Game & Map Screenshots 11

[Dororo]

I'm trying to deliver a space map set of tiles. Planets, colonies, ships and whatever else.
So far everything's good.
The designer should use a parallax background for the map lower layer (stars and other basic features), but considering how large such a map could become (and that's mean a jpg picture of over 2500*2000 for a playable map), I've thought of releasing some facility too, and allow the use of the map editor as usual.

Stars are easy, I've tried with just 12 tiles and you can create any starfield that look quite organic (no evident repetition effect). Paired with some extra big star tile the effect is nice.

Nebula "dust" it's hard instead. To avoid the space to be a large black hole, nebula dust is quite mandatory - it's a kinda colored fog in the background.


That's seems to be impossible to create with single tiles, even more with autotiles.

Problems are:

• a "moiree" effect, that's mean you can spot a texture that repeat itself for the entire area of the fog
• borders end to be obviously more squared than a natural fog

Mine solutions so far and they doesn't look correct to me:

• Releasing an uncanny number of edges, corners and central tiles to give an organic look (issue: seamless will be harder to accomplish not speaking the number of tiles)
• Creating large chunks of fog to align and mix up (issue: there's any memory advantage into doing that?!?!)

What would be the most efficient solution for that?

 

[mlogan]

@Dororo I merged your post with the Map & Screenshots thread. The Art, Literature, & Music forum is specifically for non-game making related stuff.

 

[Ophiucus Games]

@Ophiucus Games Your map is attractive, but I'm not sure that it quite works.

Do people build and live in such oddly shaped houses. Take the kitchen, for example, the right hand side. Because of the slanted angle, it would be virtually impossible to reach anything on the far end of the shelf, because of the amount of space you'd have to stretch over. It took me a while to work out what that was in the middle. Would people put such a huge bathroom (without door - doesn't anyone in that family want privacy, ever?) slap bang between the kitchen and the living room? And the bedroom at the front; of necessity a lot of wasted space between the bed and the wall.

You could legitimately argue that this is a stylistic choice, in which case, fair enough. There are, though, a couple of things which don't fall into that category.

If you compare the black circular shapes on the stove(?) next to the sink with the actual circular shape of the sink, you will see that you have 2 different perspectives. The sink looks correct to me, the hobs on the stove are too upright. The cupboard next to the stove is strangely shallow in depth. I don't see how it could hold a plate of that size. Would it not be the same depth as the halfheight cupboards? The flue pipe from the fire on the right presumably goes to the outside, as the wall is only one brick thick. I would expect to see something on the external side of that wall to indicate where the flue ends.

Thanks for the food for thought! Yes, I do need a door for the bathroom. It's a story point that the PC's grandmother moved into the ground floor as she was old and ill and had to move her bed down there to be near the bathroom...but anyway. Was gonna add a chimney on the exterior and forgot so thanks!

 

[cabfe]

@Dororo Since you never see the full image ingame, you can make it smaller and seamless. It'll look bigger than it really is, for a fraction of the size.
GIMP (and surely other programs) has a filter to make a picture seamless.

 

[Dororo]

@cabfe: thank you for your reply. I can surely add a parallax this way (the starting idea was exactly releasing a looping pic with seamless tiling). I was in hope to find a way to use A tiles for that instead, but evidently is a lost battle .

 

[Kes]

@Dororo Does it need to be a looping pic? When I need an image like that, what I do is make an image and then show it at e.g. 200% zoom or 300% or whatever so that in game it is large enough to cover the whole map. My approach is that life is too short to go round making multiple versions for different sized maps unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Tuomo L]

Small praying grounds, I'm looking for a feedback before I add any effects like color grading and such.

 

[grimf]

@ Tuoma L

Is this an ingame screenshot, or a shot of the entire map? if this is what the player is seeing:

I feel like there are way too many trees, maybe you could put in some empty spots to break the repetition? Also minor but, it's a little jarring for the pathway to be symetrical and than not symetical (the part with the bushes) there's also too much clutter on the ground. The lake I think is drawing too much attention and drawing the viewers eye away from the important parts (the village) it needs more balance composition wise. If this isn't an in game screenshot and it's zoomed in further during gameplay than I can see it working a lot better.

 

[Dororo]

@Kes : that's another good and practical idea, but it doesn't partain to me (I'll simply release the tileset - upscaling is an end user problem). Maybe I can hint people about.
Thank you!

 

[Kes]

@Tuomo L Your paths need some shift mapping. At the moment they have a grass gap between the end of the path and the doorways and steps - yet people don't hop over the last bit, they step on it.

Unless the water in the lake is both stunningly clear and quite shallow, it would not be possible to see all that underwater stuff.

The trees need to be broken up, even if it's zoomed in ingame, as such a solid block is uninteresting. I would suggest some irregular glades in there, together with a bit of irregularity on the edges. Having trees right on the very edge of the cliffs never works, imo, as there is no room for roots and it always looks like they are going to tip over. I'd move them away from the edge.

I also think that the builders would be unlikely to include ornamental trees next to the buildings when there are so many natural trees. Perhaps some flower beds would be better, as well as adding some visual variation.

