The Mana World Forums

@ nym & sull - Organizing would be much easier if you shared stuff more openly. I do know you informed me once (and that Elven knew), but things just happen when the people in charge (mostly me) don't have enough time.

This is a fine example of why we should have people communicating in real time on a daily basis on the IRC channel. Regular meetings wouldn't hurt either.

Sorry for the tone, but I'm in a fever, it's 01:30 and I have a lecture starting at 08:15. Just wanted to make a point and make it certain that people get it. I'll probably just laugh about this outburst and pointing of fingers later on tomorrow (or rather today).

Rotonen: the tiles are Sull's entirely. he was working on them a long time ago when not alot seemed to being done graphic wise (as he didn't like just the desert setting he decided to try out some pixel art himself).

Crush: Your tiles are starting to look good . One suggestion would be to make everything a bit bigger (the blades of grass are tiny and barely noticable, by enlarging things you will be able to display more detail). The tree trunk and wooden platforms will also need some more realistic shading too.

Overall i like it, with some work it could be very very good

ElvenProgrammer wrote:I like the previous version better

i'm not sure which version you mean.

Rotonen wrote:@ nym & sull - Organizing would be much easier if you shared stuff more openly. I do know you informed me once (and that Elven knew), but things just happen when the people in charge (mostly me) don't have enough time.

This is a fine example of why we should have people communicating in real time on a daily basis on the IRC channel. Regular meetings wouldn't hurt either.

Thats an important topic. but it does not belong here. you should start a new thread about this.

nym wrote:the blades of grass are tiny and barely noticable, by enlarging things you will be able to display more detail.

sorry, nym, but you are too late. when you would have proposed that last week i would have considered it, but now many people agreed to the actual grass tile and i adjusted many other tiles to fit it. changing the grass again would mean to redesign the half tileset. i hope you understand that i won't do that without a good reason.

The tree trunk and wooden platforms will also need some more realistic shading too.

what's wrong about the shading?

nym, stop fooling yourself. I understand Sull drew those with the best of intentions, but you just have to admit it's a high-res copy of the original.

Crush wrote:

nym wrote:the blades of grass are tiny and barely noticable, by enlarging things you will be able to display more detail.

sorry, nym, but you are too late. when you would have proposed that last week i would have considered it, but now many people agreed to the actual grass tile and i adjusted many other tiles to fit it. changing the grass again would mean to redesign the half tileset. i hope you understand that i won't do that without a good reason.

Your grass is good, I like it a lot... especially the short grass.
The long grass is a bit jaggy, but I wouldn't increase the size of the blades. I'd add some anti-aliasing.

Crush wrote:

The tree trunk and wooden platforms will also need some more realistic shading too.

what's wrong about the shading?

Nothing, eccept maybe most things shaded to this point were lit from the other side. But solving that would be simple matter of mirroring I guess.

Crush wrote:Thats an important topic. but it does not belong here. you should start a new thread about this.

I've ranted about it in the past, but I've given up, the channel exists, the threads on the forums exist, I think there could even be an entry in the wiki, people just won't hang around on a daily basis and talk with each other..

Modanung wrote:The long grass is a bit jaggy, but I wouldn't increase the size of the blades. I'd add some anti-aliasing.

anti aliasing doesn't work on bitmaps. what you mean is blur:

(ignore the blurred low grass around the high grass. i just were too lazy to cut out the high grass just to demonstrate the effect. but it's no problem to do so)

Crush wrote:

The tree trunk and wooden platforms will also need some more realistic shading too.

what's wrong about the shading?

Nothing, eccept maybe most things shaded to this point were lit from the other side.

please show me an example where the light direction is wrong.

Crush wrote:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Total ruination!
What I mean is

Manual anti-aliasing

Link 1, Link 2

Crush wrote:

Modanung wrote:Nothing, eccept maybe most things shaded to this point were lit from the other side.

please show me an example where the light direction is wrong.

Yours/Wrong:

Currently used/Right: (lighting from the left)

sorry, but that tileset is a really bad example of a consistant lightning.

the well is lit from right
the brown mountains are lit from left
the building is lit from the front (while the back wall on the top seems to be lit from the back)
the stone pilar is lit from right
the cactus is lit from left again
the bushes seem not to be lit at all

so, on what tile should i orientate my light direction?

in the meantime: a bunch of flowers:

the desert- and the forest tiles won't probably ever be seen next to each other, anyways, so i think the lighting direction isnt really an issue, as long as it's consistent in itself, and as long as it works whith the player model
and he's right about the desert tiles being bad. my fav is the well, lit from the right, yet throwing a shadow to the right, too! wtf?

about the flowers, they look good, though i'd only use half as much per tile. and the big ones (blue/yellow) look a little off when not combined with high grass. and the white ones could be a little bigger/rounder (look a lot like little crosses, or sparkles, right now)

and one last thing, what's with all the grass on that stone in the middle of the water? what's it grow in, one would think all the soil would've been washed off... i think it'd look more realistic if it only had some moss on it or something like that.

edit: bah, disregard the last paragraph, i just got what those tiles' use is.
but i think we could use some more stuff to add to lakes/rivers, like underwater stones, fishes, turtles, seaweed, ...

The fact those tiles will never be seen nect to eachother doesn't matter... we'll have to define a lightdirection to avoid confusion.
There will be a transition between desert or forest somewhere, direct or indirect. Somewhere there would be a swap of lightdirection.

Ok, the deserttileset is a bad example... I should have cropped out just the cliffs to show the lightdirection! :S

Both playersets aren't lit from any directions, just from above.
Most monsters have their base lighting from the left, but but Neorice was bad and lazy and only flipped them for right-directed walking animations.
Most NPC's are lit from the left, if lit from a certain direction.

Convinced yet?
Christ... would you just flip it, before I start flippin'?

ktm wrote:and one last thing, what's with all the grass on that stone in the middle of the water? what's it grow in, one would think all the soil would've been washed off... i think it'd look more realistic if it only had some moss on it or something like that.

HINT: Those are four tiles.

Modanung wrote:HINT: Those are four tiles.

yeah, i got enlightenment on that, even if a little late. that's why i edited my above post (*before* your hint, i'd like to point out). damn these inferior human brainmeats.

ktm wrote:

Modanung wrote:HINT: Those are four tiles.

yeah, i got enlightenment on that, even if a little late. that's why i edited my above post (*before* your hint, i'd like to point out). damn these inferior human brainmeats.

I'd like to point out I started typing that post *before* you edited yours.
Damn... this is pointless.

Just started working on a tree:


Thought I'd show an early WIP shot before going to bed. I think the leaves will take most time.
School started again today... just saying.

about the lightning: i just read the graphic design guidelines in the wiki, and they say:
[Link]
"All the tiles in a set needs some coerance: [...]
-The direction of the light (Sout-West?)"

light from southwest means that all tiles should be lit from the left side. i'll flip my tiles later beacuse i'm used to the actual shading. but i would recommend the designer of the desert tileset to do the same with the wrong lit tiles.

The first time I looked at them I didn't like the flower, the second time they were good, but I'd follow ktm's suggestion.

About the style reference, that's of no use at the moment, that's why I always pray all the artists to participate to a meeting, so we can finally define the style to adopt.