# HG changeset patch # User Simon Cross # Date 1282555978 -7200 # Node ID a0ab7cea67fcca79e4126dffbe6e0f3b15dbf4ab # Parent 79062a225703f83a163dd15cbca15797367218c1 Outline for artists. diff -r 79062a225703 -r a0ab7cea67fc docs/artists.rst --- a/docs/artists.rst Mon Aug 23 10:35:53 2010 +0200 +++ b/docs/artists.rst Mon Aug 23 11:32:58 2010 +0200 @@ -1,4 +1,41 @@ Artists HOWTO ============= -How to contribute art to Boomslang. +This is a guide to contributing artwork to Suspended Sentence. + +Suspended Sentence is a point-and-click adventure game. It is set on a derelict +spaceship carrying prisoners in cryosleep to a prison planet. The ship has +experienced a catastrophic accident and after drifting for many years the AI +has begun to effect repairs. Some repairs the AI cannot perform itself so it +has been waking the prisoners up one by one to effect repairs. A few such +prisoners have died or gone insane. The adventure starts with the latest +prisoner being awakened from cryo sleep. The AI's name is Jim. + +Broadly artwork for the game can be divided into artwork for Scenes, Things and +Items. + +Scenes are the background against which all the other action takes place. Each +scene consists primarily of a 24-bit colour, 800x600 pixel image. For example, +our first scene is a room filled with cryogenic chambers. + +Things are rendered on top of a particular scene and are used to add animation +and areas for the user to interact with. A Thing might be a door the player can +open, a puddle of dripping water or something for the player to pick up. A Thing +can be any size up to the full size of the Scene and may use an alpha channel +for transparency. For example, the cryochamber scene has individual cryochambers +that can be inspected, a corpse with a titanium prosthetic leg and a door that +needs to be levered open using the prostethic leg. + +Items are objects the player has picked up and which can appear in his or her +inventory. Typically Items are picked up by clicking on a Thing. Items require +two different images: an inventory bar icon and a cursor. The inventory bar +icon should be a 50x50 pixel image on a transparent background. The cursor should +be a similar size and will often use the same image as the inventory icon. + +Complex Items that the user might need to interact with (for example, to repair +it or change its settings) are handled by associating a Scene with the object. The +Scene background is then an enlarged view of the object. + +Our preferred image formats are PNG and SVG. PNGs are what Suspended Sentence +loads images from. SVGs are more of a pain to produce but are convenient for +generating multiple PNGs at different sizes.