Some fugly maptiles

Calehay · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 12:47 pm Post subject: Some fugly maptiles

I've been working on these maptiles for a few weeks now, and I've just come to the point where I think they look just awful. Is there anything I can do to improve them?

I haven't finished the grass on the bottom 2 outdoor ones.

I tried emulating what Tales of Phantasia does for the water, but I don't know if it's working at all.

Any comments?
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Calehay

Blue Pixel · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:06 pm Post subject:

the grass is good but the trees and water need improvement.
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Artimus Bena · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:20 pm Post subject:

The grass ain't bad. It does get a little busy in the variations, which ironically makes the grid stand out more. The trees are passable. The little ones anyhow. The big guy needs a little darker leaves, I think.

I would totally redo all the colors on the first pic's stones...

The table in the second pic needs to match the perspective established by the walkabout and walls and plants, etc. It looks out of place. Easiest way to do this is raise the closest side of the table a little bit, and extend the legs a little bit.

Not too bad with the water reflection, but unless you really study it, it's really confusing where the water level really is. The culprit is the brown used for the reflection. It looks too solid, and close to the brown used above. (it's water, not a mirror).

On the outside walls of buildings, there's no texture. And it's right in the middle of a world full of detail. Even if the wall is intended to be extremely flat, I'm pretty sure it'd have some sort of texture, at least to help it not stand out so much. Just a little bit. Even a few lighter\darker-shaded pixels would be great.

The floor in the last pic is really "griddy". What's with the really small pieces?

It would look a lot nicer if you drew them in diagnal pattern.

check out these floors from the eldardeen demo:

Hope I've been helpful, if I see anything else, I'll edit it in.
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The Wobbler · Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 2221

Battleblaze · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:28 pm Post subject:

I would tone soem of the grass variation down the range of green is too huge and overwhelms the rest of the map. Everyhting else is workable to me, expect the bricks, the bricks (on the first one) are terrible.
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Calehay · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:50 pm Post subject:

Hmm.. I tried texturing the houses at first, but what came out looked even worse then it just being blank. I'm not quite sure what approach to take, but I'll look into it.

I don't know, I think the tree is a little ambitious for me to do correctly right now. I'll try taking everything down before I do anything drastic. When I was originally making them, everything was much darker, but I felt that you couldn't see the individual leaves very well. Eh.. I'll play around with it.

I originally had the grass in a particular pattern that shifted by one as it went on, but I thought it looked really griddy as well. I'm not quite sure which one would be the lesser of two evils, or if I should just go back and use one tile for the whole place.

I'm noticing on this monitor that the stones are really, really bright. I originally meant for them to be darker.
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Calehay

Artimus Bena · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:04 pm Post subject:

It may help to simplify the grass. Trying to draw in every blade and leaf, etc. can be a major headache for the player.

Check out my tree too. It's a style choice, but you could try bundles like this.

Oh and figuring out exactly what the walls are really made of usually help in deciding how to texture it.
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Moogle1 · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:47 pm Post subject:

The first screenshot hurts my eyes, and also my soul. I know you've made the leaves lighter for contrast reasons but it looks awful. The yellow bricks are way too bright, too.

The trunk of your big tree is lighter on the outsides. This doesn't make sense. From which direction is the light coming? It should be lighter on the left or the right or the front but not the left AND the right.

The simplicity of the house tiles betrays the style of the other maptiles. It doesn't look bad, but it looks wrong next to the rest of the graphics. It's an easier style to pull off, though, so you might consider putting everything in the simplistic cartoonish style.

Finally, the T-shaped building has an impossible roof. Here is a bad diagram to illustrate:

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

Your dirt is the kind of thing Tsugumo warned about in his tutorial where you can accidentally make the dirt look higher than the grass, when it shouldn't be.
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Artimus Bena · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:16 pm Post subject:

Guest · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:21 am Post subject:

It's interesting you say that, because I thought I was doing the opposite. (The grass comes over the dirt, creating a fourth shadow on the dirt, but not a fourth shade on the grass, right?) It might seem that way because I still need to go through and finish creating the 4th shadow for all of the ways that I fit the maptiles together. I played around with the idea of removing the 4th shade from all of it, but I thought that would make it look flat and uninteresting.

It might also be beneficial to go over and make the grass look more like it is going over the grass in certain tiles.

Going back over the trees that I was inspired by, it seems that what the real problem (besides my lack of talent) is that my tree really isn't large enough to do what I want. Also, there's going to be palette problems if I stick with the original OHR palette, so it might be a good idea to reformulate it.

I can easily go back to the old old trees that I had in the first version of the set. Those were generally very easy to maintain, though I thought they looked a little boring.

Interestingly, no one has talked about the rim of the ponds. Does anyone find it a little plastic looking? It seemed to kind of bother me, but I really have no ideas on how to fix it.

I'm not quite sure how to do the texture on the houses. It's supposed to just be a plain painted smooth wall. Perhaps there's small bumps and grooves in places, but it would generally look smooth from a distance. I tried doing something like this, but it ended up looking like I just put it through a noise filter.

I originally played with the idea of creating wooden paneling throughout the house, but I couldn't create a pattern that pleased me. Perhaps I should have another go at it?

I didn't originally plan on having a cobblestone floor for the town center, but I thought that just having more dirt would get tiresome. The cobblestone is problematic in the way it fits together as well as its colors, so I will probably just replace it for something better. Perhaps one way to fix it would be to make the entire business district smaller, and then having nothing but dirt would be more acceptable. I guess the same thing could go for the park.

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

Calehay · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 8:39 pm Post subject:

Well, I guess this is just reinforcement to the fact that I shouldn't be making games.

I really don't see any of that.

I suppose the best course of action is to just do another set. I don't particularly want to do that because I've spent 3 weeks dealing with this one, but whatever.

Of course I'm generally unhappy with the way that everything has been turning out, so it might be a good idea to just scrap everything. It's not like it would actually be good enough to be released.
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Calehay

Artimus Bena · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:14 pm Post subject:

Calehay · Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:49 pm Post subject: