Some fugly maptiles

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

I just want to say, if there's anything that isn't overrated about FF6, is its ability to give most characters a well distributed amount of attention throughout the whole game and not just focus on the main character solely and forget about everyone else (in fact, I think the World of Ruin was in the right mind make Terra have less spotlight in order for this to happen. She was treated pretty much just like every other character during the World of Ruin.)

Yeah, I know FF6 praise is the last thing you need, but you rarely see RPGs with heavy characterization manage to make nearly every character important to saving the world, and a lot of games that do tend to be games where every character is silent when they're in your party (FF1, for example). So at least give FF6 that much, even if FFX is better (which gameplay wise and uniqueness/charm wise, it is, heh.)
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Calehay · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 8:48 pm Post subject:

Moogle1 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject:

There are a couple of cheap tricks that might help the beam:
- Make it thinner.
- Change its color. For these two, think of the beams in the houses in FF6.
- Put a shadow "underneath" it.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

Guest · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:32 am Post subject:

Artimus Bena · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:59 am Post subject:

I would probably widen the beam instead of thinning it. (Width-wise). And yeah, there'd probably be some shade in the corner below the window.
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Guest · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:45 pm Post subject:

Do the walls of the house seem a little light to anyone else? Or maybe just the diagonal part of them needs to be a slightly different shade. Ah, whatever.

And for the record, I think the grass looks worse in the "lightened and sticking out over the path" version. I thought your original grass was kind of cool, just needed softened just a bit. Just an opinion though. I also tend to disagree with a lot people here on an incredible amount of things related to making and enjoying games, see any handful of game design discussion threads.

And I just looked up and realized I'm not logged in, and I don't feel like fighting this thing that has a nasty habit of losing track of me as I go from sign-in to forum to journal. This is msw188.

Calehay · Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 10:23 pm Post subject:

I decided it might be a better idea for me to continue practicing before making a game. Here's the latest catastrophe (though there's still a new water to be done and shadows for the houses. I'm also going to do a few palette swaps on the house and finish the large grass.)

(Sorry the map is so big. I'm new to the program and I wasn't sure how to make it smaller without losing any of the map information.)

The roof doesn't work quite right but I wanted to make sure I showed off all of the tiles.

And so it won't feel like I've wasted the entire summer, here's all of the other crappy graphics that I've been working on for this game:

If I pick up this project again afterwards, all of this would have to (and should) be redone anyway because it's all so heavily referenced (except the old portraits. Those were all my own complete work and it shows.) I wanted to go for simple, but it looks like I mistook "simple" for "crappy" again.

Oh well, it gives me a chance to work on some plotscripting tricks I've wanted to try out.

One thing about the house, I've looked at a lot of games, and it seems that perhaps I have the wrong idea of what the perspective should be. On some games, I've noticed that when you see a roof that is sloping towards you, you can see the backside of the roof. But then, other games don't. Is this just a personal choice, or what?
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Calehay

Artimus Bena · Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 11:22 pm Post subject:

Everything's a personal choice. The only thing that anyone's advice will do is help you make it appeasing to the average player.

In the house picture, there's only a couple things I would note: blending the lighter grass with the darker grass (at the edges), and the base grass tile is really griddy, at least horizontally. If you got rid of the horizontal line, it would look pretty nice.

Not sure why you're freaking out though. Just make your game, and learn as you go. Just how many people do you think are going to play this, a thousand? If you keep worrying about making your tiles the epitome of perfection, you'll never get to make your game. And isn't that the point?
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Moogle1 · Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject:

I have two big complaints. Everything else is at least passable.
- The shadows are all wrong. There is no way they are being cast by those objects. I would rather see no shadows than the weird ones you have. The shadows are also unusually dark -- I would expect shadows that dark in a dark room with only one light source.
- Your hero graphics are obviously modified FF sprites. Chromis in particular isn't even modified that much. I prefer your old battle sprites categorically. The bottom portraits are better, but I have a hard time believing they were drawn by the same person who did the first.

Otherwise, the tiles look generally very good. The bricks are especially well done.
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msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Just throwing an agreement on three points:

1. The shadows are definitely horrible. I'd also rather see no shadows at all.

2. Everything else is fine, maybe it'd be nice if the wall looked a little thicker on the sides, and had the metal things coming out of it there as well. Just a suggestion.

3. I also think you really ought to start concentrating on getting some content and releasing a playable game; these graphics are plenty good to go on, except the shadows perhaps.

I wish I could tell you more about perspective, but I've never taken any kind of art class outside of elementary school. The best I can offer is that to an untrained eye (mine), the house looks okay as it is.
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smokedog · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 10:29 am Post subject:

Check out this guide, it's been around for years, and I'm pretty sure I saw someone quote it earlier in the thread.

My apologies if someone already linked it.

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/courses/frontiers-06/samples/pixel-artist/default.htm
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