Attempting maptiles for the first time in a long time

[the drizzle]

Is that a little better. I made a bunch of minor changes and added eye candy.

[Mogri]

Yeah, I like that a lot better. The flavor tiles are great.

The clothesline with the yellow thing (towel?) doesn't appear to be attached on the right side, but this is ignorable in a mockup. The biggest problem with the tiles now is that there's too much street.

[Mazin]

The clotheslines are a great idea! They make the place look much more alive.

I don't care for the brown tiles along the bottom and sides of the houses though. They don't really look like part of the house to me, but I'm not sure why.

[the drizzle]

The biggest problem with the tiles now is that there's too much street.

I don't want to add grass or sidewalk because I want it to be a very old city that's really far into it's development, but not ultra-modernized. Would very narrow streets be enough to lessen the overwhelming amount of road?

I don't care for the brown tiles along the bottom and sides of the houses though. They don't really look like part of the house to me, but I'm not sure why.

I agree with you to be completely honest. I just haven't thought of a better way to show the edges of the buildings yet.

The clotheslines are a great idea! They make the place look much more alive.

Thanks. One of my biggest goals with these cities is to make sure they look and feel like people actually live there, which I think is lacking in most rpgs. I want to make these cities big and pretty interactive, but that makes it tougher and more time-consuming to execute. For this reason, I think I'll make 3 cities max for my game. One problem with this is finding ways to incorporate battles with so few places to travel between. Any suggestions for that?

[the drizzle]

Changed the building edges, added shadows, stairs, balconies, chimneys. (Ignore the left most column of tiles.)

Mostly, I just want to know if the building edges are better.

[Pepsi Ranger]

I don't want to add grass or sidewalk because I want it to be a very old city that's really far into it's development, but not ultra-modernized. Would very narrow streets be enough to lessen the overwhelming amount of road?

Well, you gotta figure that most older cities are packed in, as in, the streets are narrow anyway. So narrowing them would make them more realistic.

You could also have a channel running through the middle to keep things tighter.

And though you may forsake the sidewalks and grass, you still need trees, as even the oldest cities have those dotting the avenues. And like I said in the Castle Paradox thread, adding some trash will make your city looked lived in and simultaneously reduce the monotony of the street.

Thanks. One of my biggest goals with these cities is to make sure they look and feel like people actually live there, which I think is lacking in most rpgs. I want to make these cities big and pretty interactive, but that makes it tougher and more time-consuming to execute. For this reason, I think I'll make 3 cities max for my game. One problem with this is finding ways to incorporate battles with so few places to travel between. Any suggestions for that?

The denser a city gets, the more likely crime will escalate within its walls. You could always have random muggings in seedier/desperate areas and bandits lurking in the outskirts. You could also offer locations that attract hostility like bars and gambling dens, as examples. And if you want "safe zones" within city limits, you could always make the towns into multi-maps, where some maps are crime-free and others aren't (with fair warning from the signs or architecture that the hero must watch where he treads in certain places).

Hope that gives you some ideas.

[the drizzle]

Not tooooo much new here. Added walkways on the buildings, streetlamps, new hand rails for steps. Getting closer to finalizing this so I can start designing this city. So please feel free to rip into anything you don't like about anything. (For one thing, there's a good chance I'll change the color of that gray tile on the roof walkway).

Also, any ideas for breathing some more life into this city? The city is meant to be sort of gloomy but it should still feel lived in. One thing I'll almost surely do is add steam coming out of some of the roof pipes, but I can't think of much else off the top of my head. (Note: the people of this city are a lot more proper and more private than the other city. They wouldn't do something like hang laundry out their windows.)

[Uncommon]

This is coming along really nicely! The only thing I'd suggest is that the brown on the leftmost house is a little close to the green on the ground, the green shadows in particular.
About the only thing I can think of to make it more alive is, well, people.

[Calehay]

The pipes on the chimney and the street lamps look as if we're looking at them straight on. Also, if you consider the size of walkabouts, the lamps are extremely large. You might want to shrink them.