New Portraits for special locations, shops, and combat~!

Greetings,

Seth here from the art department! I wanted to show how the graphics are made and also preview some images I’ve created for the game. First off, let me start with saying Brendan Robert did an A+ job developing the Outlaw Editor from scratch! It even emulates the way the pixels behave on an apple II with their quirky color artifacts. There has been some touching up by Martin Haye here & there (with some scripting Plasma by Dave Schmenk too) but overall this is Brendan’s baby.

Below is what it looks like when you want to create a tile graphic. The tiles are used in 3 ways in the game: 1) For 2d Map tiles (surprise!) 2) To map out the 3d towns 3) We will also be using them as animated icons as seen at the bottom left of the Lawless Legends Player UI.

Also notice the 3 options on the center left of the Outlaw editor. Those “flags” tell the program what type of tile it is for both 2d & 3d maps. The first is self explanatory but the last two not so much. To flag a tile as a sprite tells the program that the 3d render 2d image must face the camera at all times, where as the rest of the artwork for walls are rendered in true 3d. The third flag tells the program to not draw any of the graphics behind the wall/object to save processing time.

Next is the 3d map creation process:

With Outlaw Editor we can create 2d & 3d maps of any shape or size. Just pick a tile from the list on the right of tiles and let your imagination do the rest! On the far left side you’ll notice a list of colored names. Those are tied to the corresponding squares that are floating above special tiles that have “Scripts”.

Scripts tell the program that something special happens on this spot. Maybe there is a gun fight, or maybe it’s a saloon…only time will tell. 😉

Last is the Portrait Screen (but we also use it for title and ending screens too):

On this screen you can draw images using the tools in the upper right corner. You also have zoom options to really cram in a lot of detail into each image with. Working with the Apple II’s high bit/low bit graphics mode is a challenge, but we love a challenge. 😉

That’s it, hope you enjoyed that!

Cheers,

Seth 🙂