Game & Map Screenshots 11

@Cathy I personally would not recommend reflecting the sky, otherwise they could look like you are seeing the sky through them - which is what I thought when I saw your post, which left me wondering how I could see sky inside a house.

Other than that, a big improvement, though I still wonder if the stones around the windows need to be as big as they are. They dominate the window. Maybe take out a vertical line or two of pixels to make them a shade narrower?

Thank you Kes, I'll try that.

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to create a river animation in parallax with a small waterfall but the global feeling isn't right. I haven't done the details yet but I already feel it's going nowhere.

I've uploaded a gif, it's a bit pixelated but I couldn't do better from the capture.

Any advice would be precious.

@Cathy
I don't do parallaxing, so I'm not going to give technical suggestions, just how I respond to it as a map.

If the water is falling down into a closed lake/pond, which it is at the moment, where does the inflowing water go? It would have flooded out. So that lower lake needs an outlet.

But the issue is bigger than that. Using the tree as a way of deducing scale, that is one mighty big river - and so the amount of water coming over the edge into the waterfall is far too small. Again the river would have overflowed its banks as the outlet is too small. You would either need to make the river a lot narrower or the waterfall bigger. As those waterfalls are so well done, it might be better to make the river narrower.

The grass section of the upper cliff, to the right of the water, needs an outline to match every other bit of grass.

You have a perspective problem with the section of the cliff left of the tree. You have moved the base of it back a couple of tiles without altering the height of the grass above. This section of cliff needs to have the same total height as the waterfall section, which will affect the way you do the grass along the river bank.

Thank you for your reply Kes :thumbsup-left:

I've tried to sketch an idea after thinking of what you've said. I'm not certain this idea would correct everything but it might help.

@Cathy
I think those extra waterfalls plus narrowing the river will help a lot.
I have, however, just realised what it is that bothered me about the right side of the river. You have the river bank and visually it is on exactly the same level as the grass at the bottom of the cliff - there is no indication that the ground is higher. What you could do to correct that would be to continue the line of the cliff top across the map instead of turning it up towards the north. Or you could continue it a bit more, turn it up north for a short way and then continue it across the map. Maybe that desn't fit what you are trying to do, but you will have to find some way to solve the perspective problem.

I made my first map using some free and paid tiles and characters made by Popodot, and was hoping to get feedback on whether shadows are needed for the tiles? I'd also welcome any suggestions for decorative stuff to add to the forest clearing in the center (conditional on the relatively small selection of tiles available and my limited art skills).

@SeaPhoenix As long as you've got some art skills to copy them, you could try scattering tiny stones like the ones around the big stones. Maybe recolour them to match the dirt. You could also, perhaps, copy the little tufts that are on the grass tile and put a couple of them close to the edge of the dirt patch so that it looks like the grass is trying to regrow there. Given the simplicity of the style, I personally think you shouldn't add too much, it would be a strange contrast with the ground elsewhere.

On a different note, the pale green tree to the right of the clearing, second tree from the top, has a funny brown blob on it which has left me puzzled. I mean this:

Thanks, @Kes! Will add a few tufts of grass and some small stones too. The stones came from a different tileset and I had actually recolored them gray because I thought it would add more contrast to the map (otherwise everything's just green or brown) but I do agree stones that match the dirt color make more sense.

The blob is an acorn. :) There are a couple on the map for the player to collect (not more than that, because food is limited in the game).

I think the acorns would look better a little rotated, but I can't do a good job cleaning up the rotation. I did try 3 different placements below though - if you or anyone else has opinions on whether A, B, or C look better, I'd welcome them! A and C are ideal because they use up only 1 tile as an event but I personally think 2 on a tree look better.

The art style looks pretty cohesive for a mix :p Anyway...I'm no artist but the style looks very 2d, as in some of the objects had no attempt to even add any illusion of 3d at all. so maybe shadows doesn't fit? But you could make them look less flat, Like the log, it looks completely flat, maybe shade it a little to make it look rounder?

I think its an acorn.

You might wanna edit it a bit then.
The little hat looking thing is usually wider than the rest of the acorn, not smaller.

I wonder why there's a path leading to that clearing.
Maybe you could add a pile of logs with an axe on it so it could be a loggers resting place. With that idea you could add a circle of stones that he uses for fire and a trunk for him to sit....

And for the acorn, you could put it on the branch.

Thanks @Willibab, @Elissiaro and @Cathy for the helpful suggestions, especially the idea of the acorn on the branch! Will try to do that.

There's a path so that the player can easily tell which way leads out of this map (there's no other exit). I should have mentioned that an animal is the main character here and this is its "home". There may be a human or two living in a house a couple of maps away but I envisioned the clearing as relatively undisturbed by humans.

The evil teacups from my game. I really was thinking if I should add more teacups like in most rides but they take SO much space to use and I'm already struggling to fill the area as is. What should I do, keep it with just two teacups or try and add more?

@Tuomo L
You could try fitting one in behind the teapot?
Otherwise I'd say two is fine.

Problem is, player needs to be able to walk into the controller room for plot purposes. I'll try your suggestion and play around the map a bit to see if that would work, thank you from the suggestion!

I would maybe desaturate the teacup colors a bit. They seem too bright compared to the rest of the scene (unless you are going for the contrast, then keep it the way it is).

Hello everyone,

I worked all week on my training with the waterfall scene, doing stuff for hours and erase them in 2 seconds, redo stuffs for hours and ...... :eek: it's far from finished but I think I finally found the good feeling and I would like to have an outside eye before going further.

I didn't do the moutain yet so the tileset is mostly untouched and the waterfalls still need a lot of polish (worked 2 full days on the waterfalls, it's hard for me).

Even if you feel it's crap don't mind telling me, I need to improve and I can't stand back anymore.

@Cathy
That is a huge improvement! Well done. Two things come to mind.
I assume that you will be adding an outlet at the bottom of the screen so that the water can continue on its way. The second issue is a bit bigger, and it's to do with the left hand section.

You have a lot of water flowing down (love the way the water flows, btw) but only a tiny trickle going out. Again you would have the overflow problem. The water in and water out need to match each other.

THUNDERRR! LIGHTNIIING!

A map that I've been having fun working on :)