.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
...but I'm already aware of it. I'm just too lazy to fix it. Plus, the flaws make for a more comical look.
It also makes it completely impossible to tell apart decorations from interactive objects and generally strains your eyes... hopefully it looks better in motion :p
 
I admit I suck at art. Well, most of it is just laziness, like, you could tell me everything that is wrong with this image:



...but I'm already aware of it. I'm just too lazy to fix it. Plus, the flaws make for a more comical look.

I mean how serious can a game about candy corn man boobs be, anyway?

I think if you are a skilled artist, you can make pixel art and HD art that looks good.

If you aren't a skilled artist, you can't do either.

I can't do either, which is why I'm now working with a guy who makes a living with his art.
This has become an art style. I've seen this sort of "cluttered, bad texture mish mash" style in a few games. I've heard it refereed to as early CGI look. Some do it intentional and I see Twitchers and Youtubers go out of their way to play it.... because its designed to be non serious. There are others that go out of their way to play games that look like MS Paint.
 
M

Messsi1

Guest
splix is my favorite pixel game. My dream is to become a game designer. At FreeGames66 portal I find a lot of interesting games. I really respect them. And I dream that someday I will also design games like splix. Can anyone give me some advice?
 

Attachments

splix is my favorite pixel game. My dream is to become a game designer. At FreeGames66 portal I find a lot of interesting games. I really respect them. And I dream that someday I will also design games like splix. Can anyone give me some advice?
Try your best and learn just a little bit more every day. Learning to do art and game dev is like moving a mountain of sugar one spoonful at a time. It'll feel like you're not making any progress at first, but if you keep it up, you'll get there. Good luck!
 

Rayek

Member
When done right, pixel art is beautiful to watch. And no-one is saying you can't mix styles. Shantee is a nice example:



Compare.
This:


With this:


What looks better? Personally, I prefer the pixel art version myself.
 

Carnivius

Member
When done right, pixel art is beautiful to watch. And no-one is saying you can't mix styles. Shantee is a nice example:



Compare.
This:


With this:


What looks better? Personally, I prefer the pixel art version myself.

I do prefer the pixel art level of detail and such though I understand they switched to the HD sprites with 3D backdrops for the most recent one I suppose. I bought them all on PS4 and enjoy them a lot. I really didn't like the mixture of HD presentation over low res pixel art though as shown in the first screenshot. Really bugged me when playing the game as I have a distaste of mixed resolutions and styles and this didn't mesh well for me at all but I still enjoyed the game itself.

By the way, nice avatar. That's actually my current PSN avatar and I love the game it's from and the other games by the same developers whom I know on Twitter too.
 
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