AuthorTopic: Old, retired tiles  (Read 3293 times)

Offline big brother

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Old, retired tiles

on: February 12, 2011, 07:28:20 pm
Hi guys and gals! I was digging through some old art and I found these terrain tiles I had made for a freelance mobile game project that took the path of the dodo bird. The tile set is incomplete because I did not end up getting paid, so I guess the art is still my intellectual property. You live and you learn. I drew these four years ago, so I would do some things differently if I had to make them again.

Considering the popularity of terrain tile threads, I figure that someone may appreciate these tiles as reference.

Things that were not my idea:
- The grass/dead grass transition layout was not my idea. I would have done it with a single diagonal piece that can tile with itself, the N/S tile edge, and the E/W tile edge.
- The saturated emerald green tint of the forest
- The odd, 40x40 dimensions for the tiles

Offline michelcote

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Re: Old, retired tiles

Reply #1 on: February 13, 2011, 03:58:29 pm
These are incredibly fun to look at!  I'm going to import this to Photoshop to take a closer look at it, I'm using Chrome so the forum's zoom feature makes images blurry.  The tiles remind me a bit of Warcraft II at first glance.  40x40 must be a bit wonky to work with at first.  Did you have a colour count limit?

Offline big brother

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Re: Old, retired tiles

Reply #2 on: February 13, 2011, 07:24:21 pm
Glad you like 'em!

The sheet uses around 60 colors right now. Ultimately, the tiles plus the sprites needed to stay under a combined 256 colors. If there was a JAR size pinch later on in the project, I could probably optimize this down to 32 colors to save a bit of space. I suspect a lot of the subtle shading would be lost on a phone screen anyways.

Offline Stratto

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Re: Old, retired tiles

Reply #3 on: February 13, 2011, 08:35:04 pm
These aren't finished right? they're still missing some transition tiles
the water tiles just don't look like water to me, maybe add a darker blue instead of the light purple?
everything else is perfect

Offline Redshrike

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Re: Old, retired tiles

Reply #4 on: February 14, 2011, 01:51:05 am
Thanks for posting these!  I'll certainly be using them for reference, especially the snowy trees--I'm quite impressed by how you managed to get the snowiness with just(?) a palette swap.  I'm not quite sure what's going on with the bushes, though (I think they're bushes?  the ones with the red flowers/fruit).  The shaping seems a little odd, and the lighting is kind of uniform, so I don't get the same sense of depth that I do from the trees.

Since the project is dead, have you considered releasing them under an open license (eg one of the Creative Commons licenses)?  I can understand that there can be (plenty of) reasons to not want to, but someone might really appreciate being able to use them.