Some rough work-in-progress notes, for designing stages suitable for fighting games, as part of a project with Cheezopath and Tibi.
Onscreen pixels: 384 wide, 224 tall. Which fits a grid of 16x16 tiles. Squashed on the sides, to fit the width of 4:3 aspect ratio CRT’s. For making non-square-pixel pixelart, I’ve found multiple workflows and setups.
I will write more about the colouring aspect once I’m more familiar with the technicalities. For now, I can only offer the general advice that the design should look fine when converted to black and white.
Use a character height overlay for height references.
Blender, for prototyping and more complex elements. May need tricks to make less photorealistic.
Free stock photos. Possibly from era-appropriate old CD ROMs, available on the Internet Archive.
Photos of home-made models, possibly multiple photos to generate 3D model with photogrammetry. Organic shapes can be sculpted from clay. Material’s appearance can be changed by editing in post or judicial lighting.
Krita. Clone layers to simulate tiling. Compositions to separate elements that will be exported separately. Animated color cycling. Vector elements for previse editing of large shapes. Animation tools. Layer Filters and effects.
I have not done a stage like this yet. It will probably involve Blender.
(.DEF) files for Ikemen and Mugen. I’ve customised Fighter Factory to suit my needs as well.Seems to be only possible with some mall “helper” programs, that came with Mugen for Windows.
Watch a lot of movies, animes and music videos. Particularly if you are trying to make an era-appropriate stage, whether the era is for the stage itself, or the era when you imagine the stage would’ve been made in some alternate universe.
Stage elements should preferably never load gradually during a match. All loading and operations should be complete before a match starts.