Bylina - Lure of the Sorceress

[Adam]

I've been replaying the Gurk games recently, and got inspired to design something similar. Started with EGA, but then switched to the C64 colors. Here is what I have now. Right now I am still motivated to try and make a game out of it.


I introduced some new variations of the already existing tiles for the overland map, some new overlays for roads and multiple tile elements.
I am not sure about the water tiles. Any ideas to make them look better?


For the encounters, I thought that small vignettes would look much more interesting then the simple icons of a creature. Originally went with free drawings but then stumbled upon a screenshot of the Wolf Rock encouter in Magic Candle and fell in love with the concept.


I placed the combats on full pic maps instead of tiled ones. Added some new elements like dynamic starting positions, combat area limitations and map assets.

[fskn]

It's been a while, Adam! Glad to see you're here and still pixellin'.

About your piece, everything looks lovely. Seeing from how detailed your mountains are, I think the sea tiles should receive the same treatment. I'm thinking the waves should go in the direction of the coast, but if you'll have more than just a coast on the east side, then you really need something more generic, perhaps using diagonals, kind of like:



...but you will make it much better, I'm sure.

I did round some corners in the coastline, and I'm not sure it's possible, but you could totally ignore those.

Perhaps the sea should be darker overall?

[Adam]

Thanks fskn! The edit you made looks remarkably similar to my first attempts to make it more detailed. I grew fond of the water tiles for a while now in the meantime, so I will probably leave them as they are:


I am struggling with the vignettes right now. I think the sprites and backgrounds are nicely readable on their own:


But tend to blend in each other if overlayed despite the one pixel black outline:


Any ideas how to solve this?

Oh, I just read the sad news in the general discussions after posting this.

[fskn]

Thanks fskn! The edit you made looks remarkably similar to my first attempts to make it more detailed. I grew fond of the water tiles for a while now in the meantime, so I will probably leave them as they are

That's actually a relief to me because I wasn't really happy with that result in the days after I posted.
It just didn't fit in terms of style and readability.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Maybe avoiding sharing colors between fore and background and/or having more contrasting elements on the front and less on the background?
To me it looks like they blend more often in places where you're using earthy tones and black. That one lady on the right that's in front of the gray castle wall reads well enough, that other lady that's in front of the white house reads fairly well... Although making that house a bit taller could help separate her from the roof.

The guard/fighter doesn't read as well because there's too much detail in him and in surrounding areas. Single pixel leaves and whatnot. So maybe making bigger color clusters could help as well.

I understand you don't have that many options in regards to colors or resolution but perhaps you could make that work?

[Tuna Unleashed]

Love the clarity & colours!!