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# Graphics Contribution Guide
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First off, thank you for your interest in creating graphics for Vegan on a Desert Island (VOADI)!
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We are thrilled by your eagerness to help make this game awesome, and dearly cherish your contributions.
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This guide will help you get started creating graphics for VOADI.
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## Our agreement
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VOADI is an **Open Source** video game, and **the game's graphics will also follow this principle.**
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We're asking contributors to license their graphics under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), or a similar [free-culture license](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/), for inclusion in the game.
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To summarize the license: you allow anyone to use your graphics for any purpose, including commercially, without asking or paying you, as long as they give you proper credit.
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Also, people who modify your graphics have to share their modifications under the same terms.
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This summary is not a replacement for [the actual license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode).
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## Art limitations
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VOADI has a retro-game aesthetic, influenced by NES and Game Boy Color graphics.
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We follow rules when creating graphics so the game looks like it was designed for limited hardware.
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Our rules are different than the NES or GBC to allow more flexibility.
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VOADI is a modern game and these rules *could* be broken if we have a good reason, but sticking to the rules gives the game a cohesive visual style.
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Many of our graphical choices were influenced by [*Shovel Knight and Nailing Nostalgia | Game Maker's Toolkit* ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHhX5GtWNr8).
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### Color palette
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Graphics in the game are restricted to the NES color palette.
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![NES color palette](NES_palette.png)
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Our rationale:
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1. The game uses [Zoria Tileset](https://opengameart.org/content/zoria-tileset)—which makes up a large amount of the graphics—and it uses the NES color palette.
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2. The NES color palette is commonly used in indie games and this might make our custom graphics more useful to people.
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3. We considered not sticking to any particular color palette, but doing so makes the game look more cohesive.
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We are open to expanding the color palette with more colors if needed.
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Shovel Knight, which also used the NES color palette, [added four more colors to it](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidDAngelo/20140625/219383/Breaking_the_NES_for_Shovel_Knight.php).
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### Number of colors
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Up to **4 colors** should be used per each 16x16 tile.
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**Transparency counts as a color.**
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This means most sprites will effectively have 3 colors, while background tiles may have 4.
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This rule is often broken, but only after multiple attempts to iterate upon the graphic and condense it down to 4 colors.
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Most character sprites have a dark outline (for better visibility) which increases this challenge.
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Less is more, and creating nice graphics with less is a skill that's developed over time.
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### Antialiasing
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We avoid antialiasing, eg checkerboard patterns of pixels for shading or to give the impression of more colors.
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Antialiasing worked okay on small, blurry screens, but this game will be blown up on large LCD displays and the antialiasing effect just looks like a lot of visual noise.
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This game has a flat, clean art style.
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### Screen dimensions
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The game's screen is **144 x 256 pixels**.
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The screen's height matches the Game Boy Color's screen, and its width has been extended to fill a modern 16:9 display.
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Ultimately, VOADI is a modern game: 4:3 is out and 16:9 is in.
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Letterboxing the screen doesn't increase the player's nostalgia, it just makes them able to see less stuff at once.
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Even Game Boy-sized screens available in 16:9, so this won't prevent us from putting VOADI on a small embedded device.
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That said, **the game is still compatible with 4:3 if the sides are cropped.**
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The game's HUD and menus all fit within a 160 x 144 pixel area, allowing us to export the game with a 4:3 camera if desired.
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We see no reason to compromise this feature unless it inhibits our creative expression in the future.
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When creating maps, they should always be at least 144 x 256 pixels in size so they fill the screen.
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### Tile / sprite size
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In general, the games tiles are **16 x 16 pixels** each.
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The Solarus engine supports tiles of any multiple 8 of, meaning 8x8, 8x16, 16x8, 32x8, 16x64 etc. are all valid.
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16x16 is the most common.
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## Sprites
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Sprites are dynamic map entities.
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In other words, they are parts of the map that can move around or be interacted with.
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Usually they are characters, items, etc.
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### Characters
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Characters are usually 16x16px and have four directions.
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Most characters stand in place.
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When talked to, characters will face the player, so they need up, down, left, and right-facing sprites in order to be interacted with from all directions.
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![Angry Toast sprite](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/raw/master/data/sprites/npc/angry_toast.png)
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![Fox sprite](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/raw/master/data/sprites/animals/fox.png)
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![Gnu sprite](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/raw/master/data/sprites/npc/gnu.png)
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Characters are usually outlined with a darker color to make them stand out on a variety of different backgrounds.
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## Submitting graphics
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Before submitting a graphic, please take the following steps.
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If you can, try to follow the existing conventions for [the game sprites](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/tree/master/data/sprites).
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If you need help with any of this, please make a submission anyway and we will work with you.
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### Sprite sheet format
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Sprites of the same character/entity should be grouped together in a single PNG file.
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For example, a turtle with four directions will have all the directions in a single file.
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![Sea turtle sprite](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/raw/master/data/sprites/animals/sea_turtle.png)
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There should be **no spaces** between each sprite on the sheet.
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### Attribution
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On the graphic itself, write your name and the graphic's license.
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For example:
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![Angry Toast sprite](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/raw/master/data/sprites/npc/angry_toast.png)
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This will reaffirm your commitment to VOADI's open source nature and give us a way to attribute you in the game's credits.
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We cannot accept your graphic without this.
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You could use a pseudonym instead of your real name if you want.
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### Compression
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To decrease the file size of your image, you can run it through a program like [trimage](https://trimage.org/) first.
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It's important that you do this if you make a submission via GitLab merge request.
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If you submit your graphic some other way, you can skip this step and we'll compress it for you.
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### Submission
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To submit a graphic, you may do one of the following:
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* Upload your graphic into the VOADI chatroom: [#voadi:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#voadi:matrix.org).
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* Create a new [GitLab issue](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/issues) and upload your graphic there.
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* (*Advanced*) Create a [GitLab merge request](https://gitlab.com/voadi/voadi/merge_requests).
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* Send your file in an email to `alex+voadi@alexgleason.me`.
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## Using your graphics
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We'll make effort to respect your creative direction and communicate directly if we'd like to see a graphic changed for whatever reason.
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That said, be aware that someone else may modify your graphic before including it in the game.
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It's also possible we won't be able to include your graphic at all, possibly because we receive too many submissions.
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We'll upload your graphic to OpenGameArt.org (giving you proper credit, of course) after the game is released, so that more game developers can benefit from your work.
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Thanks again for your interest in VOADI, and we look forward to seeing what you come up with! |