Harvest Moon Mockup

[crab2selout.png]

I'm in the mood for a little Harvest Moon, and I started making a little Harvest moon sprite using my avatar's base. From there I ended up with this little beaut. I'm quite proud of it, but I'd like to see what you guys think. I think I may need to make up another grass tile because of repetition.

In case you're wondering, the x pattern dirt tiles are supposed to be dry earth that's cracking.

[Q.K.]

Not bad, but Jack looks sort of fat. Better get him working in the fields 

Asides from Jack, everything else looks pretty nice! The grass might be a bit repetitive, but it's neat.

[Darien]

I really like the quirky look the sprite has.  And the tile itself is very nice, too.  The rocks and tree trunks I like the most.

However, I don't think the sprite fits the tileset.  I mean, the farmer is uniquely styled, but the tileset is sort of generic.  I'd want to see him in a cartoonish game that's not so plain and more vibrantly colored. 

[.TakaM]

looks very nice, i wanted to get into the gba harvest moon.. but i couldnt play it coz of its graphics..
I could definetly play this

[hawken]

looking nice!

You might want to tone down the outlines on the gardener chap there, how about some softer tones?

Also I have a suggestion for your tree trunks, I think they could do with sharpening up around the areas where they were cut. Also, make a difference from the inner wood and the bark. Wood is often much lighter than the bark.

The cracked ground gets it's message across, however it looks kinda staged. Might want to throw in a "cross over" set from normal earth to cracked.

[crab2selout.png]

Sprite and mockup updates:
-branch
-tree stump
-new +updated grass tiles
-redid the cracked earth tiles



QK: Updated the outliens to match the mockup's sprites and played around with the shading and outlines around the stomach to lose the gut. I'm a little sad to see it go, lol. Getting him much skinner is going to be difficult without having to give him bird legs


Darien: I tried Hawken's suggestion of using lighter outlines on the sprite. Do you think that the black I was using was causing the sprite to clash stylistically with the tileset, or do they still not fit together?

Hawken:Went with some lighter outlines and it looks like he fits in alot better now. I updated the tree trunk to give it a cleaner cut, like you said, as well as giving the inside a lighter colour. How does it look, as I might've make the bark a little too thin so that it looks like AA. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by the crossover tiles. Do you mean I should extend the transition from cracked to normal earth a couple pixels more? I ended up trying the to redo them, this time with an 8x8 diamond instead of a 16x16 diamond. It still has an orderly look to it since it's basically a repeating pattern, but so far my attempts to make something a little more random or disorderly have been pretty big failures. I'll keep trying though.

[Ryumaru]

maybe adding smaller lighter cracks that branch out of the almost diamondish pattern would help.

btw, fuckin loving these tiles.

[Darien]

Hmm... yeah, I think it does fit better in the tileset now, but honestly I was hoping you'd change the tileset to match the sprite (I've got a soft spot for black outlines).  I also meant in terms of the character's proportion and structure.  I prefer the fatty version, too, by the way.

I was thinking about this and I couldn't pinpoint what was bothering me, so I messed around with the image's colors a bit.  I hope you don't mind.

(Oh yeah, everything you updated in the picture were great steps in the right direction)

My edit:   yours: 

I just increased the contrast and yellowed many of the lighter shades a bit.  I may have overdone it, but I think it gets my point across.

You had these lush tiles (especially grass) but the lack of contrast muddled them.  Also the sprite has a nice cartoony feel, and the extra contrast also conveys that feeling. 

Some other small things:  I don't like the hoed dirt tile at all, and the young tomatoes could be improved, too, I think.

Eh, I guess I could have just said "more contrast," but oh well...

[Xion]

Hey Darien, I agree with the contrast in the grass and the tomatoes needing work, but I very much dislike that yellow dirt. It gives the whole screen too cool of a hue. With the orangish dirt, the hues were evenly balanced - not too warm, not too cool, see?

