Battle backgrounds for Pokemon Showdown

[Eternal]

Hello artists. As you all know, Pokemon Showdown will be out soon and one thing it lacks is battle backgrounds. So it would be really cool if we can have some sort of battle backgrounds for the aesthetics of the simulator. Simply using the in-game backgrounds and scaling them will not make them aesthetically pleasing, it would look askew. Here are examples of in-game battle backgrounds:

-

...

---

-

...

---

Those backgrounds are about 260x150 pixels. What we need is 700x500, identical to this:

...

---

You can try scaling the in-game backgrounds by perfecting and the pixelates so they are clear. Or revamping them to fit the 700x500 window.

Or you can even try making your own custom backgrounds. For example:

But you want them of the size 700x500. And proportional to the in-game battle background. So the fields are well aligned with the Pokemon sprites.

Hopefully we have some people that are interested in helping out...

[Zarel*]

Ehh. I might as well clarify.

'Need' is a strong word. I would really appreciate new backgrounds, but don't think of it as a demand of any sort. :)

Showdown (and the replay viewer) is standardized at 360p (640x360). Backgrounds are 700x500 so they can be moved up/down/left/right to simulate perspective changes.

The current background is just there because having no background made it look really bland. Feel free to make backgrounds as in-depth as you want.

I think backgrounds would work better without the "base" circles on the ground - they can be added later, and it's easier to add them than to remove them.

Thanks, Smeargle's Studio. :)

[Scepticallistic]

Sorry for a rather silly question, but does the background need to be strictly pixel art? I couldn't really garner that from what I read.

[Eternal]

Originally Posted by Fat Scepticallistic

Sorry for a rather silly question, but does the background need to be strictly pixel art? I couldn't really garner that from what I read.

Well, I'm not sure if aesoft would be fine with it being in a pixelated form. I can see it looking great if it wasn't in a pixel form and aesoft would probably agree as well.

[Zracknel*]

yessssss I am on this so hard

Since Showdown is using the game's official sprites, I went ahead and worked off of the game's original backgrounds in the OP. To me it makes sense to try and look authentic!

yeahhhh

---

What do you think?

(I will seriously try and do all of the OP ingame backgrounds if you let me!)

[Wichu]

Are those D/P style? I think B/W style ones would fit better.

[Zarel*]

Originally Posted by Fat Scepticallistic

Sorry for a rather silly question, but does the background need to be strictly pixel art? I couldn't really garner that from what I read.

Nah, backgrounds look better when they're not pixel art. See Zracknel's post for examples.

Originally Posted by Fat Zracknel

yessssss I am on this so hard

Since Showdown is using the game's official sprites, I went ahead and worked off of the game's original backgrounds in the OP. To me it makes sense to try and look authentic!

yeahhhh

---

What do you think?

(I will seriously try and do all of the OP ingame backgrounds if you let me!)

This is awesome.

(Though it'd be nice to have a clearer horizon on the second two.)

[breh]

Originally Posted by Fat Wichu

Are those D/P style? I think B/W style ones would fit better.

for those who choose bw:

you may want to note that the "horizon" is very round.

[Moo]

Hey zrack I know you have a million and one things to do so if you need a hand with this let me know!

[Zracknel*]

Originally Posted by Fat Moo

Hey zrack I know you have a million and one things to do so if you need a hand with this let me know!

Yes please! Do anything you can or feel like doing-- and that goes for anyone-- having more options for Showdown to work with can only be a good thing, I think.

[Birkal*]

Can they be animated .gifs? Or should we try to stick with non-animated?

And those look great, Zracknel =D!

[Zarel*]

BW would probably be better than DP, but I'm not picky. ;)

Animated GIFs would probably have too large of filesize to be feasible, but if you think you can make it reasonable, go ahead. :)

[Cartoons!]

Kyle Dove has done a number of fan Pokemon BGs.

...

---

All rather beautiful too. I don't know if he'd be interested in allowing us to use his work (with credit of course), but I could try asking?

[Zarel*]

Originally Posted by Fat Cartoons!

Kyle Dove has done a number of fan Pokemon BGs.

...

---

All rather beautiful too. I don't know if he'd be interested in allowing us to use his work (with credit of course), but I could try asking?

Oh, my, those are lovely.

Please do ask him if we can use his work.

[Eternal]

So how are you guys doing? (bump)

[Zarel*]

hmm

[kyledove]

Try using something like this instead? Let me know how it looks, I could improve it.

...

---

[Zarel*]

Originally Posted by Fat kyledove

Try using something like this instead? Let me know how it looks, I could improve it.

...

---

This looks a bit... empty.

Keep in mind that only 640x360 of a background will be visible at any given time - the rest is just there to be visible if we zoom out or pan up.

[kyledove]

Yeah I thought it might be a bit empty, but I thought it would be useful as a starting point to see how it would look.
The backgrounds posted futher up based on the official games are far more empty. You don't want a background to distract too much from the pokemon (I guess that's why you've set the opacity a bit low?)

If it looks really bad then I could judge on what parts I could expand on and add more to. Right now I don't know where the pokemon would even be standing on.

[Swaggersaurus]

wow kyle dove, these are so great!

i personally think gf has done a good job of improving the battlegrounds whilst keeping them generic enough to be used all over the appropriate overworlds, but if we can figure out the size/scale issues and stuff it would be awesome to have your work on ps!!!

[Zracknel*]

wanted to chime in that I also think kyledove's work is excellent and would be amazing to have on the simulator :)

If I can find the time soon I'll fix up my submissions and do a few more, but really only to act as a backup plan.

Cool stuff!

[Moo]

Wow those look amazing! I think we should go with those instead of Zrack's methods. I haven't had much time to do any, but if we decide to go with Zrack's then ill try to make time for them...

[Zarel*]

Originally Posted by Fat kyledove

Yeah I thought it might be a bit empty, but I thought it would be useful as a starting point to see how it would look.
The backgrounds posted futher up based on the official games are far more empty. You don't want a background to distract too much from the pokemon (I guess that's why you've set the opacity a bit low?)

If it looks really bad then I could judge on what parts I could expand on and add more to. Right now I don't know where the pokemon would even be standing on.

Sorry, I omitted part of the context.

Cartoons sent me pixel-upscaled versions of your normal backgrounds:

...

---

These look completely awesome, by the way - I'm using them in the beta version of Pokemon Showdown.

I think either the current method of nearest neighbor upscaling - or maybe running them through hq3x - generate the nicest backgrounds I've seen so far.