I understand you point, I agreed that there was to much light part that catches the eye, so I tuned it down. I worked on the sprite sheets and remade all the stone to fit my limitations, then assembled the level from the screenshot in engine. Here is a screenshot from the game, it still lacks backgrounds tiles, it's next on my todo list. I could differentiate those tiles with the dark area by making a palette derived from the rock one, but going down a lot on the saturation.



As a base to expand upon, I'm pretty happy with the result. The multiple tiles and shade variations offers a lot of granularity on the level of detail I can achieve, even with two basic sheets. The new Game Maker 2 layer function is practically a miracle from heaven!

What do you think of the palette and general feeling?

You are right eishiya, form will also be a huge factor, organic Vs artificial rectangular blocks. It's meant to be made of vessels, tubes, some kind of placenta. Pretty close to the War of the World stuff I guess.

Right now I face a dilemma: I'm really happy about the bricks ,specially the big ones, but the palette is to broad. I've lost a bit of the simplicity of my characters, only tow shades per colour, no AA. The same is true of the overall noise produce by so many lone bricks with individual shading, I should go back to a more simple aesthetics, with more freedom on abstraction.
Truth is, the current standard of quality will be detrimental to my project, assets will take to much time to produce, and be to complex to fit the mood I aim for. So it's time to tone it down a bit. It's the day's goal, I will post something soon.

@MysteryMeat
Yeah, I think overall the stone will remain in the blue/green area, and the organic stuff, monsters and mucus, should be in the red/orange.

[EDIT]

New:

Old for comparison:


I have heavy handedly edited my assembly test to make some adjustments on the palette and the fading of blocks. I limited the palette, removed a lot of pixel clusters, and made the shape of the blocks fade in the darkness. Overall it's much lighter, more contrasted, background tiles would be easily readable as background. It's also a lot more saturated. It's a dirty edit so a lot of stuff is to be perfected, I plan on having a lot more flat single coloured surfaces with fewer details, to have contrast in detail amount too. The squint test also show that walk-able path is easier to distinguish.

What do you think?

Thanks CFKaligula!

Glad you liked the characters!

The problem I face right now with palette is, the fortress will be overgrown by some kind of weird organic mucus, kind of Zerg like. I have made no decision on the colour of this mucus, but it will have to contrast with the bare stone, a lot. It will be hazardous to touch for the player, it must be easy to notice. So if I go for a colour, I'll probably have to stick to a complementary one for the stone. But I like the violet heavy shadows, will consider that!

Something I must clarify: the tiles are indeed 16*16 but the detailed ones are not meant to be used as 16*16 tiles on a similar grid. The single stones getting out of the wall are 16*16 with alpha on the bottom, to be hand placed on the top of the clean ones, on a 8*8 grid. Same goes with the darker ones. It gives me way more flexibility and lesser tiles are required on the sheet.
It's the same thing with the big blocks, but detailed ones are 32*32 with alpha.

Hi!

[EDIT] For the scroll-lazy, every most recent images are on the first post.

















[/EDIT]

Some of you might remember my first topic here, and this one won't be very different: underground caves, great halls and dwarves... minus the dinosaurs.

I'll post a lot of stuff here, characters animations, tiles, backgrounds, etc. All in the goal to get valuable criticism (which doesn't imply positive ones, harsh and constructive is even more valuable), so don't hesitate!

Now some textures! Basic rock blocks, small and large ones:

Designed to be used as tiles. I heavily used Metal Slug as a source for inspiration. Why not aiming for the stars?

The two full sets:



An assembly test with the tow basic rock sets, done while finalising them. I have anti-aliased some rock since.  The hanging blocks are a bit out of place, they are from a previous rock texture attempt.

That's all for now, again, every criticism and advice is highly welcome!

- Skaz