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Pixel Art / Re: Stage Mock-Up (Feedback, Critique)
« on: January 16, 2018, 06:16:12 pm »
I think the outlined tiles are the major thing holding the tileset back. They look like artificial brown lines rather than like natural rocks/dirt. The rest of your dirt tiles look great, try to incorporate that look into these. Break up the vertical linear features at least, and maybe add some variant tiles with larger rocks. Try not to have the rocks all fade out to "black" so evenly, have some of the "columns" fade quicker than the others.
An edit to show what I mean about breaking up the vertical lines:
Same number of tiles, but I think it feels less repetitive and artificial like this. This edit is a little noisy, I'm sure you can do a cleaner job.
By the way, it looks like your backgrounds are blurry in some spaces. Double-check that they're getting rendered pixel-perfect by your engine.
In the next episode of me doing random stuff until things somehow ends right:
I know is not precisely a solid "9/10", but i'm still kinda proud for being able to improve so much... I'm going for a contrast of cartoony characters with pseudo-realistic scenery, i've seen games like Freedom Planet that does this so...
Of the two layers of platform-like dirt tiles, the foreground one is so much simpler and more primitive than the background one (strict squares and flat platforms vs. continuous surfaces with slopes and semi-natural shapes) that it doesn't belong in the same game. I don't know what character movement are you planning to use and whether you want slopes or staircases, but you shouldn't use both.
In many platform games there is a functional second layer of platforms above the ground plane, often special objects like buildings or trees (e.g. Metal Slug); in many games one homogeneous layer of platforms is enough because platforms are placed at any height and above one another (e.g. Bubble Bobble, New Zealand Story, Boulder Dash).
The simple square tile style can be enhanced with variations and decorations, with vertically linked grass tiles for the common configuration of stairs with grass above grass (it shouldn't look discontinuous), and with softer edges in the dirt part, but eliminating the sloped tiles that make it look cheap by comparison would have the greatest benefit.
If you choose the sloped tile style instead, I think you should improve visibility of the platform profiles with thicker grass and undergrass borders, up to the size of the exaggerated ones you have on the square tiles.
Has the Tileset improved?, i'm going for a sloped style, but for the early version of the game (you know, the one that goes into kickstarter if I decide to make one) I'm not planning to add that "functional layer" mostly because I suck at trees
maybe with the money I can find someone to do that, so, without said layer, does it still look "decent enough"?also, I'VE NEVER STOP THANKING to all of you guys, I promise the instant I finish the demo all of you are going to get it inmediatly
