Some neat edits to make your caves nicer

[Avery]

So, you followed the How to Make Rounded Caves Walls-Tutorial or you already have some neat cave walls, but… huh. Just normal walls and basic default RTP-rocks is maybe not all you need to make your cave look nice, huh?

I am using the results of the mentioned tutorial and the RTP tiles as base to add some more things we might need to make our caves look even better!

1. “Surrounding Darkness” (I do this in Graphicsgale)

Something I loved about the old XP tilesets were the ceiling tiles with the darkness inside. It made you really feel how narrow the cave was, without giving the feeling as there was a huge plateau around the player.
Luckily, this is comparingly easy to create.

Since we are just going to edit the top tiles - copy all the top tiles.
Then add a second layer on top of that and use a pencil tool (one with hard edges) to draw in the dark area in the middle on the “basic“ top tile:

Make sure the dark parts loop and that the area roughly follows the structure of the stone. The width of the “crust” is up to you, it can be anything between a few pixels and nearly a whole tile. I like it roughly a half tile wide.

Now you have to smooth the edge where the edge is on top of the rock, here the whole part on the bottom tiles and some of the sideview parts by using some of the darker shades.

Now, for the remaining edge:

“Complete” the rocks by using the colors of the cave walls - if you have problems with the pixelating you can also edit these pieces directly out of the wall.
After some more time you end up with something like this:

To get the inside corners, map the shape you can see here on the right and fill in the corners with edits:

With these we can edit the top set we had before into this:

The transparent edges are in case you need to map some corners, as well as the tiny dark squares.
Now we just need the narrow parts:

Replace the middle parts with a tile of the dark color and remove the dark color on the top.

Now move the tiles as you can see in the picture.

Remove the dark color outside of the middle tile of the horizontal option and if you want make the crack reach into the edge parts a little (but don’t alter the middle part, it loops perfectly if you do it that way!)
And there you go!

1. “The Deep” (I do this in GIMP)

This is even simpler than the previous edit and you will see how practical this is. Again, the XP RTP has been the inspiration, as it offered the option to have your cave tiles fade into a deep void:

To get something like this, we need our middle part here, copied several times:

and on a second layer, we add this layer that has just the shade we already used for our “darkness” on the outside:

Then we create a third layer that is just a transition from white to black, with the top 3 tiles in our grid being all white. (I recommend using “set grid” to 48x48 and “show grid” so you can see where the borders of the tiles are)

Now use the “curve bend” from the “distort” options.

Make sure the middle part stays straight, as you want that to loop. Use the copy option to make sure top and bottom have the same shape. It does not have to be perfect, no worries.

Your result might look something like this. Fill in the blank corners at the bottom with black and then copy that and use it as a layer mask on your rock layer.

Merge them and add them to your sheet!

1. Slopes (I did it in Graphicsgale, but doing it in GIMP is as easy as in Graphicsgale)

So, you have that cave that no one has entered in years, but you somehow still want to be able to reach different layers?
Slopes are a neat and easy to make solution.

For a vertical slope you can mostly go with the “top” area of the tiles we made.
But somehow this looks odd, right?
That is because the light comes from the upper left in the RTP and the slope is tilted towards the player. Therefore it needs to be slightly darker than the normal floor/top tiles.

Use the box selection to make it slightly darker. I like to leave the top and bottom row untouched for a smoother and more natural edge.

Now I repeat that with a slightly smaller box selection - same width, different height.

And after 3 times, we have a neat slope that fits our map perfectly.

For sideways, things are nearly as simple as that.

Take the middle part from your “top” and erase what is left of the wall on the bottom.

now place them in two groups of 3 and use the “slope” feature to get… well, the slopes.
You can make them more or less steep of course, but they won’t tile that well then.

With some additional color adjustment we are already done.

As you can see, these are pretty steep, so you might use different angles for the ones your characters use to walk such a slope up. These could also be a feature, an area you cannot walk up, just slide down?

1. Water (done in GIMP, cause transparency!)

You can have animated water in your cave, but to be honest, most caves have static lakes instead of rushing rivers… which is good, cause these are easier to make!
First, you choose (or make) a water structure:

Then, recolor it to match your cave better and think about which wall options you have:

Left is the recolored water and the 4 tiles are the 4 wall options this set has.
So, I created a new layer in GIMP that has these wall tiles and as addition one of the stone pillars to see how we treat these special tiles. On top of that goes a layer filled with the water tile on 90% opacity:

Now remove everything that shall not be submerged by water: a nice curved rim for the water on the walls and the upper half of the pillar.

Add an empty layer on top of that and use two shades of lighter blue to draw a rough outline around everything that is nor submerged.

Set the opacity for that to something around 70%.
Now: remove the wall.

All results:

Now that we are done let us have a look how these might look like:

(not a picture perfect screen, more trying to fit all different options onto one map)

 

[ShadowDragon]

great tutorial as always, with some nice idea's.

alot of usefull tips that can apply to alot of ground, thank you again
for a detailed tutorial once again.

 

[StrawberryFlower]

I used the slope for my road! Ofc, I forgot which "side tiles" was using lol