You packed so much much character into her animations! Looking fantastic :D

Thanks Eddie! :D It'll be even better when we launch!

My two favorite games ever made! :D

Extremely cute :D The game looks beautiful - I'm looking forward to playing the full version!

Got it in one! I've always been inspired by Kunihiko Tanaka's beautiful portrait work in Xenogears, and I hope I was able to capture that style here.

Astonishingly beautiful. You've got an amazing production going... I can't wait to play the finished game!

Probably not for this year, as I don't think there will be time to whip together everything needed by the deadline. Definitely a goal for next year though!

...for lighting which is unlimited palette. The result is that it still looks like the texture stems from a limited 16-color palette, but the lighting looks a little more sophisticated & clean than you could get on the PS1. I'm using my unlimited color budget to "cheat" in that regard. :D

...although it's still easy to tell that the textures were limited palette, even after lighting.

In my textures, I start with the rough 16-color limitation, but I fake some of the engine lighting within the texture. So there's one set of layers that's limited palette, and another set (cont)

So, I'm actually cheating a bit here. (This will take a bit to explain.) On the PS1, you'd have essentially the source texture with its 16-color palette + the game's in-engine lighting. Once the lighting is added, the # of colors in the final image goes well past 16, although... (cont)

That's correct. Although, even though the texture sheets are unique to the level, they weren't all made completely from scratch. You start with a source texture or atlas for the type of rocks or grass you want, paste into the texture sheet, and then paint over it until it matches the topography.

Thanks, you too! I really enjoy digging into the technical details of these old styles, so feel free to ask anytime!

Lastly, the color restrictions are an important part of the style. Most terrain textures I studied were limited to one 16-color palette per poly, with 256-color images reserved for things like portraits or key art. I didn't adhere to a strict 16-color limit, but it was a general guideline.

FFT was somewhat unique in using entirely hand-drawn pixel art textures with no photosourcing, so I went for that route. Also, it doesn't use texture atlases for the final models. Instead every level gets a unique texture sheet with textures that match the unique contours of the terrain. (cont)

Glad you like it! The modeling style is quite easy to emulate, but the textures are the toughest part to nail. Studying the source textures from PS1 classics helped a lot. Most Playstation 1 textures are a mix of either pure pixel art, or low-resolution photosourced textures that were pixeled over.

I consulted a lot of photo reference of old stonework for the details on the textures, but the actual level layout was done ad hoc. The layout morphs a lot in the greybox stage as I do gameplay testing, so I try not to get too attached to a specific scene reference!