Page 3 of 3

Posted: 13 Jul 2006, 18:46
by Schorhr
As you can tell I am rather new to 32x32 tiles, but I really like the project and tried to whip up something.

http://www.nottoxic.com/wapcc/ae/aqua/lavatiletest.png
I just doodled some basic ground and lava flow cracks the last hour, nothing fancy.

What kind of worlds/spritesets are really needed at the moment?

Posted: 13 Jul 2006, 19:07
by Matt
nice :)

Posted: 13 Jul 2006, 19:44
by Schorhr
Thanks :-) Any comments/advice/requests?

Posted: 13 Jul 2006, 21:59
by i
not bad. base tile still need some work, it is too tiled. also you could add some old cracks without lava.

anyway it good attemp.

// yep i'm still alive.

Posted: 13 Jul 2006, 22:09
by Schorhr
Thanks. Atempt sounds so much like "Thanks for trying, but, err..." :-))
Nah. Anyway:
Yes, I also noted that making it 25% percent darker looks a bit better, though I was afraid it would look too dark.
I guess its because the eye cant differ darker shades so well compared to light grey tones.
I will try to reduce the tile-effect by decreasing the texture contrast and ammount a bit, and as well create the gaps you suggested ;-)
Getting late here now though...

I've looked closely at some other tiles used in the game, some are just as awefull. It would really help to use a set of maybee 4 different tiles or simply rotate/flip some...
Even in SoM tiles tend to look awefully repeating (even though they used two different lava tiles!)
http://secretofmana.planets.gamespy.com ... een022.jpg ...

Anyway, I finished most of the lava rivers and a simple shore.
Image

I think im starting to get the hang of it, though its a lot different from my cellphone game pixeling... so much colors and pixels :-)
I'll also have to check if it all fits together, since some shades wont fit together well at the moment, but its a start.

I think the lava would really benefit from animated & asynchron tiles?

As for gameplay, it would be a neat idea that you can pass these or smaller gaps but with loosing some health, or with a special armor (Fire boots,... Dragon Skin...).

Posted: 14 Jul 2006, 00:23
by LEG0LAS
it looks very good to me

i just think the floor could have some more datails like small stones or some cracks.

but "all the work" is very good Schorhr.

nice job :wink:

Posted: 14 Jul 2006, 07:09
by Schorhr
Thank you!
Yes, as "i" suggested, I will add some cracks, work on the base tile and also add some rocks that look better then my first poor atempt ;-)

Posted: 14 Jul 2006, 12:00
by Modanung
Am I the only one who doesn't like 'em enough?
I think the lava, both in the cracks as in the lake, is really too blurred. The tile for the lake o' lava is also way too tiled.
For the streams it seems like you have some lava rendering tool, placed the result under the floor tile and then erased some parts. This causes the blurred result as well as there is no direction or depth in the stream at all.

I did this just now to show what I mean and how I think a lava stream should look like more:
ImageImageImage
To add some variation I could add some cracks to the side 'n all.

Posted: 14 Jul 2006, 12:43
by Schorhr
Well, I read on the Wiki that "if you can do ANYTHING...", so i did :-)
I wanted it to look like cracks where the lava nearly boils out, yours look more like a deep crack filled half way with lava.
Actually I drew hard contrast tiles first, and the lava is red filling with lighten- and darken brushes. All hand made ;-)
I smoothed the borders afterwards, i just found it too disturbing since I did not intend deep cracks. Just split open surface with the lava right underneath.

I really like yours, but in my opinion, its more a straight lava canal, no random cracks where the lava is right underneath. It would make a great addition to the current cracks. Its just two different things.

I will sketch some sideviews later to give some more detail on what I mean.
//EDIT Image

I also dont like the lava in SOM, the bubbles look too cartoony. I guess its a matter of taste, so I used a blurry lavatile.
The problem to all is that only one tile over a large area has disadvantages, thats probably why in SOM they used two lavatiles in a pattern.

As I said, I will try to make some deep-canal lava streams later, but its really not what i intended.
Maybee you should go more into detail on the wiki about Qualitystandards and guidelines. This would prevent people like me from spending time they could have done it right the first time...
...though in my oppinion there are lots of stylemixes in the current game, and its allways a bit too much with the depth shading. Just my 2 cents.

//EDIT
I just compared the states of my tiles.

Image
Here is the
1) tile shown in my samples above
2) the original before smoothing the edges
3) the "sharp-edge" original with a bit of "canal depth" shading