Game & Map Screenshots 11

@Guardinthena Your mine looks a lot better now that the floor is a bit more varied. Just helps break things up, you know. The moss looks a bit weird due to how autotiles work. You could try playing around with shift mapping, or, if you really wanted, create some moss patches from small tufts of grass, clump them together, and place them around the water's edge. I don't know. Whatever makes sense to you.

The new hand monument is definitely an improvement over the original.

@Raith -I am loving that cute tileset! You custom made it, correct? Super cute!

As for your question, I think both styles look really nice. I do agree with Frostorm that it depends on the size of your sprites. But also, you do not have to waste valuable tileset space with large structures. The trick is to make those large buildings characters, you read that right. Figure out the correct dimensions and put it on a character sheesheet in your characters folder. Then, make the space the building will go on inaccessible so the player won't walk through the building weirdly. Like put down water or something, then the character that will house the building or whatever else you plan to so. And voila! No more problem with wasted tileset space, the building character is automatically capable so the player can walk behind the building if you want, and all is well.

So with that trick in mind, it really comes down to how you want your buildings to be now that tileset space isn't an issue.

@The Stranger -Thank you for the advice! Not sure if I am going to end up keeping the moss but I agree with your advice and Kes's, if I do end up keeping it (I know I will likely use the idea down the road for a wet cave, so I'll have to do something at some point) then the best approach would be to clump the moss/grass on a tileset for a more natural appearance and definately tone down the color.

@Frostorm It is a fully custom-made tileset! I haven't published it anywhere except here. It made possible to do such style when RPG Maker started to embrace the 48x48 tile size.
The character sprites models are chibi. That's also why I need feedback: classic Pokemon RPGs use overworld chibi sprites plus Style 2 building size ratio, and it worked very well.

@Guardinthena Oh my god, what an unthinkable idea! Why it doesn't come to my mind before >.<. Thank you!

@Raith I'm wondering if it would help if you approached this problem from a different angle. From what I can see from the screenshots, it would be easy to make the basic house and the flat roof as A3 autotiles. You could have a couple of variations there, one with the little veranda thing, one without. Then you could do your upper floor construction with shift+click mapping. Because they are autotiles you could stick whichever window you wanted onto them without having to have separate bases for each window style. That would leave just the sloping roofs to go on to B-E tiles. From my own experience of using sloping roofs, that would take up (usually) less than half a sheet.

@Kes Already tried that, but sadly it didn't work very well. The A3 walls and roofs somehow functioned properly, but non A3 roof designs actually will end up bigger in B-E tiles. The final result using autotiles is Style 2, but with much more blocky appearance thanks to the deviance from Golden Ratio - which even shift-click or "mask tiles" won't help. What I learnt from using A3 autotiles is, it is good for interior and specific kinds of structures only (e.g Arabic style buildings, default basic houses, big castles, tall walls, gigantic boxy structures, etc), but don't try it if you need dynamic architecture diversity. That's why I in this case insist to use the whole house tileset instead of A3.

@Raith I'm wondering how you did that. If you look at this post, in a different style to your own, it was done with a combination of A3 autotiles and slanted roofs on B-E. I'm not saying you should do it that way, but I think it can do more than you think at the moment.

@Kes well, yeah, technically that what all mappers will do apart from artistic styles.

Let me share my experience that led me choosing the manual tileset method in dealing with architectures, which may helps others considering their technique in designing tileset-based buildings.

All started with this premise:
All sloped-roofed buildings are basically a fancy, decorated isosceles pentagon.
My goal is to avoid "undecorated 90-degree isosceles pentagon", a.k.a this:

Therefore, I need the Roof Edge.


I'm trying to preserve the sloped roof edge (see next spoiler, the blue box), which will take just 8 pixels width of details (number of pixel is counted from the intersection of wall edge).

Because of that, come the logic of red box: notice how the wall edge must comply with the roof base.

Here come the autotile problem (see the last spoiler).
You can, of course, mask that wall autotile border with specially made tiles in B-E tileset to achieve the desired wall edge, but then I think like this: why even bother creating A3 autotiles when you only use them only to cover it again with manual tiles?

So this is the comparison (please forgive me for using placeholder for the autotiled wall):

In summary, to produce same roofing edge style, that autotile wall is going to need 6 x 4 roof tiles compared to 4 x 4 roof tiles of its manual counterpart. Or you can keep the 4x4 roof but you will also need to create additional 2 tiles to mask the wall edge (4 if you plan to make two story building, 6 if more), plus the window tiles, which basically need roughly the same drawing effort compared to the manual one.

So, yaah, personally I don't want to spend that number of tiles just for that tiny amount of details in one sloped roof. So I'm giung for the manual one.

I think this is a crucial mapping technique since it dictates overall map image.
In the end, it all depends on the mapper's goal.




Dang I feel this is out of topic but I posted it anyway.
[EDIT: edited some typos]

@Guardinthena Awesome! I'm glad it worked! I've realized that the key to pixel art is to not actually do pixel art lol

@Raith I just noticed, is your tileset 24x24?

@Frostorm Nope, it is the default 48x48. The technique is drawing it in 24x24 pixel tile, then save it in 200% enlargement using nearest neighbor interpolation. The 24x24 px is odd but just right, not too small like 16x16 and can be divided by 3 unlike 32x32

@Raith Damn, I should've gone with that method instead of rendering my game at 960x540 and fullscreening it to 1920x1080. Arrg I've already done so much of my UI with my current setup, it would be so much work to redo it. It'd be like starting a new project...:kaosigh:

It's Screenshot Saturday, everyone post your pics, let's see 'em! I hope you're all having a good weekend.

It looks better in motion, if you got a second to watch the video. I'm open to feedback and suggestions, swing by the thread and let me know what you think. Take care!

@Ace of Spades Very nice logo for your game. I like how the southwest portion of the compass is cut out so that it hugs the text.:thumbsup-left:

@Ace of Spades Hail to the great overlord, Cthulhu. Sound like a great game. I have to play it.

I made some modifications to my Port map for The Wastes. Ignore the offset doors...

Isn't the retaining wall too tall by about *counts* 4 tiles? According to those pipes it should be about the same height as the ship, shouldn't it?

I've been playing with some new tiles I bought, but I'm not sure on the lighting for the map. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve? Right now the shadows just kind of make it feel dark in my opinion.

@RoseReveries shading on the tiled map can be hard, especially if you use texture-rich tiles. However, it can be very easy, too, depending to the circumstance.

To shade properly, firstly you must answer this question:

Where your light source is positioned?

For RTP style tile users they must know that default RM MV tiles light come from southwest, hence the shadow in the northwest. Lazy person like me like to use global light, in which light source came from the top, hence the shadow is directly below the objects without west-east skewness.

In your case, the light come from the west side (based on the small objects), therefore the shadow must be on right. This is already inconsistent with the building shadows which light source come from the south. My suggestion is choose one between west or south light source.

Again, keep the light position consistent and you're basically good to go.

If you shade, you'll notice the tempation to use gradient shadow. The rule is only use gradient in non-flat object. The case in your map, please look at the alley and the roofs. My suggestion is remove the gradient and apply a flat shadow with only a pixel of blur. Please try and compare it!

The other characteristic is shadow length. Contrary to popular opinion, in tile-based map, shadow length often follows the time setting rather than the object height or light source - thanks to the limitation of the tile size. It means that shadow tend to be longer in the afternoon and shortest in the morning or in the middle of day. If you feel your map is darker, it is probably because of this. My suggestion is keep the shadow short based on what time setting in the current map. Please try and compare it!

Give it practices, and you'll be a Shadow Master in no time!

Crap, I never noticed that. It's supposed to be very tall since the bay was deep, but most of the water has evaporated. I'll have to think of a better way to get on the ship.

@cthulhusquid Wouldn't it be easier to move it all up a little and just add a bit more water at the bottom? I don't know, but it seems like a wall that tall would be a bit boring to navigate inside a game, due to it being so large. It doesn't take too much to give an impression of depth when you can't see the whole map.

@RoseReveries I agree with Raith. The shadows on top of the roofs are the main culprit for making it look dark. Since there's a shadow on there, either something is blocking the sunlight or the light source is below the roofs. Even though it's bright and colorful the shadowed roofs make a brain think it's night time, so it looks dark. If you follow Raith's suggestions and it still looks a bit dark to you, you could try adding a little bit of color to the shadows, something cool to suggest a warm light source. A little hue shifting adds a lot of dynamics to an image.