Braid Graphics Briefcase Update
September 21st, 2008
The Braid Graphics Briefcase has some new additions!
• Animated GIFs! As seen above, these can be highly creepy. And very annoying as forum avatars!
• Animation Stacks! These are the original Photoshop files for all the characters, exactly as I delivered them to Jon for importing into the game! Every frame of every character.
• Level Icons! The black-and-white woodblock-looking icons that introduce every level are also available.
There have been a lot of calls for different-sized wallpapers, and I still intend to get around to that. Although if anyone wants to take the wallpapers that are already available and modify them to satisfy those requests, that would help me!
Check it all out here.
September 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
even more! thanks again!
September 21st, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Thank you so much for this, David.
You didn’t have to do this at all, but you did it anyway.
My girlfriend will be really happy now with the sprites for the princess!
You and Jonathan are really a huge inspiration for me, you have created one of the best games I’ve played in my 22 years of life. And believe me, I have played hundreds, if not thousands of games.
I’ll be writing a rather long review/analysis of Braid for my blog (wich is in spanish, I’m chilean), and I wish you could leave a comment there when I post it… that would be so awesome!
Anyway, thanks for keeping Braid’s fans happy!
Cheers!
September 21st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Kr!s, happy to help. Unfortunately, I can’t read Spanish, but if the score is 97 or higher I will gladly leave a comment.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:43 pm
It’s not necessary at all that you know spanish, I’m going to leave a message for you and Jonathan at the end of my review, in english.
So don’t worry about not understanding the rest of the post. And also, there are no scores in my blog, it’s just my opinion, and you already know what I think about Braid, I said it in my previous comment!
September 21st, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Sounds good man, I was just kidding about the score thing. Looking forward to your article! Let me know when it’s up!
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:22 am
Great stuff. Love the Game! =o)
Thank you very much!
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 am
Thanks very much for the animated icons! Seriously, this is great.
As for the backgrounds, I was hoping to have a super-high resolution background that I could cut down to the size. At the moment if anyone has any requests I could cut one of the wallpapers to an appropriate size. (For example, background right now is the left portion of the City Panorama, expanded to be 1920 x 1200.)
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
Well, the issue with the wallpapers is that they were made from actual game screenshots, meaning that their maximum size is the dimensions of the game’s video output, 1280×720.
There are a couple ways to make bigger wallpapers … One might be using the existing ones and just kind of combine them and blend them to cover more space … if you follow me. The other one would be to take the original graphics used to create the backgrounds and compose a new background. Which is possible … just a little more time-consuming. And they won’t have the particles that are added in the game engine.
So, there is no high resolution file sitting on my hard drive that I just haven’t uploaded. It requires some work to do any of these solutions. Since there’s interest in that stuff, I’m sure I’ll get around to it.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
[...] on his blog, David Hellman has released an update to the Braid Graphics Briefcase that contains animations for all the characters, which you can use as forum avatars or whatever. [...]
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Thanks for the explanation, I understand the dilemma now. I think I misunderstood how you were making these backgrounds – they’re from the game, rather than from a photoshop file with particular layers selected.
I wouldn’t want you to have to recreate the backgrounds from your original graphics, that sounds tedious and time-consuming. If you feel it’s worth your time, then I’ll be glad to have them, but I had (erroneously) thought you had a high-res file just sitting around to be used.
I don’t know the details of the PC version, but maybe it will support higher resolutions? That may be an opportunity to grab a higher-res version that also includes the game engine effects.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
David,
Thanks again for your generosity with your time and work. It’s a real pleasure to see a game artist that takes care of their community.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Sure, my pleasure! Thanks for your interest.
To Daniel, I would expect the PC version to have the same resolution as the xbox version. To go higher would require re-importing all the graphics at full resolution, which is not straightforward since the full resolution source files aren’t necessarily set up exactly the same as the half resolution ones that are in the game now. It’s a bit of a headache and I haven’t heard Jon indicate in any way that he’s planning to undertake that in the near future.
Also, I have no idea how a higher resolution would impact performance. For a 2D game, Braid is already pretty demanding for most modern PCs.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:41 am
[...] here to grab some cool Animated GIFs directly from Braid’s artist. That is also the artist’s [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Have the completed puzzle images been released in some form or fashion?
I’ve been somewhat perplexed by my inability to find any of these, which makes me wonder if there is a reason for that.
Regardless, I love the work you did on Braid and appreciate you giving us a window into what goes on in making a game.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Excellent question!
I have not released them, and if no one else has released them … Good!
They are meant to accompany certain achievements in the game. I like them that way. I personally do not consider them terrific paintings in their own right! They are more meaningful within the game, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s like a view from a mountain that you can only get if you climb the mountain. Sure, you could look at a photo, but is that as good?? And then once the photo is out there, will people bother to climb the mountain anymore? And even if they do, will the view be as great if they already saw a picture of it?
In other words, I am against photographing mountains. Is that what I said?
September 30th, 2008 at 5:22 am
This graphics collection is amazing, and thanks so much for making it. When my friend first showed me the game, it was the artwork that grabbed me, even before I saw the depth of the gameplay. I’d often just stop and look at the scenery. I could spew praise for hours about both gameplay and art. You guys have done an absolutely fantastic job.
Not sure of the technical side or how possible it is, but would it be possible to add a few floor pieces? I’d love to do a fancomic or something, and that’s the one missing ingredient.
Either way, thanks for creating such a captivating game, and giving us so much insight into the creation process.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I figured it was something like that. ^_^
Reading and thinking about the game after beating makes me want to go and look them over again and potentially use them to facilitate discussion.