[WIP] Underground walls (new tileset)

[arikel]

Using some tiles from existing tilesets (mostly from Irukard and IvanMorve i think), i came up with this one. It's supposed to be easy to map with. Since this is my first tileset "from scratch", i guess there are many beginner mistakes in it. There are still some texture tiling problems, and lots of things need to be improved... Telling me it doesn't look good is ok. Showing me how it could look better would be much more appreciated.

Arikel

Underground walls tileset, work in progress.

underWalls2.png (177.35 KiB) Viewed 3065 times

[Rotonen]

Welcome aboard.

New pixel people are always appreciated.

[Crush]

I created a lot of tilesets in the past. In my experience the best way to find out what is wrong, missing or redundant in your tileset is when you try to create some maps with it yourself. Judging the quality of a tileset by looking at the tileset itself is very hard. But when you see some examples how the tiles are used you can give a much better evaluation.

A tutorial can be found here: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Mapping_Tutorial

[Dark_Mag]

wow, cool! But I think walls need some more shadows. But really everything cool.

[enchilado]

Always keep in mind the material from which your walls are made, and only use existing tiles if they fit and are nice themselves. For example: the way you've used the Road tiles on top of the walls looks somewhat odd - I would have just made it black, as with caves.

Also the cave water tiles that you have reused are very low-quality themselves. I would recommend not using them in any other tileset - in fact, I was working on new cave water myself, but I have so many things I want to work on at the moment that I'm not sure how long it will take for me to get around to that.

[arikel]

I used some tilesets and made some maps before trying to make a tileset myself. While creating this tileset, i tried to keep the mapping in mind, and made a lot of mapping tests along the way. I also tried to make the layout of the tiles in the tileset so that it's as easy and natural as possible for the mapper to pick them up.
Here's a mapping test.

[Crush]

Can you please post an image which shows a part of the map in the original size?

By the way, why do you want these tiles to be used with the cave tileset? I think they would work much better as an outdoor tileset because of their brightness.

[arikel]

Sure, here it is.
When i started to work on this tileset, i had in mind a new area where a non human race lives in underground cities. I was also thinking of a new cave tileset for that, and i wasn't sure yet if it would be rock or ice cave. I ended up with these shades for the buildings, and you're right, they would look better outside.

[Crush]

Finally something I can evaluate properly.

The wall tiles themself look pretty good for a first time work. But as I said they don't work well in the cave environment. I would rather picture them outside, most likely in the desert area. The roof texture doesn't work that well either. It simply doesn't fit. Changing the color palette might help but I think you should rather try to create something on your own.

Another area where I see room for improvement is attention to detail. As you might notice your test map looks pretty sterile and lifeless. Why? You need more objects. Stuff standing, laying or hanging around. Signs. Wall tiles with cracks, holes or graffiti. Small variant tiles the mapper can use to make maps more interesting and give the empression that there are real people living there.


Also a little word of warning to avoid you getting frustrated: The most competent content integration and management people around here are currently spending 99% of their energy on the first Manaserv content release. So when you want to get anything not part of CR1 into the game you should not rely on a lot of help from the team. Your chances of getting it online will still be pretty good though when you are willing to do most of the work yourself and create (or organize the creation of) a complete update they just have to apply.

[AxlTrozz]

Nice effort, I took the freedom to make small suggestions, you need shadows and as Crush said attention to detail, you can improve a lot the walls, roofs and columns adding small details,

eacity.png (203.3 KiB) Viewed 2625 times

1. More contrast on the right side of the column
2. shadows and more shadows
3. the shadow inside the open doors must follow the sunlight from southwest, they look like the sun is right in front
4. borders in the roof, column and doors need more contrast
5. add more carvings to columns, they look amazing

Regards

[arikel]

Thanks a lot Crush and AxlTrozz, understood, i'll work on all that.

[arikel]

I've been working on the columns a bit, here's what i got so far. I find it very difficult to add shadows to the buildings. If anyone could show me a method to get their angle and length right in this perspective (according to buildings height), that would be really helpful.

[AxlTrozz]

I'll try to help you with the shadows, please provide the file so I can work with it.

Don't expect a 24hrs. response, I'll take me some time

Regards