Ishisoft - portfolio for Craig Forrester

Problem:

My upcoming game UpBot Goes Up relies a lot on colour to distinguish the different robots from each other. This can present a big problem to colour-blind gamers, something that is overlooked far too often by developers.

Here’s an example screenshot from UpBot, with the normal version first followed by simulations of three types of colour-blindness (created using this filter):

UpBot and DownBot (yellow and green) become especially difficult to tell apart.

Solution!

To solve this UpBot features a colour-blindness option, that ends up looking like this:

The colours have been altered so that they are easier to tell apart. Each bot also has its own logo (the same shape as their eyes) to provide a definite difference. This logo is also used on the bots’ target zones.

An afternoon well spent I think – hopefully it’ll make a difference for a few people!

Also.

Check out BlindGiRl too. An Xbox Live Indie Game with built-in colour-blind filters.

I just realised I never posted this. Another art attack for work, the theme being “quiet”.

I am excited to announce: UpBot Goes Up! It’s an Xbox Live Indie Game that I’m working on with LeFishy and Bateleur, who I met at TIGJam UK, a get-together of people from TIGSource. The plan is for three versions; XBLIG, iPhone and Flash.

It’s a retro style puzzle game – that means simple mechanics, but not-so-simple puzzles. Based on the title of the game you can probably guess what LeftBot, RightBot and DownBot do.

Enough talk, more screenshots.

As a side note, if you’re interested in XBLIG I heartily recommend joining in the community at the xblig.co.uk forums – for both developers and players.

Rayteoactive, creator of Tobe’s Vertical Adventure, made this awesome fan art featuring Johnny Platform. Johnny is looking possibly more freaky than ever before (too much caffeine, I expect).

This reminds me to also link to this cool one from Burn The Internet.

Thanks!

This sketch is a sort of crossover fan art between my own Treasure Treasure and Tobe’s Vertical Adventure by RayteoActive. You can find bigger treasure if you work together, it seems. Working together on the way home would be useful too though..

I’ve been getting into sketching more recently using ArtRage to improve my non-pixel art skills. I’m quite happy with this one, for now at least (no doubt I’ll see how awful it is in a few days).

It’s Trixie, again. I’m really liking the Treasure Treasure characters at the moment. Also got a couple more characters for the same universe in my head.

Another themed pixelart, “secret”. I think I could have worked on it a little more but I’m quite happy to call it done and move on to something else. 256×192, 18 colours.

It started out in the initial sketch as a waterfall scene, but someone suggested lava, which it turns out makes for much more interesting lighting anyway.

Pixelart on the theme “Growth”. 8 colours, 256×192.

Recently I’ve been working on a brand new framework for my XNA games to make development speedy, and have done about half an hour’s work on a potential next project.

I appreciate it’s not that interesting, but in the interests of actually posting something in the Devlog category, this does the job!

Don’t worry, I won’t post every incremental step of progress. Just every other step.

The graphics are placeholder; they’re a shameless rip-off of Arkedo Series – 02 SWAP!, which incidentally you should buy.

Mockups for a DS platformer with world map.