My Take On Dark Souls - Part 2 : The Games That Tested Me!

DARK SOULS GAME - PART 2

I mentioned that I would write a follow up to the first part of playing Dark Souls and I finally have managed to get around to it. If you haven't read the first part you can look here >. To wrap it up quickly Dark Souls is a challenging, fascinating action adventure RPG where you can create a character and put them against creatures of your worst nightmares...

Welcome to Dark Souls...

Basic Dark Souls Items

Dark Souls Items Sheet - Artwork Copyright FromSoftware

Titanite
A very valuable commodity in Dark Souls. Titanite can be used to upgrade weapons and armour. Although upgrading armour with Titanite in Dark Souls 3 is no longer applicable.

Souls
These are the equivalent of currency. Use souls to level up or purchase items. Souls can be found be either killing enemies or found on perished hollows.

Homeward Bone
Great for getting you out of tight spots. I would advise having these equipped. You never know what lurks beyond the grey mist.
Estus Flasks
Are essential unless you have a huge health bar – and trust me, going for a straight up large amount of HP isn’t necessary the best decision when you start playing. Estus is flame, its warmth and above all else is basically health potions. You can upgrade the amount of Estus you carry or how potent each drink is in replenishing health.

‘Flame… precious flame’

Magic’s
I have to admit that I didn’t use too many spells/miracles in my players build. Maybe If I was to play through again maybe I should create a Hexer? Throughout Dark Souls you will come across numerous spells that the player can cast to heal, protect or destroy.

Pyromancy
In the world of Dark souls you can cast pyromancies. These are lesser spells which a non-wizard or spell caster can use.

Throughout the souls games there are many items you can pick up, wear, use or cast in the game. Writing everything here would spoil too much. And there is nothing like the
pre-internet days of discovering something apparently hidden. If you are adamant that you want to look for some special items you can follow a website such as this.

Bonfires

You will find a small comfort from the warm glow of your bonfire. These are sanctuaries from which you are protected by the terrors that lie in the deep gloom.
They are also save points!

SPOILERS –

Inhabitants

Phantoms, merchants, vagabonds and lone wonderers... these are the characters you may meet on your journey.
NPC’s
Through the Dark Souls games you will stumble upon rogues, renegades crestfallen travellers, and many others which will either mean to harm the player or help along the way. Generally speaking its favourable to have the NPC’s at your side. You will often come to notice that NPC’s will gather at the central hub of all 3 games so the player can access them easy to either purchase supplies, weapons and various pieces of equipment.

The peculiar characters of DS world will come across as little ethereal and strange, many seam to laugh for no apparent reason – maybe they are mad, maybe the game is laughing as it knows at the torture of some of the stupidly hard challenges that await. They know some you don't. I'm watching you Pate.

Solaire A fanatic and bizarre sun worshiper that you come across in Dark souls, He is in the first level just after defeating the Taurus demon. "You really are fond of chatting with me, aren't you? If I didn't know better, I'd think you had feelings for me! Ha ha ha!"
Pate
I found out that The voice actor for pate was none other than - Peter Serafinowicz, the actor from Shaun of Dead. Pate is a shifty character that you come across in Dark Souls, so keep your wits about you. He looks a bit like a roman Legionary.

Crestafallen night
The Crestfallen knight is a general down and out misery in Dark souls, he is in the first installment and basically sits around wallowing. The Crestfallen knight is easy to distinguish, he will be sat near the bonfire, being a melt.
Andrei
The humble and generally upbeat blacksmith, he makes me feel reassured… maybe its because of the westcounty accent. Andrei will sell and reinforce weapons.

“Tink – Tink - Tink”
Lucatiel
She is one of many characters in Dark souls 2. She is a good summon from memory, although starts to become a little absent minded as time goes along. You will recognise Lucatiel by her attire – She has the appearance of a musketeer

Bonfire Women (Fire Keepers)

2 and 3. These ethereal characters will help the player to level up throughout the games.

Old Ladies of Dark Souls 2

These 3 characters are met early on in the Dark Souls 2. These cynical old crones are former Firekeepers and they are tended to by a servant called Milibeth.
You can meet the Old Ladies intro here...

"Like a moth to a flame, your wings will burn in anguish.”

Design and Feel
The world(s) of Dark Souls is a large and solemn place, inhabited by the lost, the crestfallen, the mad and... you. FromSoftware have done a great sculpting both a enjoyable adventure story steeped in ambiguous lore and a sword-swing, monster slaying RPG.

Secrets
What I love about the souls games are the secrets, the mysteries and the easter eggs – there are entire hidden zones in games which can be discovered by pressing, knocking on or falling into walls or objects. I won’t ruin the game for you, all I can recommend is that you start knocking on some walls! There are many. I have to confess, I didn’t discover enough in dark souls 1. And it has been a while since I played.

Monsters
The monsters, the demons and even the your standard combatants have had so much attention to detail paid them it's almost a shame to rush the game. The designs of the characters capture elements of historical realism which just add the the authenticity to the Dark Souls worlds.. These monsters feel as old and as genuine as their environment.

These nightmarish monsters pull you deeper into the yawning darkness to join the other lost souls, the countless 1000's which never completed their journey.

The Environment
Dark souls feels like something out of a dark ages. The souls realm is a place of medieval purgatory where misery and total hopelessness emanates from every cornerstone, archway and tree the player crosses on their path. On of may favourite environments is the Majula. Perhaps this peaceful place reminded me of where I grew up, its peaceful and beautiful but bleak at times. The Untended Graves is also another favourite of mine.

Other Gaming Bits

Did you know!

They have made a table board and card games of the Dark Souls games?

You can buy them from Steamforge Games online or from smaller online retailers. Some of these games may come to this website in the future – Board Games

Help and fan sites

http://darksouls.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Souls_Wiki

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/

https://uk.ign.com/wikis/dark-souls

Dark Souls Trivia

Apparently in dark souls 1 there is a forbidden boss that was removed from the game in late stages of the development – he was called the Undead King Jar-Eel

Devil in the level details : From software love to pack in insane amounts of detail, so much so if you can access the game from your PC you can explore the world and distant structures – apparently. When playing the Dark Souls game in Lothric you can also see some of the lower level detail of the roofs if you look off the ramparts.

Copyright Dark Souls – Fan pen drawings by me.

Thinking In Black – Tips and hacks for working black in digital illustration

Thinking In Black

Black can be a trouble to work with when it comes to print, especially with all of the varying print processes, paper finishes and general variations with commercial printing machines, inks, screen calibrations and so on - working with a black is a headache and I'm sure many others would agree! So, I have put together some tips and tricks to assist with your projects - it can be a dark and treacherous path. This post will mostly focus on creative approach rather than the pure technical aspects of Black ( K ). Working with 4 colour printing and spot colours is a detailed topic in its own right which is worthy of a post.

Illustrators, painters, artists and photographers

Firstly, does it really need to be BLACK? When I say does it need to be ‘Black’ are there many things in the real world that are completely black? Aside from an all light absorbing, all-life-drinking black hole that absorbs all light and colour? Besides… that's something that;s not of our world as far as I'm aware. Looking at the world around you, you will see come to see how lighting, surface, atmosphere and texture will absorb surrounding colours, including what you would what you would call a black surface. For example, someone is wearing a black t-shirt, more often that not if, even if it is new, light will catch on the folds, the creases and the contours of the fabric giving the black fabric a slight hue or tint depending on the light source and ambience.
  Study things! I like to look at surfaces and objects that have an interesting finish for example : gloss surfaces, bottles, matte paint, skin, fur, hair, shadows, animals, sunglasses, cloth, etc. Another good source of reference of how to use light and dark with dramatic effect is Chiaroscuro – do some research online - research Caravaggio (one of many artist's using this approach) and see what comes back. Caravaggio used light and dark with excellent dramatic effect framing the narrative in light and shadows. This is potentially subjective but hopefully... it will be food for thought – if its jet-black you’re after then please read on! ( I have attached a little image below with some dark but not black shading )

Illustration with a pinch of mood lighting! Left : a world of pure black and white without colours, the others... and bit of hue and tint

RGB controversial

Typically, I like to work in RGB first and then convert my files to CMYK afterwards, especially if I’m working on a bitmap illustration or digital painting. Why? Because working in RGB generally gives me more creative freedom in the beginning and it also allows me to move between digital and print at a later date anyway. This is a my preferred method when working on an illustration and by no means a rule, just a preference. I’m not the only one working this way. By doing a Google search I stumbled upon a commercial artist who also likes to work this way – this writer and artist goes into much greater detail about the in’s and outs of color channels on their blog. I recommend having a read at some stage – perhaps after you have read my post. :-)

(http://muddycolors.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/printing-your-work.html)

Unexpected Results - a pleasant accident

I was always taught to work in CMYK for print and RGB for digital. I still champion this for working with professional printers as trying to print from RGB file may produce some erratic results, be it for leaflets printing, flyers, and other mediums. I accidentally ran a test print from Photoshop in RGB (Thinking it was CMYK) and the results were far more superior than the CMYK version. Both were printed on the same satin finish paper, on a Canon Pixma A3 with an impressive result. Despite my efforts and tinkering with the levels in the CMYK version to replicate what had happened In the RGB Version, I couldn’t produce the same results. I will make an assumption that my Inject printer translated the RGB to CMYK and just knew what I was after. I can’t complain too much as this project was sent to print and retained all the vivid colours and strong black colours.  Saying this, I still recommend trying to stick with the CMYK for design and print despite this result as this is typically what is asked - best to be safe, but something worth exploring for the future.

Digital - Add a Hue

Unless your are working in RGB and your artwork will remain for screen (digital) only. Then may be best to work with ‘Designer Black’ check the numbers. Although the computer says it black (or you've had it calibrated) it is best to drop a bit of colour into the mix - and do test print it.

Have a little play in the Colour Palette - this is the picker from Photoshop

Tips + Photoshop!

If you are working on a image in Photoshop and have started in RGB and want to convert your artwork colour settings in Photoshop, don’t just click on “convert to CMYK” use the colour profile under edit instead as this will provide better results. Use U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2. Experiment with the different settings to get the desired finish.

Last Key Points!

• Take heed of the colour warnings when you are in the colour picker window. This could save a lot of headache later on.
  
  
• Let the printer do the leg work. Send your artwork to the printer and try to let them help you. A printer worth their salt will want to help you and have your return custom. To reinforce what results you could also send them a physical sample (saying like this please!) from your home printer – assuming you have a good quality home printer.
• As mentioned previously, if you are working on an image with a lot of dark areas why not add a little hue / tint of colour? 20% cyan for example or some magenta/red for a warmer image.
• Avoid working with 0, 0, 0, 100 K, as this best reserved for font/text printing and can your work charcoal appearance. Use a ‘Rich black’ or 'designers black' instead. 20, 20, 20, 100 k for example.
• Avoid 100, 100, 100, 100, CMYK as this is reserved for crop marks and using this colour can drown the paper - no one wants drowned paper!
• Don’t be fooled. Your screen can be way out of the sync with your printer. Do some test’s first and see what results come from your printer (even printing on your home printer cannot guarantee the finish you require when you send your work to print) So take note.
  
  Yes... black can be painful to work with! And can be tricky colour to tame!

Thank you for reading!

Simple Custom Cursor For Your Stencyl Game

The following block shows a simple method for making your own custom cursor.  Please refer to the Stencyl community help section for further details on coding blocks.

General Gist : this little 'how to' covers some basics for making a custom cursor in Stencyl. In a nutshell, you need to hide the default operating system cursor and swap out for your own custom cursor, which will be an actor type.

Part 1 : Graphics
1 ) Firstly you will need to draw your one custom cursor in graphics program of your choice. I used Adobe Illustrator to draft up this pointer and exported it as a .PNG – Dims 29px 27 px, remember to save your .PNG in logical place in your project folder.

Part 2 : Importing a Cursor As An Actor Type

1 )Open Stencyl and navigate to your game project (assuming you have already made a project)

2 )In the upper left corner press on the “Actor types”and create a new actor. You will then need to add a frame and import your newly created cursor!

Part 3 : How To Make it work

1 ) Click on 'actor behaviours' and create a new behaviour! This will be a basic behaviour to make your Cursor work in your game.

