The Mana World Forums

I've been cruising around the forum and wiki for the past few days and am pretty much amazed at some of the art y'all are putting out. I've only started playing with tmw a week or so ago and feel pretty excited about helping out however I can. Most of my MMO experience comes from several years of building/programming for muds, and recently the game I was helping with has started to stagnate. And now I find myself in this new and exciting place that is doing all sorts of fun things with my creativity.

So, anyways. I'm interested in helping here and I understand that mapping and pixelating are great ways to get my toes wet. For lack of direction I've started with a basic dock set that I'll try to learn with. I'd really appreciate any feedback!



You can click on the picture above or here to go to where I have the tiles/images all laid out and stuff.

Thanks!

Endaira

Welcome!!!

The planks on the dock are a little small, it also lacks contrast.

Agreed. Except not on the size. Small planks can be used well, if tiled properly. The primary problem I see is the lack of contrast. Try added shadows under the dock and also add darker shadows and lighter highlights. Don't overdue it though.

One other thing: consider separating the planks not just width-wise but length-wise as well. Make it feel like somebody patched it together from multiple smaller logs.

thanks! yeah, I was aiming for the rickety sorta look so the gaps in the planks are a good thing to play with. I'll try the shadow underneath as well, just wasn't sure how involved I wanted it. Sweet feedback! thanks!

Endaira

Thanks Len and Pauan for the observations and help! I redid the tiles and I definitely think they're greatly improved.





You can click on the pictures above or here to go to where I have the tiles/images all laid out and stuff.

Thanks again, and feedback is more than welcome!

Endaira

Interesting tiles. I'm going to test these out.

EDIT: I have a couple of suggestions for improving the tileset:

- The two tiles in the center of the tileset's second row, which I assume always go under the tiles in the first row, are not necessary. They can simply be drawn in underneath the upper row's tiles.

- The tiles that jut out from the sides of the dock do not need to have the shadow drawn in. I would recommend that you instead use a dark gray or black color with transparency to create a shadow. This will also look better when the dock meets with the land, and help improve the tileset's ability to be reused (see below).

- Lastly, remove all of the water from image, except for the water on the dock's support legs. Different areas may have different water tiles, so this tileset would need to be designed to be reused for the different areas without need to modify it.

The color of the highlights is too saturated. It stands out too much.

Humor me and scale up the platform size and make it properly tilable in at least 4 directions. The plank size is irrelative of this.