Size problems

[warriorsdogs]

Despite doing art, I am still new to pixel art and I am having a serious problem understanding which size is better for a pixel art, I imagine that there isn't a direct answer for that but so far I havent found any response that could give me a more clear direction

So I am just posting this:



Do you think that this size for pixel art is good? Does the house looks way too big and the character small? Any tips where I could know how many tiles should something have?

By the way, I am using RPG maker MV's default resolution.

 

[TheoAllen]

Remember that in RM maps, there're representative. It doesn't resemble the actual map, so as long as it represents enough on what you want to convey, it's usually enough. Some people might draw their own rule like the building should be 2 tiles high, and the door is either one or 1.5 tiles tall. So in my opinion, all that matters are consistency.

Now, to answer your question, yes, I think it's okay.

 

[Sauteed_Onion]

Well, the BIGGEST thing with art that I've noticed is "consistency". Take for instance, Ultima Online in the Classic Client.. The game is ageless to me, in that it's just old school pixel art.

They SEMI recently put some new art in there, that does not match at all, and the art they put in is actually really good. Like TOO good comparatively for it to seem right. In particular I'm speaking of a horse art they put in there, that looks beautiful, modern games have nothing on that horse's quality/look. Like somebody REALLY wanted to make a beautiful horse and put it in Ultima Online and they did. It matches absolutely nothing else. So I didn't ride that horse.

Does that look good to me? Yes, but if you're going to go with that style, don't do an Ultima Online horse and switch. Or bait and switch.

 

[Kes]

Art is not a 'mechanic' as such so this isn't the correct forum for this.

[move]Resource Support[/move]

 

[Sharm]

The scale seems good for just "does this look pretty" but there are some issues you're already running into that are worth considering.

Tiles work best when you keep the grid in mind. Right now, your house looks great but doesn't have repeatable tiles, so that means that to recreate the house in the game you would have to have a unique tile for nearly every tile that house takes up! You probably would have a hard time reusing any of it to make a new structure, too, so adding variety would add loads more tiles. . . . Since you're using pixel art and tiles, you should try to find places where you can repeat things, then work the edges to fit the middle pattern after that. With the structure, do you want to use autotiles for the walls at all? What angle do you need the slant of the roof to be so that you can still make a larger or smaller roof with the tiles you have? Could you change the windows a bit and only need one extra tile to make it wide? This stuff does, unfortunately, make designs a bit more rigid, but if you're clever people won't notice.

The other thing to consider is that the bigger you do pixel art, the more time it takes for each bit. If your intended art style is going to be very simple, this won't be too much of a problem, but if you're going complex, this is going to get to be a lot of work, very, very quickly. Personally, I think working at 48x48 is way too big, I don't go above 32x32 for tile size. This is just tile size, single objects can go above that certainly.

Since you seem to be making something for MV, there are two ways to do it and still work smaller than you are, both involve faking the smaller tile size by scaling up the tiles when you're done drawing. One is to work at 16x16. Each tile works up fast, it's the tile size used by most classic pixel RPG's (lots of references), and it's able to also be used in all the makers. Even 2k/3. Disadvantage is that it doesn't have a lot of room to work in if you want some details, and it makes icons awkward. The icons are 32x32 in MV, which doesn't divide evenly into thirds the way 48x48 does, so it's not really ever going to be pixel perfect to use icons, and you have to have icons that are only 10x10. There are ways around this, but it's something to consider. The second way is to work at 24x24. This size allows you more details than 16x16 but still works up 4x faster than 48x48, plus it doesn't mess up icons at all. It's not used much, though, so finding tiles or icons if you don't want to make everything is more difficult, plus it can't be used in any of the other PC makers. For a nice example of these things, there's the POP tiles for 16x16, and I believe FES is 24x24.

I can tell you're not new to art, that's a lovely start!

 

[warriorsdogs]

The scale seems good for just "does this look pretty" but there are some issues you're already running into that are worth considering.

Tiles work best when you keep the grid in mind. Right now, your house looks great but doesn't have repeatable tiles, so that means that to recreate the house in the game you would have to have a unique tile for nearly every tile that house takes up! You probably would have a hard time reusing any of it to make a new structure, too, so adding variety would add loads more tiles. . . . Since you're using pixel art and tiles, you should try to find places where you can repeat things, then work the edges to fit the middle pattern after that. With the structure, do you want to use autotiles for the walls at all? What angle do you need the slant of the roof to be so that you can still make a larger or smaller roof with the tiles you have? Could you change the windows a bit and only need one extra tile to make it wide? This stuff does, unfortunately, make designs a bit more rigid, but if you're clever people won't notice.

The other thing to consider is that the bigger you do pixel art, the more time it takes for each bit. If your intended art style is going to be very simple, this won't be too much of a problem, but if you're going complex, this is going to get to be a lot of work, very, very quickly. Personally, I think working at 48x48 is way too big, I don't go above 32x32 for tile size. This is just tile size, single objects can go above that certainly.

