8-bit MADNESS

[Mogri]

Sephy: That would be awesome.

also, if you are looking for people, i would love to do some maptiles. 16x16 is a much more pleasant tiling experience for me... for some reason. i believe gameboy actually uses 8x8 though...

heck, i would love to do 8x8 map tiles if that is feasible...

You're correct, but it's easier from an editing standpoint to work with 16x16.

Anyway, it would be great to have you do maptiles. (At this rate, I won't actually have to do any of my own work on the game!)

EDIT: Also, since you are only using 4 colors for in game stuff, you should make a palette where as many colors as possible are used for the gameboy layover.

That's exactly what I did. Take another look at that screenshot

[shakeyair]

of course a mockup would be better, but i dont have anything that is convenient to do it on. (i am not doing a mockup by hand... no way!)

i want to know my tiling restrictions before i do much else. i hope im correct in remembering that the game boy can use all 4 colors on tiles... and tiles do not have transparency.

will it be one set of tiles per map? or does it matter?

EDIT: on looking at yours again, i think mine doesnt look 'authentic' enough. im not really sure why i even did a house wen you have one. just having a good time with the palette and houses are where i always start hahaha. i guess let me know what style you prefer, and ill start working that way.

i am having a blast, as silly as that probably sounds. 4 colors is a lot of fun, and i love the smaller tile sizes.

[Mogri]

First of all -- and it really doesn't matter for your purposes, but it might be good to know -- the tiles are going to be imported as walkabouts. You can't actually use tiles as slices. However, we do use tiles as tiles, although they're representative. I have an ugly tileset that's only visible in the editor, which I use to represent the actual walkabout-based tiles that the game uses. You can do the representative tileset as well if you want.

Second, yes, you can use all four colors. You could also use transparency if you wanted to -- I'm not sure if the GB hardware supported it, but that's a technicality at this point.

Third, there's no technical restriction on the number of tilesets to be used, but in general, the fewer, the better, since each tileset represents 128 walkabouts we have to block out.

Finally: what are you thinking regarding layers? Currently, the script supports a background layer and an overlay layer, but not an intermediate background layer (think layer 0 and layer 2, even though that's not how it actually ends up working in this case). If you want that intermediate layer, I can easily add it in, but if you don't think it'll be useful, I won't bother.

[shakeyair]

oops i meant transparency within tiles. but you answered my question in a roundabout way. haha. to be somewhat faithful, i figure ill only use 3 colors on a tile that uses transparency.

is there a reason why you are using walkabouts rather than box borders? box borders are already 16x16, and each row could hold 16 tiles. seems to me, even if it did nothing besides help organization, it would be nicer.

i could send you a 16x256 pixel image, and the tiles on it could be imported as a set. this is assuming you are using all the different frames as different tiles?

oh, and one last thing then im good to go-- can the tiles animate/is that a feature you are planning on adding?

[Bob the Hamster]

... You can't actually use tiles as slices.

Actually, if you import them as backdrops, then you can load them as backdrop slices. Then you can attach the backdrop slice to a single-tile-sized container slice that is set to crop its children. Then by adjusting the x/y of the backdrop relative to the container, you change which tile is displayed.

You might expect this approach to be extremely slow, but actually the OHR does a good job of caching sprites, so there will only actually be one copy of the backdrop in memory, and the time to crop and paint it will only be slightly slower, probably not enough to worry about.

However, we do use tiles as tiles, although they're representative. I have an ugly tileset that's only visible in the editor,

I was wondering how this worked in the map editor. Cool.

[Mogri]

Actually, if you import them as backdrops, then you can load them as backdrop slices. Then you can attach the backdrop slice to a single-tile-sized container slice that is set to crop its children. Then by adjusting the x/y of the backdrop relative to the container, you change which tile is displayed.

You might expect this approach to be extremely slow, but actually the OHR does a good job of caching sprites, so there will only actually be one copy of the backdrop in memory, and the time to crop and paint it will only be slightly slower, probably not enough to worry about.

Interesting. Sounds like CSS's approach to spriting.

What's it do for transparency? I assume that since it's a backdrop, there's no transparency.

[Bob the Hamster]

What's it do for transparency? I assume that since it's a backdrop, there's no transparency.

Actually, backdrop slices do support transparency.

[shakeyair]

currently the lower half of the fence uses a 'middle layer,' but it doesn't need to at all. just fill in those tiles with the grass green and it will work just as well, except you won't be able to make it cross over the lighter green (short grass? sand? i dont even know but it looks good haha)

not so sure about all the roof support fancyness... i mean, im happy with how it looks but i dont know if it fits stylistically with the trees... and i like the trees a lot.

you might have noticed i have a tendency to get carried away with my own games, i get really excited about the graphics (especially the maptiles) and... never make any actual gameplay. so. i am having a blast doing this. i have been considering just offering myself up as an artist instead of doing anything else, but then i worry i would get stuck in a project i dont want to do. it is nice to work on something with confidence that it will be eventually finished, since you are someone who has a lot of finished things.

[Spoonweaver]

love it

but don't they need to be a different size?

[shakeyair]

please...


please. i was thinking maybe having a special tile or npc placed that tells the engine to make a large enemy sprite and cycle through the four frames.

it would go on this building on the right, which also can function as a lighthouse somewhere else (or if large animating things are too much work), i suppose.



also, complicated walls (ugly?). and rock walls will be a quick copy and paste.

On another note:

If it helps with making a story, here are some locations im interested in making:

A factory: Especially if Mogri lets me have my way with the large animating things. Some machinery would be a lot of fun to do.

A temple: a fancy one, but maybe overgrown? ruins, maybe, but those are hard to do well with tiles.

A mineshaft: only if it can have elevators. with gears that animate. if not... well i suppose i dont mind that much. haha.

A jungle.. also hard to do well with tiles. 99% of videogame forests look terrible, and we just accept it... but since im stylizing the trees( and i have some other ideas)... i want to try it.

EDIT: and more importantly, i guess: what else do we need for town 1? my todo list (here so i dont forget and get sidetracked and make a freakin windmill before i realize what im doing)

-windows
-sidewalk/gravel/stones
-signs (INN/SHOP/etc... how do you want these to be? what all kinds of shops will the game have?)
-bushes (tried one or twos styles, not happy with them)
-1 more small tree variety
-rocks

EDIT: cut the fat. added windows, gravel/stones.


mocked up:


clearly that building is ugly. but it shows off all available wall textures, and how they can be mixed and matched.

[Mogri]

Very nice stuff.

Are you interested in doing the map design, by any chance? Map composition is one of my least favorite things.

I need to put together a thread for everyone involved to discuss the direction of the game. For my part, the temple and mines sound great and easy to fit into almost any setting.

[shakeyair]

can you import/export maps now? if so, are there any outside programs which can make OHR maps?

i dont want to lay out dungeons, though, i find that very difficult.

[TMC]

Great graphics! A mix of slightly different styles, but nothing that you don't get used to immediately.

It's possible to create 3-layer tilemaps with TileEditor, but I can't recommend it. If someone has a suggestion for a generic map editor that's good and would actually be a good fit for the OHR, I could add import/export support for that program. I know SDHawk made the maps for one of his games using maped from ika/Verge/Sphere/whichever it was.

I got most of the way through adding importing/exporting of map layers (for moving them between games, as a convenience: you can already mostly do this manually) before deciding it would be best to wait until the switch to the new map file formats.

[shakeyair]

I have been using a program called Tiler for the mockups, its simple, clean, and easy to use.

[TMC]

You'll have to provide a link to it, because I can't find the program you mean.

However, for any map editor that's not really easy to support I'd really only want to spend time on it if it's one of the best/most popular: have to split the time between other projects like overhauling the OHR's map editor after all.