SotW 1 (winner is Plissken)

What'd you do with Revfan's entry Pineconn?

Yeah, I sent it to Amaster and Joe just like it said in the topic. What happened?

Please send submissions to all of the following managers: Joe123, Amaster42, Pineconn, russadwan, and bobrocks95.

I never got it. :shrug: So as a result, you'll enter SotW 2. Sorry.

Meh, that's alright I guess. I'll just sit this one out 😛

Anyhow, let's tear all of these down. Lot of entries, but that's really to be expected. Nothing too special here in terms of tile selection, but ah well. Without any further adieu...

Plissken: This one gets my vote. It's a fairly well-made DoR shot, and I only have a couple of complaints. First off, there isn't much variation in terms of what's on the ground. There also seems to be a lot of walkability issues and it just feels overly crowded as a whole. I really don't like the perspective on the castle tiles. Fix that. Or better yet, get new ones altogether. Finally, the palette looks a bit washed out. I'm really a fan of low-saturation palettes, but the general rule with palettes is to make them high saturation, high luminosity, low saturation, low luminosity. Here, the palette is low-saturated, but it's bright as well. Either heighten the saturation, or darken it.

Russadwan: JPG... eww... The distortion of the JPG here really kills it, along with the dark, high-saturated palette. The shadows look just plain wrong and there's no variety anywhere, aside from the randomly placed trees. Along with the tile inconsistencies. The tile selection is nothing special either. I'm really starting to hate Radien for putting the SD3 grass in the DoR set, cause now we're seeing it being used in ugly shots everywhere. One last quip, why does the water look like radioactive dog shit?

Blaman: "Blah" really defines this shot. The general layout of the shot isn't too bad for the Pure tileset, my complaint with it is that there is far too much monotony with the mountains. Why couldn't more than 1 type of tree be used? And why not more details on the water? I also don't like some of the walkoff issues here, and the part at the top with the trees all lined up really hurts this shot... AND WHY IS IT JPG!?

Sam Atoms: A really, really basic GBZ shot. Same problem as the other screens, no variety on any of the tiles, not to mention the perspective issues as well as the tile errors and the really badly drawn sky.

Sharon: Big, empty, ugly palette, no ground details... etc. Repeats a lot of the same elements, making it just plain boring to look at. Not much else to say.

Joe123: First, I must commend you and Gleeock for being the only members on this poll to give us shots that aren't in Pure. Now on with it... Seeing that you used your FFA tileset, I have to give you points for creativity, but the rest of the shot fails. Color issues, space issues, perspective issues... Why is the castle shiny plastic?

Gleeock: "Hey guys, let's spill grey paint all over the screen, then put a shitload of plastic toy spaceships on it!" Nothing else needs to be said.

Revfan9 wrote: Why is the castle shiny plastic?

That's how Square drew it ^_^

Yes, in Joe's defense, that's exactly how a screen like that would look, if you've ever played FFA.

Gleeok-Were those tiles ripped? If they were hand-drawn, thumbs up, though I'm hoping that whole game wouldn't be over a dark, cloudy sky.

Russ-The shadows are a little off.... I'm going to assume the water looks like it does for a certain purpose.

Oh I don't need defending about the screen design, it's pretty crappy =P

It was an example screen I knocked up when I'd finished 2 months of ripping and organising and fancied actually doing something with the set.
It's not even from my actual FFA game.

Just, you know, I can't do much about the 'plastic' castle =P

Revfan9 wrote:
Sharon: Big, empty, ugly palette, no ground details... etc. Repeats a lot of the same elements, making it just plain boring to look at. Not much else to say.

I can't argue with those points. :P About the palette though, it's the LttP Darkworld palette that I made to fit Pure, not custom. So it's not my fault that it's ugly (aside from the fact I chose to use it).

I'll have something much better next week.

Sharon?

Are you SD?

Joe123 wrote:Sharon?

Are you SD?

