[WIP] 2-Color Terrain

[hangar]

This is my first attempt at doing my own graphics and I'm no great artist, so I'm trying to keep it simple. Black and white, no ramps and put together procedurally. What you're looking at is a sort of natural "grass" terrain, along with a "ruined building" terrain that I just can't get to work right.

So what I'm asking is:

1) How can I improve the grass terrain?

2) How can I use two colors and square edges to create the impression of a ruined building?

[EyeCraft]

Hello hangar and welcome to Pixelation!

Your greatest tool for this kind of work is the usage of silhouettes. They are tremendously powerful at conveying information. Here's a quick example:



(Ignore my playing around with trees in the background)

Notice the foreground immediately stands out as rocky outcrop with grass strewn about... at least I hope it does

This can be applied to great effect on something like a ruined building, too. Find some reference photos of buildings under construction, or in the process of decay, and note the kinds of silhouettes they make... I imagine lots of support poles and wires jutting out will be a big one, as well as chunks missing and piles of rubble heaped up at areas around the base.

[hangar]

Wow, that's fairly amazing. But something I've struggled with is having clearly-defined tile borders so the player knows where the boundary is. How many pixels can I cheat on each side of the boundary while still retaining that hard border? Here's the player character for size reference. (Edit: forgot my program upscales; see the bottom image to compare to this one.)



One thing I've been fiddling with is graying-out background tiles that the player cannot collide with, but I fear that would destroy a lot of the silhouette's power.



It seems to work pretty well for creating tunnels by marking existing tiles as pathable:

[VDX]

I like your style.

Not bad at all.

Can't wait to see what you can do with the silhouettes in the background once you got the full picture done.

[PypeBros]

One thing I've been fiddling with is graying-out background tiles that the player cannot collide with, but I fear that would destroy a lot of the silhouette's power.

It pretty much kills the beauty of it. You could certainly work it out by having less straight ground and walls. Or just opt for a bitmap-based engine rather than a tile-based one.

... or how about using highlights of the grass to suggests the walkable floor ?

[TheInquisitor]

I like Eyecrafts approach for this. I've developed the ruined building look a little further by giving it a "distressed" slant and that great looking shreddies appearance.