@Kes I think your town needs more life, there is no real purpose for someone to get out of his place.
Maybe add empty crates, barrels, bottles, broken plate ... in the alley near the inn as if the cook would put his useless stuff out waiting to be thrown away.
Maybe add a small place where to tie 2 or 3 horses, a few covered piles of wood, a pile of bricks near an unfinished wall.
Each house could have a small garden, I think you need more green, the only tree feels a bit small on my opinion.
Maybe add a small platform where an old beggar would shout that the world is coming to an end...
A small hand carriage would be nice too.
I really think it needs to show that people live there.
Game & Map Screenshots 11
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@Cathy Thank you for your detailed suggestions.
Crates, barrels, broken bottles etc. Their absence is a deliberate design choice. I decided that not every town needed to be filled up with useless junk and general tat - my other towns have it (I hope not to excess) but not this one. The cook at the inn doesn't put out stuff to be thrown away as hardly anyone visits the inn anymore, so no need to cook. (The innkeeper is genuinely astonished that anyone wants to stay. The armorer hasn't sold anything in years and so stopped making new gear a long time ago, just gradually selling off bits and pieces when he can. That sort of thing.)
An unfinished wall. This would imply that building is going on. It's not. As I said in my reply to Cthulhusquid, the town's population is getting smaller and smaller. There is, therefore, no need for new building.
Every house with a small garden. Nope, there isn't room and I'm not going to double the size of the map just for gardens.
You say that the town lacks life - great, as that is precisely the atmosphere I wanted to create. This is a town which is slowly shrivelling up on itself, one where hope and a zest for life have ebbed away. People put one foot in front of the other in order to get through another day. As well as the map, that is conveyed by the music track for this town, quite different from the usual atmosphere of a town theme. Quiet, melancholic, zero oomph.
I think if you look at the map from that perspective, you will be able to see why it is the way it is. -
@Featherbrain The big sprites look better, going by those 2 screenshots. But it'll depend on how much more space enemies can possibly take up, and what your battle animations are like. But going by those screenshots, there's way too much dead space between the enemies and the players. Second screenshot looks like it fills up the space way better, due to the bigger sprites but also from having placed the enemy not so near the edge of the screen.
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@Kes most points are ready made (the good ones anyway) however one thing that i find is that the town gate looks off compared tot the town. Like architectually different (which could work of It truly was different and not trying to be samey to the buildings).
Really pulls my eye to it everytime i look at it in a bad way (sorry).
Towers have the same issue bit less noticable.
my suggestion (the easiest) is ro change the roofs on the gate and walls all together to make Them truly different or to add some more Wood detailing to make it more inline with the buildings inside the town
as always tho, that's Just my opinion and im Just 1 Guy who doesn't know anything either xD
something like this for example ties it all together a bit more, imo.
(ofc this is a quick edit in photoshop by cutting and pasting the png so quality is lacking)
Alternativly you could leave the roofs off alltogether and add crenaltions instead to make it a different architectural style all together. -
@Finnuval I like your suggestion regarding the towers and will find a way of implementing it.
Thank you.
EDIT
And done. I tried putting in the wooden panels, but it didn't really quite work, imo. Instead, I have remade the windows and tiles to match those in the rest of the town and redone the wooden dividers/supports in the tower roof. Here is a before and after image. What do you think? (Ignore the bird, it just flies around at random.)
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@Kes yeah it looks more like the towers belong to the town architectually now.
(And i Will ignore the birds xD )
EDIT: one thing i am kinda missing reading through tour answers so some of the other comments is a (empty) guardhouse to hold all those guards once payrolling the town. But that's Just me nitpicking xD -
@Finnuval Glad you think it's an improvement.
As for the guardhouse, it had been the custom for every male in the town to take their turn, a sort of militia as it were, so no separate guardhouse was needed. Which is why a reduced population means no one in the towers on a regular basis. -
Ah ok, so there is a story explanation. That's good xD
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Trying out retro aesthetic for my project, how does it look? -
@Tuomo L Nice tiles.
The placement of the chairs looks weird, especially the two facing up. I'd move them closer to the table.
I'm not sure, though, about using those face sets if you're trying to get a retro aesthetic; they don't meet that objective, imo. I can see that they came with the sprites, but then, the sprites don't look retro either. I can see the potential for a clash of styles here. -
I thought that they all looked like they belonged in Game Boy Advance, which is the retro style I am going for.
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Really love these screenshots and that you have a totally unique and very cohesive look going on. I'd say the larger battlers all the way.Looking for opinions. In general, which looks better? The small sprites or the big 2x sprites?
Other comments welcome, though assets are still drafts/placeholders (thus the duplicate sprites).
View attachment 193797View attachment 193798 -
On the way to the park. -
@Tuomo L I really like your use of space. The environment feels properly big. Good subtle use of fog too.
-- Screencaps from the final dungeon of my short game. Unfinished. they feel pretty empty as of the moment.
Notes: Dreamlike locale. The potion vial in the second is intended to be glowing.
Blocked out section since there's some errors.Maps
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Here's a ramen shop related to the main story of Collector. One of several flashbacks (that occur past the demo's playtime) take place here.
Here's a small part of the flashback, but I need to add some more people.
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@SoftCloud The dirty floor of the second screen shot is particularly well done, as is the furniture. Nicely wrecked/neglected. For that map, I don't understand the gleaming sliver (or is it a bit of fire?) on the 2 pieces of furniture. I personally would take the brightness of the bottle down a bit. It is too much for that level of lighting.
Is the first map in the same building? It looks quite different, so I'm assuming it's not, but if it is the same it needs to match up the same level of dereliction as the second.
ATM the first map all looks artificially damaged. To have a creeper grow up an internal wall, you need to make the place a lot more ruined. Creepers need soil and water, and so the place where it is growing from would definitely have semi-destroyed the papers lying at its base. The floor would be stained in that area. In fact, the floor looks pristine fresh all over apart from the unusual dark patch across the centre area. Even zoomed in I'm unsure what the object is in the corner just left of the creeper. Is it a fungus? In which case you definitely need to make that area wet.
The flowers in the pot would have died unless there is someone still living there and tending them.
The damaged wall section next to the pot looks off. Usually when a wall loses a chunk that size, the cracks run up, not down. Wood does not break like that. That particular graphic is more for plastered/rendered walls than wood panels.
The green poster at the bottom needs adjusting, imo. It is meant to be in shadow (I think, based on the way the lighting falls) and therefore would not shine out like that. If it were florescent it would shine in a different way to the way it does now.
@Ninjakillzu Is that a laptop/pc in front of the shop assistant at the counter? If so, the blue light it is emitting should only fall to the left, not also come out of the back of it.
The level of light given off by the artificial lights and the green screens seems to clash with the fact that your windows suggest that it is day outside. The natural light would soften the amount of apparent light from those other sources - especially the green screens which are giving off the same intensity of light as the big lamps. -
I turned down the intensity of the green panel light and darkened the windows to reflect the lighting outside. As for the computer, it's from a futuristic tileset and doesn't have a solid back, so the screen is visible from both sides.@SoftCloud The dirty floor of the second screen shot is particularly well done, as is the furniture. Nicely wrecked/neglected. For that map, I don't understand the gleaming sliver (or is it a bit of fire?) on the 2 pieces of furniture. I personally would take the brightness of the bottle down a bit. It is too much for that level of lighting.
Is the first map in the same building? It looks quite different, so I'm assuming it's not, but if it is the same it needs to match up the same level of dereliction as the second.
ATM the first map all looks artificially damaged. To have a creeper grow up an internal wall, you need to make the place a lot more ruined. Creepers need soil and water, and so the place where it is growing from would definitely have semi-destroyed the papers lying at its base. The floor would be stained in that area. In fact, the floor looks pristine fresh all over apart from the unusual dark patch across the centre area. Even zoomed in I'm unsure what the object is in the corner just left of the creeper. Is it a fungus? In which case you definitely need to make that area wet.
The flowers in the pot would have died unless there is someone still living there and tending them.
The damaged wall section next to the pot looks off. Usually when a wall loses a chunk that size, the cracks run up, not down. Wood does not break like that. That particular graphic is more for plastered/rendered walls than wood panels.
The green poster at the bottom needs adjusting, imo. It is meant to be in shadow (I think, based on the way the lighting falls) and therefore would not shine out like that. If it were florescent it would shine in a different way to the way it does now.
@Ninjakillzu Is that a laptop/pc in front of the shop assistant at the counter? If so, the blue light it is emitting should only fall to the left, not also come out of the back of it.
The level of light given off by the artificial lights and the green screens seems to clash with the fact that your windows suggest that it is day outside. The natural light would soften the amount of apparent light from those other sources - especially the green screens which are giving off the same intensity of light as the big lamps.
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The following video shows some of the interiors and exteriors of a castle I'm building for Evergloom.
Its an ancient keep, repurposed as a training school for magically gifted girls. I could really use some feedback from outside our team.
What I'm trying to create is a sense of scale: a sprawling castle filled with thousands of people, factions, and secrets. The keep is very under capacity, as less girls are being gifted with magic, so the further you get from the main entrance, the more desolate it becomes, and the more rundown.
There is a lot more to the castle than in the video, but its already three minutes long, also a lot of the rooms still need padding out with characters and events, so they may seem a tad empty.
I would particularly like feedback on:
- The overall feel of the castle and specifically if it feels like my brief description.
- The main entrance (the first room in the video) which I've rebuilt a dozen times. I'm trying to make it feel splendid, but also like a hub for taking in goods, meetings, study.
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Trying making some smaller maps for once, to cut down on the time spent mapping. There'll be a few on-map encounters added later, but this will be one full area on its own (somewhat like an early game mini-dungeon...) Player starts at the bottom, and each enemy defeated will make a piece of the bridge to the boss on the island appear.
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@Milennin I'm quite new to rpgm but as a gamer I'd say that the shadow under the trees hurt the eyes, it's really black, maybe gray or some transparency could help.
Maybe you could add a difference of level in some places so it would be less flat.