The inn has no chimney, so unless it is unheated I would add one.

Your steps appear to be the same number of tiles as the cliff (difficult to be 100% sure in such a small scale) so that in effect it is a ladder rather than steps. They need to be at least one tile more. Maybe curve the ends of the cliff so that you can fit another tile in?

Given the way passabilities usually work with fences, I cannot see enough space in front of the statues for people to stand and pray before them.

 

[dreamfall887]

Spent the day making custom menu themes for my game using Galv's menu script. Tried to make sure the menu themes fit the characters colour schemes. I've never designed a menu before so this was a fun (and time-consuming!) experience.

Spoiler: Tia's Theme

Spoiler: Zoey's Theme

Spoiler: Ashley's Theme

Spoiler: Jasmine's Theme

 

[gabrieldiastche]

Spent the day making custom menu themes for my game using Galv's menu script. Tried to make sure the menu themes fit the characters colour schemes. I've never designed a menu before so this was a fun (and time-consuming!) experience.

Spoiler: Tia's Theme

Spoiler: Zoey's Theme

Spoiler: Ashley's Theme

Spoiler: Jasmine's Theme

OMG THIS IS SO COOOOOOOL!
I feelin love already, congrats!

 

[grimf]

@dreamfall887

Wow, these look awesome! Much better than the default menu.
UI completely baffles me so I don't feel like I can give any valuable feedback unfortunately. The only thing i'll say, and this is minor, but I always disliked the super sharp corners of the healthbars in RM, making them rounder I think might look nicer. I feel like closing the gap between the health bars and portraits might look nicer too? feels like there is a lot of empty space between them. I don't know, again UI is just not my forte at all so I would take this with a grain of salt. It looks nice as is too, so no need to change anything.

 

[Kes]

@dreamfall887 Well done with these!
I was struck, though, by how close to the actor's head the 'exp' term is. It looks rather squashed in. I'd have it a little further away. It also looks a bit squashed under the actor's name. Could the name and Lvl move up a little to allow exp to breathe a bit?

I would also end the coloured bar (is that the exp bar or something else? In which case, what's the black line?) end at the same point as the HP and MP bars; the same for the class. I think it would look neater than having them push beyond the others.

 

[dreamfall887]

@gabrieldiastche,

OMG THIS IS SO COOOOOOOL!
I feelin love already, congrats!

Thank you!

@grimf ,

I think i'll say, and this is minor, but I always disliked the super sharp corners of the healthbars in RM, making them rounder I think might look nicer. I feel like closing the gap between the health bars and portraits might look nicer too? Feels like there is a lot of empty space between them.

Thanks for the feedback, @grimf . I agree about the empty spaces between health bars and portraits. I may tweak their positions in the script to see if I can make it look better.

@Kes

I was struck, though, by how close to the actor's head the 'exp' term is. It looks rather squashed in. I'd have it a little further away. It also looks a bit squashed under the actor's name. Could the name and Lvl move up a little to allow exp to breathe a bit?

I would also end the coloured bar (is that the exp bar or something else? In which case, what's the black line?) end at the same point as the HP and MP bars; the same for the class. I think it would look neater than having them push beyond the others.

Thanks for the feedback, @Kes. The black line is the exp bar, when the character gains exp the bar start filling up and turns light blue like this:

Spoiler: Example

I agree about moving the Name and "LV" higher up, I'm definitely going to change that. I'll move the "EXP" higher as well (maybe above the exp bar) to see if that looks better as well.

 

[Ninjakillzu]

Here's something cool I thought up...Giant holographic animals! This area is still progress.

 

[KakonComp]

@Ninjakillzu I really like how the lion's looking; it's a cool idea for a more sci-fi oriented game. At first I thought the water with the fountain spouts were a lighting system above the player; that or the wing of a plane. Makes much more sense that it's water

I am still working on the map graphics, but here's a W.I.P. of a battle scene, with three differently colored peasants as enemies:


The main character is gonna be a blue slime that's also a blue mage, so any enemy attack on the slime will be learnable, which is why it can taunt.

 

[Ninjakillzu]

@Ninjakillzu I really like how the lion's looking; it's a cool idea for a more sci-fi oriented game. At first I thought the water with the fountain spouts were a lighting system above the player; that or the wing of a plane. Makes much more sense that it's water

I actually got rid of the water! It was too troublesome to get it to look right, and this helps with cutting down on the map events. The other animal is a Giraffe.

Animalia Exotica is supposed to be a zoo of sorts, where you can walk among different "climate zones" and view plants and holographic animals, since a lot of the real animals are extinct.

 

[Lorenze]

 

[Kes]

@Lorenze I like that map a lot. The only thing I wondered about was the timing of the head shaking. She does it for a while before she starts speaking (unless that's the effect of the loop) and during all the dialogue. I think it would have more impact if it began at "But...we have to keep going."

The map I'm currently working on, yet another town. This one appears to end abruptly at the top, because at this stage what you see is the only section that the party can visit.

It's more complicated mapping with these tiles than it looks because, as usual, the player can walk behind all the buildings. Because the map on its own looks a bit dreary, there is also a screen shot to show what the colours look like ingame.