2 ) Click “add event” in the top of the panel. Add > When updating

3 )You can either navigate through the code blocks manually or you can search for them. Using the image shown. Thats how to make a basic Cursor in Stencyl! Don't forget to attach the block to the Cursor Actor, the green button in the top right will allow you to do this - “Attach to actor”

Block for making custom cursor

Run game!

Bug with cursor full screen * untick fullscreen mode!

Please take into account that the flash player from Stencyl ( when tested from the game ) game glitches in full screen mode. The main default operating system mouse will still be visible despite having the cursor hidden.This could be an apparent issue with the flash player. - Dated from May 2016. Try unticking the full screen mode... Not the best

Notes : this bug happens on a iMac OSX i5 10.9.5

#stencyl #flashplayer #cursor #simple #pointer #codeblock

Quick Techniques For Reducing Banding / Posterization in Photoshop - BRUSH STROKES

Posterization – Rough Techniques For Reducing Banding!

Notice the subtle rings around the soft brush?

What is it?

If like me you work as illustrator/designer, I’m sure you will have run into the dreaded banding aka Posterization If so, I will go into detail shortly. Please note; this is told from an illustration and design bias.

Illustration in Photoshop has been a blessing for me. Edit, undo, save as, copy, paste, re-colour artwork the list goes on. This issue comes when working with radial and linear gradients and tones of black and grey. Working with a lot of black and orange as part of the colour palette, I have had to figure out ways for dealing with or working around banding. For example, when I’m rendering characters like Rufus the rat, he has grey body with even darker creases in the body, getting the shading and highlights to blend hasn't always been easy - banding has been a big issue. As it stands, I’m still uncertain as to how to get a completely smooth finish when rendering by work with a grey and black tones. I can offer some methods for reducing this so called ‘banding’ effect and the bane of drawing Rufus. 

For additional information this has been written based on the specs of the my iMac - OSX, but this issue has proven to effective on a TFT Screen using windows 7 and older versions of PS.

My Setup 1 : New Document ‘I like RGB’

From the off I have tested this on Photoshop CS5 and CC with similar results from version to version. 64 bit – 32 bit RGB to CMYK I’m not entirely sure if this has an influence aside from whether you are working with 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit; the later offering marginally tighter rings and hues. For this example I have worked with A 300 DPI document, in RGB using 8 bit (this can be changed later) also with the colour profile listed below on an iMac. This is by no means a significant contribution to the final out come but maybe worth noting. 

‘tangent alert’
 Using RGB in the early stages is my preferred method, not everybody’s. Isn’t this madness? You won’t see genuine colours of your artwork! Well unless, your screen is calibrated exactly and your using pantones, guaranteeing what you see on the screen to print can be tricky anyway. Besides, I work across both mediums of screen and print. 

Method 2 :  Ultimate Trick - Brush & Noise

I’m assuming that you are running into this issue whilst using a soft edged brush tool in Photoshop, based on that, I would advise turning the 'noise' on under the brush panel (as shown - press F5 bring this window up) this helps in the blending of steps with greys as shown below. As far as I can tell, based on my work, this improved the overall smoothness and graduation of the tones from light to dark regardless of bit mode or any other. You can also dabble with the filters if you are using large radials (That would be a different article). 
As you can see below, the black brush at the top has rings (banding) and the one below has far fewer the brush used on the lowest part of the blob has noise switched on. The speckled effect will be less obvious once you take your artwork to print.

See how the rings blend together of the lower part of the blob?

Method 3 : Big to small, playing with scale

Another trick for tightening this banding is by shrinking/scaling down your completed artwork. When you have applied the 'noise' and finished the process you can physically shrink the image to hide some of the messier details - an illusion essentially. 


This is a method that I have used not only to disguise banding when digitally painting but also to give the appearance of tighter line work and detail.



Step 1 piece of art = 100%
Step 2 scale art to = 75%

So when you print the document some so the details and blemishes are hidden away from the naked eye. This approach can also hide some of the rings in banding with added element of noise!

Conclusion
You will see the benefits for this when you come to printing your work, especially if you are working with shades of grey.

To summarise - Add noise to your brush mode.

Hope this helps!

This method was used when illustrating/digitally painting Rufus the Rat for Satzuma LTD

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