Since you seem to be making something for MV, there are two ways to do it and still work smaller than you are, both involve faking the smaller tile size by scaling up the tiles when you're done drawing. One is to work at 16x16. Each tile works up fast, it's the tile size used by most classic pixel RPG's (lots of references), and it's able to also be used in all the makers. Even 2k/3. Disadvantage is that it doesn't have a lot of room to work in if you want some details, and it makes icons awkward. The icons are 32x32 in MV, which doesn't divide evenly into thirds the way 48x48 does, so it's not really ever going to be pixel perfect to use icons, and you have to have icons that are only 10x10. There are ways around this, but it's something to consider. The second way is to work at 24x24. This size allows you more details than 16x16 but still works up 4x faster than 48x48, plus it doesn't mess up icons at all. It's not used much, though, so finding tiles or icons if you don't want to make everything is more difficult, plus it can't be used in any of the other PC makers. For a nice example of these things, there's the POP tiles for 16x16, and I believe FES is 24x24.

I can tell you're not new to art, that's a lovely start!

Oh my god, thank you so much, I think I am finally starting to understand things now regarding tiles and you are right, I should think in designs that allow repeating them myself. Is there anything such as "recommended number of unique tiles"?
By the way, what do you think of this artstyle? I did it out of tiles knowledge purely as some mockup, is it too complex to work big?



I wonder if parallax mapping would be better in my case, only leaving space for interative tiles?

 

[Sharm]

You're welcome! I'm glad I can help.

Hmm, I wouldn't say that there is a recommended number. A lot of it depends on other decisions you'll be making. Making tiles is a bit like doing a bunch of work upfront so that things are less work down the road. This means that if you're doing a small scale game, only a few locations, not very big maps, then worrying about tiles would probably be more trouble than it's worth, and having a lot of unique things won't be any harder than making tiles. However, if you have big maps or lots of locations, then breaking things down into lego pieces will be very much worth it, and make everything faster.

There is an upper limit when working in RPG Maker. VX, Ace and MV all have a limit of 4 B-E sheets, each with a limit of 256 tiles (except B, you can't use the upper left corner tile, so it has 255 available). There's also the A tiles, but putting unique stuff in there gets a little complicated. The A sheets all have different rules that govern how they get placed on a map, and the only ones that work like other tiles are the ones in the A5 sheet. They're always at the bottom, so it's not the place for anything needing transparency. For Ace and MV you can also have different tilesets for different maps. VX is trickier, I believe it's only one set for the whole game, so you have to choose carefully what's on it. XP doesn't have a limit, since you can just make the sheets longer (there's a lot to love with XP's mapping), but the longer it gets the slower your game is. 2k and 2k3 have one sheet per map, the sheets are tiny, and they have rules for what the different sections on the sheet do. I'm not very familiar with 2k/3 yet, so I don't know a lot about how it works. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that while you do have a lot of freedom to use a lot of unique tiles, if you're making a big diverse map you can actually run out of room for everything you need.

There are some alternatives, though, that can free you up quite a bit. There's parallax mapping, where you give up on tiles completely and just make a picture as your map. There are tutorials kicking around for learning how to do that. It's not my thing, but there are others who adore it. Parallax mapping does take up more memory than tiles do, by a significant amount. It's not a big deal if your game is small, but if you have a lot of unique places your players might get upset by how much room your game takes up on their computer. There's also alternative mapping solutions like TileD and Grid Free Doodads, where a plugin/script circumvents the normal mapping and lets you do it a different way.

I like your picture, it's dynamic and interesting, and the space it takes up on screen makes it feel more personal. It reminds me a lot of the old Adventure Games. Too big or too small will depend a lot on your choices, again. If it's a big or small game, if you're going to add in a lot of texture/detail or keep it simple like it is now, stuff like that. If this is the entire map, then you won't have any trouble fitting everything onto sheets.

Pixel art, as an art style, is all about precision. The look of something can change drastically with a change of only one pixel so a lot of care goes in to placing every single pixel. The cool thing is, because of that precision, pixel art can be really sharp and clear even when showing something tiny, unlike raster art where going small means it's too blurry to understand. It's also really great for recoloring. Anyway, that's why bigger scenes aren't recommended, putting that much effort into a whole screen's worth of details can be very exhausting. You might burn out before you get far in game creation. If the style is simple, well, there's not a lot of precision needed for 90% flat colors. A simple style can make it easy enough that going big won't be too much. If you're going to make things complicated with textures and details, then going big becomes a huge amount of work.

For me, I like to be very limited on the tiles I need, making them usable in as many places as possible. No tile is unique, but by placing things differently and using alternative tiles to add variety, I can get some beautiful, almost unnoticeably tiled maps. Doing it this way allows me to make a ton of interesting locations without driving myself crazy with how much work I need to do. Adding a new location is as simple as mapping it. I'm not saying you should do it my way, just wanted to give you more information, make it easier to decide what would be the best for you.

I hope this long winded ramble about tiles helps you come to your own conclusion about if you want to do mostly unique tiles or not. I look forward to seeing what you decide to do and the pretty results of your decision.

 

[Weremole]

One of my favorite SNES era tiling tricks is that the desert and snowscape locations in Seiken Densetsu 3 use the same tileset with different colors and a few props. If you plan a bit you can get away with some crazy time saving stuff.