Zelda Gameboy Color inspired stuff

[Dusty]

Before I post the graphics I'll say I was very inspired by the Zelda GBC games. Link's Awakening and the Oracle games were great games and the graphics were quite charming and simple. You can find some of their likeness here:

http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy/lozla/index.html

Anyways, I was gonna have a stab at making my own Zelda-like game and I wanted to do something a little new for myself. I don't usually work with restrictions nor smaller resolutions, so I thought it'd be pretty fun to do graphics fit for GBC... and it is fun. Even though my graphics won't be strictly fit for the GBC hardware I do want to try to stick to the restrictions as best as possible(4 colors per tile, mostly). I think I might stretch that a bit for some things like transparency on sprites, but I dunno. I'm also not referencing the graphics as I work on them, but I do compare them when I'm done to make sure it doesn't coincidentally look like I simply edited tiles(which has happened a few times so far).

So ya, tiles so far here:


and a small mock-up:


A small edit today, can't decide on what cliffs are most fitting:

[jams0988]

Very nice tiles. The Zelda tiles are very nice to look at, and so are these. =)
At 1x, the second cliffs read most like cliffs to me, but they're all very close, really.

[Dr D]

A small edit today, can't decide on what cliffs are most fitting:

Definitely the second for me, a nice little amount of detail that matches the look of the other tiles, but it's not so noisy (ie. the third picture) to look at. The first looks too plain/simple imo.

Pretty nice work with these so far, keep on going, and maybe try to incorporate some of your own ideas into the Zelda tileset too, would like to see some new objects and stuff.

[Ryumaru]

I concur with the others, I think the second cliffs are the most successful. As far as the tiles go, I must say I think you're channeling LoZ just a bit too much. Without seeing them side by side and out of the context of these forums I would assume they are in-game images. Technically the pixels are all well placed but it would be nice to see you push the uniqueness in the small tiles.

[Dusty]

I concur with the others, I think the second cliffs are the most successful. As far as the tiles go, I must say I think you're channeling LoZ just a bit too much. Without seeing them side by side and out of the context of these forums I would assume they are in-game images. Technically the pixels are all well placed but it would be nice to see you push the uniqueness in the small tiles.

Well it was kind of my desire to really invoke that feeling of Zelda, but just with my own work and ideas in place. It's kind of early on now, but hopefully as I progress and flesh out ideas I can start incorporating my own things into it. Though you say seeing them out of context makes you think they're actually Zelda graphics, I'll still emphasize in reality that they're fairly different and much more detailed than their Zelda counterparts:



Though I do get what you're saying, and some others have brought it up in IRC so it's not something I'm pushing aside just yet... but the original direction of this was to have my own twist on Zelda tiles. Graphics-wise I feel like I did my best to do my own thing, but I think the biggest culprit here is tile layout. I really am a big fan of how simply, yet efficient the design of tiles were in the Zelda GBC games. They were so simple in design but were so easy to manipulate and create appealing level designs with that I really wanted to see where that took me.

[Ryumaru]

Yes looking at the comparison makes it easier to see the differences ( although I think I actually prefer the roof styling of the original more, it enforces the perspective better imo) your windows especially are good.

I think with same layout it will be difficult to see it as anything more than a "revamp" . Will look forward to seeing you include more unique assets.

[Dusty]

Well here's a kind of example of some things I plan to branch off into:


Making my own level props, messing with current designs and such. It's all something that I'll mess around with as I progress and hopefully it will benefit from it. I mean it's not going to make it go from a Zelda-lookalike to something totally different, but I hope to make it look a little more unique.

[Grimsane]

intriguing, and yeah at glance it's instantly identifiable as Zelda, and I was like wait.... looks at the ref you posted, oh okay yeah. 

and being so close to the style is actually really good, I've seen quite a few games go a bit too far from that style and mood captured in Zelda LA/LTTP and I think the main reason it's so close without direct ref'ing is how well the mid-years 2D Zeldas went about things in a simplistic and stylistic manner, if you observe the way things were then it's quite easy to reproduce something almost identical because of that, I think your's have some definite appeal, are you using your own version of the GBC palette or using the real deal/someone's 'close to spec' palette? I like the subtle detail in your dirt tiles btw.

I remember playing Link's Awakening on GB and GBC (deluxe or DX edition or something heh) anyway hope you go alot further with this it's quite awesome 

[PypeBros]

very promising so far. I just regret the "blurry" effect you got in the grass/dirt and dirt/path transitions.

[Dusty]

I agree, it's something I had noticed and tried at fixing it with a new pattern:


As for the palette I just searched and found a small one that was a compilation of various colors found in different games. Though I have added a few of my own colors since apparently the GBC supports 32k colors or so, so I didn't think adding my own would matter much.