iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I Have played nothing for thirteEn consecutive years but Zineth I am currentLy Posting this from within Zineth join ME in Zineth Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i n e t h Z i

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

I'm so indie I can't afford VR. 😎

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

git clone? I don't want ANOTHER of this muppet!

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

...but also, I'm a little bit awesome, let's be frank. (I'm being cheeky, but I'm STILL really proud of this spritework)

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

In fact, for the hell of it, here's a side-by-side: - SMB1, 1985 - me messing about in NESmaker, 2020 - Action52, 1991 It's not that I'm awesome, I've also got thirty extra years of pixel art evolution to draw from.

The Cheetahmen, from Action52, looking like Shitah, man

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Finally, there's the AVGN problem: the "retro look" is that of the games that looked GOOD, PLUS all the graphical refinement that followed them. A 1991 SNES sprite isn't a 1996 PS1 sprite, which in turn isn't a 2004 GBA sprite, which is NOT a 2024 SNES sprite.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

That and it's a lot less intensive to make low-poly look good, obviously. If you want ornate high-definition visuals, somebody has to actually make them. Not only that, make them look good together, because if you don't, you get the Unity asset flip look.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

The general rule I go by is that if getting it right leads to a worse drawing, I feel free to cheat a bit. This is also often how lighting is done in art, emulating the same "cheating" as photo lighting.

en.wikipedia.org

Three-point lighting - Wikipedia

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Sorry about the delay. I admit I don't actually do much calculation at all, since 100% correct perspective is generally overkill for my own art. Here, the perspective isn't quite correct, but it's easy enough to interpret as not QUITE 90-deg angles.

Scanned pen and paper sketch by me, showing some leeway in perspective, which I later used for an EP

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Addendum: Because higher FOVs also deepen perspective, FOV is also a really handy trick in racing games. It's also why a lot feel strangely slow: the FOV is pulled in for TVs.

media.tenor.com

a video game with the number 126.9 on the bottom right

Alt: FOV tricks in F-Zero GX

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Finally, low FOVs are one of the reasons behind MANY complaints in early 3D games about the cameras. Mario 64, for instance, made it really hard to tell distances because of its low camera FOV.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

There were TONS of complaints about FOV in FPS ported from consoles in the 2010s, and they were legitimate: if the FOV doesn't roughly match the space taken by the screen in your vision, it feels off. You can see this in Wolfenstein 3D.

Virtua Fighter 4 arcade vs. PS2. PS2 is zoomed in to account for the size a TV, would take up in the player's view, which was generally much less than an arcade monitor all up in their face.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Finally, FOV is the secret to all those pictures where the Moon seems massive, and at the other extreme, fisheye lenses in skate videos.

FOV high, see everything. See also curvilinear perspective.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

I've never seen it talked about in any art tutorial I took as a teen, despite that it's essential for consistent perspective across your piece. These two show this off:

Mantegna's dead Christ. It probably wasn't intentional on Mantegna's part, but the foreshortening is as if the "camera" was very far and zoomed in.

Artwork for Akuma in SVC Chaos, by Nona. Here, the camera is close.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Focal length is film-speak for what games just call FOV, since games don't have to worry about physical lenses. Put simply: not all perspective is equal. Zooming makes object bigger in the shot, but flattens the perspective. Movies often use this in shot composition to underpin the plot.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

OKAY SO You know how you look horribly deformed in selfies unless you're practically Sieg Heiling your camera away from your face? The reason is focal length. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_z...

en.wikipedia.org

Dolly zoom - Wikipedia

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Same, but in reverse: dev keeps the sanity at bay.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Between these Facing Worlds, it was a Foregone Destruction. 😎

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

These three were probably the good thing about Blood 2. :l

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

She also did voices for Blood 2 alongside Stephan Weyte (if you don't know who that is, I don't like you >:( ) and Michael Shapiro, AKA the good Shapiro, AKA everybody's favourite blueshift beer boy:

media.tenor.com

a man stands in front of a blue background with the name barley

Alt: Barney "Calhoun" Half-Life, from the Half-Life series

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Revision. It turns out that when I start inking, my pencil does, in fact, continue to exist. :O

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Addendum: wish I could edit in "FOSS people" instead of "types."

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I've heard of a git pull, but this is ridiculous!

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

By this point, I'm half-seriously wondering if Microsoft does this on purpose to get FOSS types descending on their users. I use TempleOS btw

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Reposted by Le Capitaine

Le Crew @lecrewgamedev.mastodon.gamedev.place.ap.brid.gy · 17/02/2025

Today, Discord user jjeune.jean joined the #Butterflies server and posted this fanart: an OC rudie, and Jae. Man just strolled in, guns blazing.

OC Rudie. Katakana says レグバ, translit. "reguba" because I didn't ask the name and am terrified to get the spelling wrong. ._.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

(yes, I looked up "kirk" for this)

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

I'm an idiot. Should've been "If you don't Donkey Kong Consucceed." Thus I ask, unto this congregation, the Rare mercy to Grant kirk hope. ⛪🙏

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

...that YT auto-deleted on post for YT reasons.

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Sorry if it wasn't clear: I have no complaints about your track, I think it's great. The whole jokey rant was an addon to the original, also jokey comment I wrote on the video:

BREAKING: Local Madlad Accomplishes the Elusive "Good Trap Song"

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Le Capitaine @le-capitaine.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

With apologies to F-Zero X and Jet Set Radio: Classic Doom, whose modding scene got me into dev.

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