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Messages - StevenH
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Pixel Art / Re: [WIP]Isometric Game Mock Up
« on: April 02, 2008, 02:47:10 pm »
@Tocky:
The way I've seen iso tiles stored in the past is the way you have them in that pic, and sometimes I've seen them be stored in the following way:



And there's some other storage formats I've seen, where the images are stored as blocks of arbitrary shaped squares that match the rough idea of how the object looks in the 2.5D isometric world.

And as you said at the end of your post to the nay sayers, this is a weird way of doing things and looking at some of the challenges there has been weirder systems out there with the limitations.  If I was to do the engine in the normal DS / GBA ISO style it would be boring, and look like every other iso game out there, I'm going for a style here that means creative thinking is needed on the part of the graphics, so that you keep in mind the limitations of the system , and create an image that looks nice, but is looking like it was made up of tine single colour iso-cubes.

@all:
The engine I'm working on is currently version 1 - and I'm working on it at a paper level at the moment, so these mock ups are helping to shape the engine into something better.  One thing that I have on the feature list for version two is the ability to spin the scene around to look at it from 1 of 4 angles, as well as using that 165 colour palette i mentioned before (by alpha blending the edges of the internal pixels you can create smoother looking floor tiles I'll do a mock up in a moment that shows what I mean).

Another reason for doing the tiles this way is map editing - I don't need a complete iso map editor, i can just use a 2d map editor to put the floor layout down, and then using lookup tables apply a specific wall tile to the walls at run time, again increasing the time to develop new maps, as I don't need to worry about making the walls seamless at design time, as long as they look good at run time I'm happy.  Latter on I will do a proper level editor that allow you to select the wall for the area, but for now a 2d tile editor will do.

A quick mock up anim of what I mean about the smothing of the "pixels" in the next version of the engine (this will not be coded for a while yet)

I just spotted that I did not update that large iso tile clump one in the bottom left...

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Pixel Art / Re: [WIP]Isometric Game Mock Up
« on: April 02, 2008, 01:14:16 am »
Sorry for not getting back sooner to this thread, I'm at work at the moment, and was a little shocked at the number of replies in the short amount of time it's been open.

@fil_razorback:

Yes it's the bottom part of that screen that I wanted the crits done on, as for the shading, I agree there is none, but it's a limitation I'm living with until I get past the initial OMG I've got graphics to do...

@tehwexxl0rz:

Yeah I will be using a light source, probably top middle right (75% across the screen from the left), but I need to get the basic shape sorted first, which was the original idea of the tiles, but since I only really re-started this project yesterday, I am not expecting a masterpiece from day one, but something I can work towards over time.

@Dusty:

I drew the tiles, and want them to look good in both 2D (so that I can get better at 2D pixeling) as well as the iso output (using the engine output) at the moment everything I've uploaded has been done in 100% Paint Shop Pro XI, or GIMP (when I've got time during my breaks on my laptop).  I'm also a programmer so my tiles are currently what a pixel-blind person would do, I want and know I can get better, but I would like to get started on the pixels and get better at it, than sit around at home / work and say I *could* do that, if I had the time...

@Myran:
The restrictions I listed are like that for a reason - memory on the DS is not just a 4MB lump, it's split into segments for the video (2D, 3D, tiles, etc) and sound system, and every byte saved is an extra byte that can be handed over to the sound or video system.  The graphics engine that I am looking at is a pure software engine and is not using any of the DS's hardware to assist in the display of the tiles, thus I need it to be very space and processor efficient, if the graphics engine is taking 75% of the frame to draw a screen, then the game logic and creature AI have very little time to work with (DS is fixed @ 60 fps, and thus games need to run as efficiently as possible on it).  This is only the first generation of the game engine, I already have plans for the next generation, which is one of the reasons for the 16 colour limit - the 16 colour generic palette that Arne provided has 159 50% alpha colours, this is still less that the 256 colour limit of the DS's frame buffer mode (there is a 15bit mode, but that mode is too memory hungry for me).  As I say to people at work, there is method in my madness for this project.

@Sabata:
Those iso tiles were done by hand in PSP, but they have been done using the same graphic logic as the engine I'm writing.

The base iso tile I'm using is not the same as any of the iso tutorials for pixel artist - 2 pixel top / 3 pixel top - it uses 4 pixels at the top and bottom, and has a 2 pixel point at the sides:

Code: [Select]
----0000----
--00000000--
000000000000
--00000000--
----0000----

If you reduce that tile down by one row / column until your left with one "sub-iso tile" you will see that it's a line of 4 pixels, this is the basis of the engine I'm using.