As for Crab's edit, It's wonderful! The cracked earth looks much better, as do the tree stumps. I don't like the second Jack edit, though. It makes his lengthy arms much too obvious and his shoulders look too broad.
It would be cool if, in the game, you could get out of shape if you didn't work enough or ate too much. Then you'd move much slower and lose stamina more quickly. You could be either fat, skinny, or fit.

Anyhow, ya done one of my favorite series' much justice. It makes me smile.

[Darien]

Right.  As I said, I may have overdone it.

[Hyptosis]

Very nice stuff, too bad it isn't easy to make fun games like harvest moon, I'd love to do something like that. =D Or better yet some kind of online game with fun art like this! I'd play it all day long. =P

[crab2selout.png]

Another updates. Some of the changes this time around:
-more contrasted palette(hope you don't mind Darien, but I really like the orange soil, so I tried to keep the colour preserved)

-little changes to the weed, rock, stump, and cracked earth tiles. The changes on the grass and stump were to make them tile better. The stump now uses 15x15 of the 16x16 area so that if a stump tile lies adjacent to another tree tile, none of the pixels rub together. The grass had one length of grass that connected to the tile beside it, take a look at the past version to see it.

-redid the tomato to fit in with the outlined style.

-small changes to the base sprite to improve the look of the skinny version. I think I'm going to stick with the fat version from her on. I don't know why, but I love looking at that big ol' gut.

-turned earth tile changes

-made some other changes I can't think of right now.




Darien: Tried to apply your crits. I've made a couple different turned earth(TE) tiles for you to look at. What direction do you want to see the TE tile go in? Do you want something that looks much cleaner, or would you rather see a more messy and disorganised dirt clump. I kinda like the TE tile in the middle of the bottom row, the ones beside the 2x2 cracked earth.

Thanks for all the C&C so far, guys.

[Lick]

Great piece, it's getting prettier and prettier. I wish I played Harvest Moon, hehe. You're mockup really juices up that thought.

There's something strange about the rocks though (especially th big one), they seem to shiny for rocks. And where the other tiles are seen from (almost-)above perspective, the rocks are viewed more from the side. That multiple perspectiveness is a mock-up killer, y'know.

[crab2selout.png]

Great piece, it's getting prettier and prettier. I wish I played Harvest Moon, hehe. You're mockup really juices up that thought.

There's something strange about the rocks though (especially th big one), they seem to shiny for rocks. And where the other tiles are seen from (almost-)above perspective, the rocks are viewed more from the side. That multiple perspectiveness is a mock-up killer, y'know.

eep, I was thinking about the perspective at the start but must have gotten distracted or something. Here's an update plus I tried messing around with the tomatoes again..

I was addressing  it to Darien last time, but I'd like anyone's comments on which direction to head with the turned earth tile.

[hawken]

looking good! Time to get the tiles into multimap?

[Darien]

Yeah, I think you made the right call with the dirt. 

For the turned earth, I'm leaning toward that bottom one, too. I'm finding it hard to think of how I think it should be. I can't recall how they did it in the original Harvest Moon, maybe that could spark some ideas?  But the bottom one, I think, would work.  It's just... everything else is very clear and defined, but with that turned soil they just seems like vague blocks of darker dirt, you know what I mean?  It just doesn't seem to fit with the rest.

All the updates look great, too.  Especially the new rocks.