Indeed. :P

As a note to those interested:
The full version of Gleeok's caption!

And so one man, and a monkey, set off to save the future of Earth from a ruthless alien menace. We would've sent more ships, but due to the advent of the cheese-ray, over 90 percent of the Earth is now covered in cheese, and the budget for the development of a device that can use cheese as a form of super-efficient fuel has, very regretfully, been turned to cheese also. 0_o So one brave fighter sets out to confront the entire enemy fleet, outnumbered one billion-to-one. How hard could it be, right? ...Wait a minute; Oh Damn it! ...Monkey, Did you paint the spaceship pink again? Gah, you did, didn't you! ...Why don't we just put a giant bullseye on the thing with a big sign that says; "Shoot here to win"...Ugh...where did you say got your license from again?..The Internet? ..Earth is doomed.....

mighty_darknut wrote:Indeed. :P

Oh lol

ok =P

Nice entries everyone! I am glad to see a lot of participation already. I really think Plissken's entry stands out this week. I love the colors you have going on there. That is going to be a very nice looking quest and I have seen a lot of great things coming from you. Keep up the good work.

Okay, I'm jumping in.

Plissken: I almost hate to jump on the bandwagon like Revfan forewarned, but I truly feel that this is the best screen. Clearly every detail was looked at, but don't include so much detail that it is overcrowded. But overall, the shot is very pleasant to look at.

Russadwan: Ever since they were introduced, I've never stopped hating those walls. The shadow is a bit dark, and the water... shouldn't it be blue (unless it's poisonous or something)? Blue water would add a nice bit of color to the screen so that it isn't all green.

Blaman: A little bland (probably mainly due to the tall mountain), but still a nice shot with lots of color.

Sam Atoms: A good shot for Game Boy graphics. I really like the palette for some reason; it gives the shot some energy.

Mighty Darknut: Not much to say, other than some details appear to be random.

Joe123: Having never played FFA, I can't really comment on this. As Revfan mentioned, there are a few perspective issues (I'm looking at the water/waterfall).

Gleeok: This shot looks really nice (especially the intricacy of the layers of clouds), but it isn't really SotW-material. It's just a backdrop and a few sprites.

First off; Congrats to everyone on getting Sotw started. There's some great looking shots here, and even a shot from Sam Atoms! :thumbsup: I don't think I've seen one from you before. I still haven't made up my mind yet for the vote, I'm kinda stuck between Russ and Plissken. Great screens you two.

I'm mainly aiming at revfan here, but note that there was some confusion on the actual deadline, so consequently some shots were rushed.

bobrocks95 wrote:Gleeok-Were those tiles ripped? If they were hand-drawn, thumbs up, though I'm hoping that whole game wouldn't be over a dark, cloudy sky.

I'm sorry revfan, in your infinite aesthetic wisdom, that you don't like my clouds. Maybe I should use only three colors and make them poofy for you, but then you'd just say something like: "if I wanted cotton candy I'd go to the fair". 😉

As a note to those interested:
The full version of Gleeok's caption!

Quote:
And so one man, and a monkey, set off to save the future of Earth from a ruthless alien menace. We would've sent more ships, but due to the advent of the cheese-ray, over 90 percent of the Earth is now covered in cheese, and the budget for the development of a device that can use cheese as a form of super-efficient fuel has, very regretfully, been turned to cheese also. 0_o So one brave fighter sets out to confront the entire enemy fleet, outnumbered one billion-to-one. How hard could it be, right? ...Wait a minute; Oh Damn it! ...Monkey, Did you paint the spaceship pink again? Gah, you did, didn't you! ...Why don't we just put a giant bullseye on the thing with a big sign that says; "Shoot here to win"...Ugh...where did you say got your license from again?..The Internet? ..Earth is doomed.....

And Pineconn, what the hell man? Is your copy/paste function broken or something? It's not that hard to do. I'm in disbelief that you could manage to somehow screw up my shot on purpose. So it's not the best shot by any means, big deal. It's not exactly a Triforce/dungeon ridden quest is it. You can't look at the shot and know what is going on like a screen with Link in it. No, you need an alternate way to glimpse into a tiny bit of the game itself, which might put the picture in a context regarding an actual plot....Alright dude, PM time, you and me; 😊

PMed.

This is a screenshot contest, not a story/plot/caption contest. I don't know how you do it over at Pure, but here, votes can't be swayed by "lolol that capshun is teh funies." I am now limiting each caption to 50 words.

On a brighter note, I'm glad to see we got [strike]10[/strike] [strike]11[/strike] [strike]13[/strike] 16 votes in one day already.

I think I like the look of Plisskens a little better, but I'm intrigued by the idea and the ambience of russadwan's. So I voted for russadwans because I thought it was really cool both graphically and conceptually, despite the fact that I thought Plisskens was slightly better looking.

I too ended up voting for russadwan. That Screen is the most innovative use of ground tiles I thought. You can see the passing of time with the grass growing over the floor onto the water. Very nice. 😊

You know what, I had this contest easily until Plissken made a last minute entry. Dang it, I was hoping I could win it easily. But now he has twice as many votes as I do. At least four people voted for me. 😊

I really liked Gleeok's clouds, and was thinking of voting for his, but in the end, I had to choose russadwan. His image is just conceptually very nice, it's very clean, and it stands out quite well.

Yay, I got another two votes! Plissken's is still twice as far ahead as mine, but at least I got six votes! Thanks to everyone who voted for me! You know, I swear I've seen Plissken's shot in a Pure ZC SotW before. Maybe we should make a rule that if you have entered a screenshot at Pure ZC's SotW, you can't re-enter it here.

mighty_darknut wrote:Indeed. :P

Pineconn wrote:Okay, I'm jumping in.
Russadwan: Ever since they were introduced, I've never stopped hating those walls. The shadow is a bit dark, and the water... shouldn't it be blue (unless it's poisonous or something)? Blue water would add a nice bit of color to the screen so that it isn't all green.

Pineconn wrote:Okay, I'm jumping in.
Russadwan: Ever since they were introduced, I've never stopped hating those walls.

Ditto. Sorry to the artist (ShadowTiger, I think), but I think they're ugly. Especially the grey mess on top.

russadwan wrote:Maybe we should make a rule that if you have entered a screenshot at Pure ZC's SotW, you can't re-enter it here.

Why?

Cool, this place got a SoTW? Awesome!

But why wouldn't we be allowed to re-enter it here if it won over there?! I'm going to enter next week!(Probably with an old shot that I entered at Pure a while ago)

EDIT: By the way, voted for Pineconn, for obvious reasons. Second choice would've been Russ.

Russ, same tileset =/= same shot. Go look for more than two seconds over at Pure's archive and you'll see that. I've seen almost everyone who regularly enters SotW over at Pure enter in different shots from a similar area or same style.

Thanks to everyone voting for me so far! It's great to be able to participate in the very first SotW somewhere.

EDIT: Wow, in fact I just realized. This is the first place anyone's seen that shot before. So please, don't think I just re-enter old winning stuff to...uh...I really can't think of a reason why I'd do it.

We won't allow previous PureZC SotW winners, but I have no problem with submissions from PureZC contests that did not win. After checking, Plissken won a SotW contest with a different, though similar, shot.

(EDIT 9/30/08: Whatever.)

BTW, we're still accepting screenshot submissions for SotW 2. I believe we have only one so far.

Pineconn wrote:We won't allow previous PureZC SotW winners.

*grumble*
Why not?

I mean, this contest isn't linked to PureZC's anymore than AGN is to PZC

Um, because they already won. It wouldn't be fair for other submitters to get screwed by a screen that has already been honored.

Well there goes my plan for the next one �_�

It's not very fair on the person entering it having their options cut down because of another, unrelated event.

Then again though, I can see where you're coming from :shrug: