Game-related pixels thread/critique

So, reading the fairly nice tutorial on rock graphics in this month's Hamsterspeak, and I have some questions. Figured I'd make a thread for them, and about maptile-y graphics in general. (Since the other pixel thread is explicitly not for games)



I'm a little confused as to how you decide where to put the darker shades for rock textures. Just throwing them on randomly gives it a polka-dot gray look.

More generally, my water is fairly bad-looking, and that sign needs some work, but I'm not sure what to do with them.

So yeah, queries all around.

i'd be happy to offer some advice but your image is actually pretty blurry since it is saved in jpg format. try resaving the image as a bmp file and posting it. that way i can see the specific pixels and help you improve them.

---

!!!

WHOOPS.

Photobucket auto-converts, I guess. One second.



Here it is in .png format.

I think the crack with red shading works better. The crack in the ground is on a smooth surface because I don't know where to apply shading.

Depending on what hes using to host the image, PNG might be a better choice, bmps can be blurry too.

and dont worry about posting the wrong kinda graphics somewhere, im pretty sure as long as your posting something well be fine with it ;)

---

Blip.

With everything OHR related, PNGs are the way to go.

They're pretty much eps files for pictures with fewer than the 256 colors or whatever it is.

I realized that after making slime avatars for here. My Captain Falcon one i did before was a gif and looked terrible, but the png preserves the image quality so long as the palette isn't so huge.

I saved as .bmp, but photobucket disagreed. It's a PNG, now, which is the best format for sprites (provided you're not using an old comp that can't read them)

ok so i googled some screenshots from Chrono Trigger to find a nice stone of inspiration, and here it is:



just a pretty ordinary rock, but it looks nice. you can see that they used very little dithering, only really to show a few imperfections on the surface of the rock. they also added some grass coming up over the rock and some darker green around the perimeter of the rock to make it look nestled up in the grass rather than looking clearly just drawn on top of the grass tile.

i edited your stone some to give you an idea of how to take what you had previously (more 2D) and make it look a little more multidemsional without actually being multidimensional.



but after looking at my stone, it really could probably use one more shade darker along the perimeter to make it look just a bit more rounded. hope this helps!

---

!!!

Alright. Applied some of that to the brick wall, and added a new crack tile to try and weaken the grid. I'm really happy with that wall, and the tutorial is to thank for it.



I think the sign can be saved if I change the colors on it, but that water looks atrocious. The "border" of the water is obvious, but that's relatively easy to fix. The water itself is a mess, though.



We're all learning together, then, at least.

After seeing it all laid out, I really like your grass tiles. They look really good dude.

The sign, I would consider trying something completely different, it looks very weak. The brick wall looks great.

It's a totally different style from what I do, so I can't exactly say what I'd do, since my graphics are bright and cartoon-ish. But really, great job so far. You're on your way dude.

I suggest making the bricks all the same size since that's how they really are. and perhaps outlining the sign, or giving it a shadow or both or something, because I'm just not feeling it.

Also, your water looks like you just colored the grass tile blue. I suggest rethinking the water completely. More white! ...and more circular patterns!



EDIT: I love the fact that your game is currently named "Rename"

well first of all edited four times??? i think the water and grass tiles look fine. they look pretty different if you pay attention to the shapes in the water and the shapes in the grass. pretty different in my opinion.

however i do agree that making all the bricks in the wall the same size, i think you should go out and buy some different sized bricks and build a wall with it. you would be surprised what would happen. but all the same size is what i think.

thats my 2 cents for swine flu

I did the grass months ago, and haven't sprited since. It shows, I'm afraid.




I drew the water the way I used to draw grass, which is probably why that impression came across. I'm going to have to scrap that water and think about it different. *Searches for water tutorials*



I actually like the look, but upon closer inspection, it doesn't tile well. I'll remake that.

for some reason i thought this thread was started by red...

http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue10/cartography/Cartography.html

Thanks for another useful post from GBA.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I like that your bricks aren't all the same size, regardless of whether real bricks could actually work like that, as it takes away from the monotony of tiles.

Your tiles are pretty good, but they suffer a general lack of contrast.
With a palette this dark and saturated, it's pretty difficult to pick apart colors that are too similar.

Keep it up!

---

♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