Reid wrote:Recoloring tileset in general is also a bad idea
No it's not. Well it is, when used without brain enabled. But the technique in itself is valid where it makes sense.
Look e.g at Chrono Trigger whose tilesets used for the various eras are palette swaps.
A few updated images. 1) whole level w/ collision tiles. 2) whole level w/o. 3) closeup showing some lava I rendered myself. I colorized the crystals by hand too, just for the hell of it.
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2013-01-29-171033_1024x768_scrot.png (178.12 KiB) Viewed 3105 times
2013-01-29-171017_1024x768_scrot.png (174.7 KiB) Viewed 3105 times
2013-01-29-170617_1024x768_scrot.png (219.53 KiB) Viewed 3107 times
Unfortunately your lava doesn't tile well. When you try to build a larger lake, the tile borders immediately become visible:
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lava-tile.png (13.38 KiB) Viewed 3082 times
former Manasource Programmer
former TMW Pixel artist
NOT a game master
Please do not send me any inquiries regarding player accounts on TMW.
You might have heard a certain rumor about me. This rumor is completely false. You might also have heard the other rumor about me. This rumor is 100% accurate.
I'll see what I can do about some modifications. My main concern was that in order to get something to blend with tiling you need to give it a more generic look. On the other hand, who knows what I might accomplish with some creative blending. I'm saving the original somewhere at any rate; I think it looks cool
I haven't tried the automapping yet, but it sounds like a useful feature. I'll take a look at it.
Thanks a lot for the input everybody.
That is indeed looking better, but I do have one critique (which I hope you won't take personally) - While your lava does tile better the way you modified it, it is also very obvious where each tile is. For the most part, map tiles look best when you can't see the "grid" formed by the tiles. In this case, your lava tiles all have a dark border, which not only makes the grid very visible, but also makes the edges of each tile look deeper than the middle. My suggestions for this are:
1- Remove some of the darker color from the edges of your tiles, especially the ones you use in the center - it seems fine on the edge/border tiles to me. You can still have darker patches here and there for a more realistic look.
2- I'd probably toss in a tiny bit of some yellow shades, to give it more of that "magma" look. Only in small amounts anyway.
3- You might consider another "center" tile or two, that is darker all over - this could help give an appearance of depth, the closer to the middle it is.
That said... I really like how you've done the border tiles - the darker, curving lines look really good (in my opinion), particularly on the left and right sides.
Tiana wrote: I apologize if I gave anyone the impression that BC is the troll-king of the GM's. That title is rightfully held by mrgrey
<Mistakes> you are too difficult to troll
<Frost> Germans have Chess Boxing. English have Cheese Racing.
<Frost> I'm slightly terrified what the Russians consider violent sport.
<o11c> chatroulette
<Jaxad0127> YOu can't grab yourself.
<Jaxad0127> Elenore explicitly prevents it.
<Mistakes> speak for yourself
Here's some cool stuff I did that I thought I'd share, but it requires some explanation. I took the basic monster-skeleton.png, and learned that it dyes much better if I invert the color scheme first. So I took that inverted skeleton image and dyed it with tmw's dyecmd (using "W:#994040,772020,440808,000000"). Then, I made a sprite overlay for the eyes, ribs, fists, and leg-bones (which could probably be made dyable itself relatively easy). This is the awesomeness that ensued