Take the tile graphic:

Code: [Select]
12
34

this is then displayed as:

Code: [Select]
----1111----
--33332222--
----4444----

Hope that helps explain what my engine is doing at runtime.

@ndchristie:
OK if that's not a good first attempt at this, then I must be really bad at working on pixeling stuff... I'll have a look and see if I can work out what you actually did there, apart of make my head spin and kick itself about 30 times...
I think I may have to blow up that image you did and study it - I think my attempt looks like a crack in concrete, and yours looks like an oil painting on the floor, I see I still have a few things to learn about pixeling, including shading.

@cave: (just caught this as I was typing this reply)
The point is I can store a tile in 16 bytes of memory, as opposed to the 512 (assuming that I'm storing 256 colour image) and wasting 50% of the space in un-needed dead-space pixels, the amount of space used goes to 1024 bytes for one tile if I'm using 16 bit colour data.  Also I'm British and as per most history when it comes to computers, we can't afford lots of memory (look up the story of the first spreadsheet for the PC that ran only on PC's with 640kb of ram, when most PC's came with only a 512kb ram)  :D

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Pixel Art / [WIP]Isometric Game Mock Up
« on: April 01, 2008, 06:28:53 pm »
First off, don't ban me because of the blatant Zelda Oracle of Time / Seasons intro dungeon tile rip, it's what I'm using in my current engine to test it out while I did some proper better tile graphics, I am working on some better tiles...

I think I better let you know the limitations on my game engine I'm working on (otherwise any crits may be useless)

1) Each tile is limited to 4 colours from a palette of 16 (any 4 colours can be used, and the first colour can be transparent, but not always)
2) Each tile is edited as an 8 x 8 pixel image (compressed into 16 bytes when stored in memory), but translated to an isometric tile when displayed
3) The output device is currently targeted as the DS, but I may work on a PC version as well (with the same limitations).

The 16 colour palette that I'm using is the generic one from the post by Arne.  I've been working on this engine off and on (mainly off) for a while now (there's a test engine on my PC that was originally written to work in DirectDraw 6!).  The main thing that was stopping me from continuing with the project, apart from lack of time, was the lack of good graphics, I've found that I've got some free time now between work and thought I'd attempt to get the graphics done, but my attempts have not been fruitful (so far I've re-ripped the graphics from Zelda and re-did a small section of the intro map / animation.  Now comes the fun part, actually doing my own graphic tiles, and well I need some serious help in making them look good - so I'm on my knees pleading here, help me  :noob:

So here's the 2 mock-ups I've got:

First the ripped tiles from Zelda that have been changed into iso tiles by hand in Paint Shop Pro into an iso scene using the same style output as my game engine:


No CnC on this one, it's a total rip, but it shows you what the walls should be like when I get around to the graphics

And here's the piece that I want some CnC on:

Again, please ignore the Zelda ripped stuff, it's still there as a reminder of how good those tiles look when rendered in my iso engine style.

Please be gentle, and any help or crtis given will be taken on board in the next version of the tiles...

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General Discussion / Re: Introductions
« on: April 01, 2008, 12:28:04 am »
Well I suppose I really should put my introduction in here after all I did do some CnC on an iso image yesterday...

I'm a total new guy / virgin when it comes to pixel pushing, I'm more of a programmer, which will be seen in my attempts at pixeling stuff.  My current pixeling level is programmer - i.e. nothing looks like anything, it's more of a blob of random colours thrown at the canvas in an effort to attempt to make something that works.  What I'm hoping from this walk into the world of the pixel pushing artists of the world is a higher ability to generate images, both 2D tiles / sprites and 3D texture maps.

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Pixel Art / Re: isometric
« on: March 31, 2008, 06:06:25 pm »
Hi, I'm not an expert in the isometric style you've gone for, I'm a follower of the 4 pixel top and bottom of an isometric diamond style which works great when coding, but I digress...

The big house is very good, one problem I see is that your not consistant with the edge line of the house, the sticky out slanted wall's edge is not the same as the rest of the house.  Other than that I can not see any major issues.

As for the little animated flashing light house, err the only thing I can see wrong is the base of the palms, but I think it's just a case of my prefered iso style to the one you have used.

I've just had another look at your big house, your defiantly mixing styloes, the floating H has some iso-artifacts at the bottom and is using the 3 pixel iso style, where as your house is using the 2 pixel style.

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