[Dhaos]

You seem to be working very hard on this, so I decided to to a grass-edit for you. Most newer games do not use one tile grass anymore, they usually use 2-4 (seiken densetsu 3 used 2 different grass tiles for example). I personally enjoy using 3-4 if I'm able to. Anyways here's two examples of grass: a clear version and a 'bushy' version.

simple:



bushy:

Here's a few things to keep in mind:
-99% of decent pixel grass follows the same 6 shapes/types of grass-blades (see if you can find them in my edits)
-every pixel of a tile does not need to be filled
-grass is never a perfect pattern unless its cultured/groomed/mowed
-multiple tiles lets grass look more natural and wild
-grass tiles are design to 'tile' only once (you create tile patterns using several tiles)
-ground tiles in general look better when they have smooth transitions (the grass gets tall then shorter)
-high contrast grass is *bad* it overpowers the picture because grass tends to take up the largest space

Also I realize my edits my be too detailed for what you're doing, but it should give you some ideas on how to improve your grass. (and of couse you can ignore all this because you didn't want your grass to be like that =P)

[Lick]

That's great grass you have in your edit, Dhaos. Amazing. Looks really good.

[reydragk]

@Daos:  I don't much like the first edit you did, but the second one is awesome.  I definitely agree on the idea of having transition tiles too, looks much better

[hawken]

what size are the tiles?

most games use 8x8px and then make 16x16px groups in the editor.

if you're planning on 4 16x16px grass tiles, that's 16 8x8px tiles, which could lead to some great variations if you have the time and patience for mapping.

[crab2selout.png]

-99% of decent pixel grass follows the same 6 shapes/types of grass-blades (see if you can find them in my edits)
-every pixel of a tile does not need to be filled
-grass is never a perfect pattern unless its cultured/groomed/mowed
-multiple tiles lets grass look more natural and wild
-grass tiles are design to 'tile' only once (you create tile patterns using several tiles)
-ground tiles in general look better when they have smooth transitions (the grass gets tall then shorter)
-high contrast grass is *bad* it overpowers the picture because grass tends to take up the largest space

Your post was incredibly helpful, Dhaos, especially the ones above. This gave me one of theose lightning bolt moments, sort of how I felt whenever I saw this Pixelation post by Sals on animation principles. I'm still experimenting on the grass, so it might be another day or two before I get something working that I works with the other tiles. I'm just making a post so you don't think I'm ignoring you as it was very enlightening for me.

[Zolthorg]

Just remember to keep that style you have crab, bushy grass.

Not every game is seiken densetsu 3.









(that was my latest experiment with tiles)

I do conded you pointed out many things that i should work on myself Dhaos

[crab2selout.png]

Wow! Two months already? Er, to explain, I wasn't satisfied with what I was making and I guess I needed some time to figure out what the problem was. So, some time passed and I started redoing some tiles recently and thisis the result. I'm not doing this to get some more crits as I've gotten quite a bit of great advice from the topic already. I need to practice more than get crits at this point. Mainly reviving this topic as I said I would deliver one more update and because of all the great pixel tips and advice I got here I don't want to go back on my word.

Sorry to all the colour restrictionist. I admit that there are a lot of similar colours I could get rid of(partly because I pasted some of the things like the sprite and animals). I'll probably end up replacing the tree eventually, too.

[Akira]

Ack! lovely. One of the loveliest HM's i've seen in a long time. everything meshes together well. only problem i can see with it is the tomato plants look a little off. hard to say what though. makes me want to become a farmer

[Dhaos]

You really spiced things up alot. Great work, the plants look much better this time. The new sprites are great too. I think the tree could use some work though, its somewhat plasticy. Try making more individual leaf groups (more roundish fuzzy shapes basically). Heh, those stumps are hawt though XD! Glad to see improvement here, keep it up =)

[ndchristie]

very nice, i tihnk i liked your old dirt a lot better though, this new dirt seems a bit too plain and smooth.  Either way, i love this series and what you have here rocks like woah

[sonic_reaper]

The style is getting me all hot and bothered with everything being so silky sexy smooth.  The one thing though ... the color of the dirt is kinda making my eyes bleed.  And the cows look hilariously deformed (in a good way).

[Darien]

This new one is really great, crab.  I love the cows and the new farmer sprite.  I like the tree, too, but if you feel you need to replace it I'm looking forward to the new one.  The dirt does seem a little oversaturated to me, and I do agree with the Akira in the the tomatos seems off.  Great work.