Deception: New background style

[Jackie]

You may have hit onto something there Dave.  Give us the option of which resolution we want to play.  Sometimes those who have older models of monitors and/or graphic cards  may have problems with the higher res although not sure if either of those has anything to do with any of that or not.  Not that technical on those things.  I just know that there is times that I have to change the game to play it because of the resolutions being too high or too low for mine.
Waiting on pins and needles for the first beta testing to begin.  lol
Jackie

[DaveGilbert]

Well, after several days of reading and listening to all the feedback, I think I've finally made my decision. 

I'd been waffling about it, wondering if it was a good idea to change it and not being able to make up my mind one way or the other.  On the one hand, it seemed a lot of the fans didn't like it.  On the other hand, the backgrounds looked super nice and it would be such a shame to downgrade them. 

But then came the epiphany.  Yesterday, I was hanging out with Abe Goldfarb (who plays Joey) and showed him a current build of the game.  Within two seconds, he noticed the resolution difference and said he didn't like it.  He actually scrunched up his face in distaste.  Well, that was the tipping point.  If even Joey thinks that the mixed resolutions are that bad, who am I to argue?  So downgrade them I shall.  Apparently there are several downgrading options that I didn't try, so I am pretty confident that I'll find a method that will please both the old fans and new ones.

Anyway, thank you everyone for the great feedback  - it's helped a ton!

-Dave

[BlankCanvasDJ]

They ARE gorgeous, super-nice looking backgrounds. I hope you display them in their high-res glory in an extras gallery or something.

[winfrey]

Both were ok, when I compared the two I did like the one with the lower resolution background, but then reading it became blurry when blown to full screen... well that would not work..I like you art and video of your games. hope you get this work out to your satisfaction

[stevensonjr]

Hi again,

You know... if you do find someone to work on hi-res characters, I would consider buying the game up to 50$...
It would be such a thrill to have the beautiful hi-res background and hi-res characters... and this would give Wadjet Eye Games even more visibility on the market !
You could inspire yourself from the latest runaway game. It's a 2d game with hi res. Lovely.

I just like your games, so don't worry, if you feel I am crazy, I will buy it whatever choice you make.

Greetings,
StevensonJr

[kmkoni]

I think it looks pretty rad, actually.

[Nathan Allen Pinar]

Backgrounds to me are the key element in any point and click adventure game. The characters I don't care about as much. Backgrounds give that "vista" appearance that you rarely see in 3d games. This is actually the number one reason what compelled me to join the Gemini Rue team. So I think you're on the right track.

[gypsysnail]

Good game concept! Only thing is too, I agree sorry that the high res and low res mixed together don't look good. I would too prefer to see low res like all ur prev blackwell games have been in. Low res is more appealing to the eye than high res and high res looks a bit too 3D and detracts the true nature of the game. I hope you will seriously reconsider changing to fully low res. I also would be happy to be a beta tester again.
Cheers

[Layabout]

Downgrading doesn't look too bad IMO. I am currently doing some backgrounds at 1920x1280 and downsizing them to 480x320 and they look fine, even zoomed in. (sorry can't post pics, nda and all that). You just need to select Bicubic Sharper in the resize options in photoshop to make them sharper and not fuzzy.

[DaveGilbert]

Hi everyone!  The saga continues.  

Here's an update.  For awhile I was downgrading the high-res backgrounds, but the results were always several kids of awful.  With a lot of fiddling I could get them to look decent, but eventually I realized that it creating 1000x more work than necessary.  The extra time and care needed to make high-res backgrounds only to take even more time to downgrade them seemed extremely inefficient, and not very fair to the artist.  At the rate we were going, you guys wouldn't see Deception until 2012!  Fortunately, only a few backgrounds had been made so I decided to cut my losses and remake all them all from scratch. 

Here's the new boat background:



Not as detailed as the original hi-def version but it fits the style of the sprites better and it's something that can be done reasonably quickly.  With 30+ backgrounds to do, that's more in line with what I want.

However, I *have* decided to keep the high res character portraits:



Since the portraits are separate from the main action, the resolutions won't clash as much.  Plus I like them too much to degrade them.  If all those indie Jrpgs can get away with it, so can Blackwell.

So there it is!  Thanks for all of the feedback, everyone.  In the end, I think this was the right decision.  We're back on track and we're moving at a pretty fast pace.

[ColinBlair]

I think the high-resolution portraits are really important during dialogue sequences, it helps sell the characters. It is also a very traditional thing to do and a common trait of many of the best adventure games of all time including the first Gabriel Knight game. It is looking good Dave.

[Nathan Allen Pinar]

"Rosa's sprite does make her look a little more "nerdy" then I was expecting but that's about it."

As she should be. Convergence to me went a bit off character for her.

[DaveGilbert]

Rosa *is* kinda nerdy.

[Puzzler46]

Hi Dave,
I did like the last boat in lower resolution but would buy the new game regardless, since I really like this series.  I am so glad to see that another one is just around the corner.
Kathy

[Purplerabbit]

I definitely think you've gone the right way, Dave. The problem with the shots in the first post is it looked like the sprites were not actually in the scene, like bad CGI!
With the new ones, they definitely look more part of the background.

So looking forward to the new game!