Starbound Sprite Art Has Me A Little Worried...

Look, I love these types of games and no matter what, Starbound is undoubtedly going to be one of my favorites, but frankly, I'm getting a little concerned about the player artwork being 'washed out' for a lack of a better way of saying it.

While the appeal of the retro art style is something of a mystery to me, I appreciate the artist renditions of what they feel works best. Since Terraria is very often referenced as a direct comparison to this game, I would use that as a reference. See, despite the low-bit graphics of Terraria sprites, the player characters still stood out vibrantly against the environments mainly because of the usage of darkened borders surrounding the animated sprites. The colors in Terraria also are very vibrant and diverse, if not lacking in the finer detail.

However, in Starbound, the increased detail of the sprites seems to be very much washed out as the players do not have any kind of darkened borders or depth to them, leading to a kind of blurry mixture of colors. Also, I can't help but notice that Starbound artists seem to draw much of the color from the pastel palette, which gives much of the color a tinge of white-grey to them instead of stark contrast.

I'm not intentionally trying to be overly critical, but as our characters in the game get more diverse and weapon and armor sets are mixed up, I am worried that the detail in the artwork is going to be lost in a blurry pastel hued smudge on the screen.

Is it just me that feels this way?

 

Yeah, just you.

 

Guess I had that one coming.

 

Well that was...complicated. Personally I see no issues with the art, but my eyes don't see those sprites the same way yours do, as long as it's not ugly and it's artistic I like it...guess I'm too simple.

 

Honestly yeah. Also I don't think you will be running naked through all the game and many armors have black for main color.

 

I really like the artistic style of it, but I feel it may have too little pixels to work with(resolution level?)

 

I like the pastelly art style, and its clear the style is supposed to be completely different from terraria, but i do agree that certain weapons might just blend in with the character. Maybe they could make the outlines of the weapons darker to remedy this?

 

The game may have the same pixel artist as terraria, but this isn't terraria, and terraria looks more like and overworked flash game compared to this.

This game being a retro style game, the artwork itself brings back fond memories for me. at the same time this game is literally pushing the boundaries on what a retro game should have been right, and is raising the bar on sandbox.

I am sure if you aren't the only one that feels this way, someone will release a sprite pack mod, that will change the textures of the game.

 

not worried at all.

 

Yeah, it is just you. Try getting glasses, it helps me! lol.

 

Have you watched the livestreams? They'll help you get an idea of what the game will look like.

 

Listen to the music. Now back to art. Now back to music. Now back to art.

See, it's all so calm and peaceful! Now my main concern would be how will I feel like fighting monsters in such a calm atmosphere...

 

If I do understand what you are trying to say, then no, you are not the only one unlike what the others are implying. I believe there has been at least a couple of other threads about this except they were phrased differently, and since the first screenshots of the game I have seen a lot of time ago my main concern were the most frequent colors... as if they were a tad "too colorful". There are armors and furniture of actually nice colors that aren't from the list of colors we were shown with the paint tool, and speaking of the paint tool that's also a bit scary because I'm afraid of other players turning into walking rainbows, however at least it has black and white. I was kind of disappointed too when they removed black and white from the clothes color palettes in the character creator and I hope that is not permanent.

Please note that this is a minor complaint, the game looks amazing and awesome and I can't wait to play it nonetheless, it's more like a pet peeve, and besides I didn't really expect realistic, quaint palettes in a game like this, it has its style and complaining about it is pointless I guess. It's just the one and only thing that bugs me, all those purple trees and procedurally generated, awesome, yet perhaps way too much diverse monsters with their colors disregarding their home planet etc. (unless I missed some news, which I trust I did not)

 

Desert Battle 1

 

this.

 

I can see where you're coming from, but I don't see the problem myself. Or at least it's not something I immediately thought when looking at videos/screenshots of the game. I don't think you have much to worry about

 

If it was really that big of a deal, I think the devs might've noticed by now.

 

Meh, I think we'll be fine with the sprites. I kinda thought like that at first, but the style eventually grew on me. You shouldn't need to worry 'bout it

 

I am worried that the game will be 2D. so scared

 

nice I see what you did there