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They did some nice recycling of many of their tiles (something we can learn from)
They even did it with some of the buildings (the lazy bastards!)

They could get away with it easier: you don't see the same landscapes again as often as you see in an MMO.

This however does not mean we could not get away with recycling if we do it smart.

Word. Also, as I'm pretty sure has been mentioned before.. another form of tile recycling can take place when multiple tilesets are used to design a single zone.
Oh hey, regarding the desert tileset's coastal animation.. how does that animation look in SD3? (from the screenshot on the right) Anything we can learn from?

Dave wrote:
Oh hey, regarding the desert tileset's coastal animation.. how does that animation look in SD3? (from the screenshot on the right) Anything we can learn from?

It is beyond amazing, but I'm not sure if we can pull it off on the large scale

I think he was after an animated example for you to show us...

No, I was actually just looking for his visual recollection. I haven't played much of that particular title, so I don't really recall and haven't really seen a lot of the graphics. ..but now that Rotonen mentions it, if you get a chance, gif together some screenshot clippings of that water animation for us to stare at.

About the reused sand tiles in the screenshots; I wondered whether or not they recolored those tiles from a single graphic and a palette change, or just had three different versions.. then of course that made me wonder, if we're dynamically coloring objects and all of that, it will work for tiles, too.. correct?

This is probably completely off topic, but Dave your image on the side there is creepy...

My smiling Cronus avatar felt old when I finally got back online.

I think many transitions can be reused. It would benift the speed of the game development, and it would hardly be noticed by the player (if the actual tilesets have enough variation). We could for example created 3 types of cliff-tiles: Round, haxagonical/triangular and square (like the new forest tileset). Then you could color it for each type of environment different. Would not be lots of work, and I think it would not harm the game (maybe even be an improvement, because you get more consistent). Same counts for shore-lines.

The main reason for squaresoft reusing tiles like that was size limitation of the ROM modules. So they used palette swapping a lot. But it is really surprising how well it works.

Crush wrote:The main reason for squaresoft reusing tiles like that was size limitation of the ROM modules. So they used palette swapping a lot. But it is really surprising how well it works.

And the fact that it actually takes a lot of time to produce tiles like that. There's no point wasting weeks to churn out a new tileset when you can reuse an existing one and basically get the same effect. The trick with that is - sure, it's reused, and sure, people will notice that. But it looks good, and if it does look good, it doesn't feel cheap.

It's like having to eat the same meal every day for a week, but it being something really, really good. If it's really good, you don't get tired of it.

Plus i do find that snow and sand do tend to drift in very similar patterns.

That really depends on the type of snow and it's shape... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow#Types_of_snow

leeor_net wrote:That really depends on the type of snow and it's shape... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow#Types_of_snow

Same goes for sand ie whether it is wet, dry, fineness of the grain.

I was speaking in general before.