Eh, yup. Grass tiles. [CIP][W+W]

[API-Beast]

Eh, yup. Another thread without finishing the previous ones, maybe have been a bit too overmotivated.

New tileset, trying to get a "perfect" 32x32 look for it, so it's a bit more structured than the cave tileset but similar workflow.



Current Issues:
- The big cliffs, they look a bit bland, approach worked fine for the small ones, but it seems I need to make something different for the big ones.
- What kind of decoration/features could be used to break the whole thing a bit more up and make it look a bit more exciting?

[Anarkhya]

Actually, your small and big cliffs look like wood planks to me, that's the main issue I'd see, what you need is love rocks

[Yngar]

I really love this style. The contrast makes it look like you are standing in front of a huge wall. It makes it look very large and majestic

[Hideon]

I agree with Anarkhya. Maybe something like that would be a better choice:


I edited only the short cliff, I'm that lazy

[API-Beast]

Reworked the cliffs a bit.


@Hideon: These kind of details quickly get distracting and dull. I would not recommend doing something like that for a tile that will be visible more often.

Colors are pure greyscale right now, haven't decided on a palette yet. Though a greyish probably looks better and less cliché than brown/orangish rocks.

Is there any game out there with a comparable aesthetic? Some kind reference would be really useful.

[coffee]

@Hideon: These kind of details quickly get distracting and dull. I would not recommend doing something like that for a tile that will be visible more often.

That is a totally untrue statement. I have no idea where you got that from. This entire forum is filled with proof against that.
Pixel art is very often a lot about details. At least.

I have played a bizzilion games that have a lot of detail in the tileset and it doesn't get dull. It gets more exciting and less quickly dull.
A game being dull is about something made wrong in the gameplay, not in the amount of details. What is better then finding a cool extra detail in the scene that you run through that breaks it off for just an instant. Would you rather have the player run through a world of nothing, I would find that extremely dull. I can keep going on this and give you one thousand examples but i'm not since you hopefully understand where your statement lacked any kind of credibility.

In this case I think the cliffs deffinatly need some fundamental rework even if the style is simple. It doesn't look natural for being in a natural scene. Right now it looks like metal and the one you had before looked like wood and I think Hideon made a good effort in showing how it might be done.

I would also change the black to something more lit if you intend to keep the empty space and at least have some kind of foreground
to not make it look like a wall, since it's not.

[jams0988]

@Hideon: These kind of details quickly get distracting and dull. I would not recommend doing something like that for a tile that will be visible more often.

His edit looks a lot more interesting than yours, and a lot more like rock. I'd take another look at his edit if I were you. = \
Your bush needs some reworking, too. It's reading as a dead tree to me right now, which is making the scale of the whole piece seem very strange.

[API-Beast]

GUYS, Guys, as you should be aware I am working on it, it just takes a while, that thing was just a early WIP, early WIPs tend to look bad. Could you please give me the benefit of doubt sometimes and not put me on the stake yet?

[coffee]

No one has put you on the stake. I'm just pointing out things for improvement, which this part of the forum is for.

If you want help or comments I don't think you should reject someone trying to help you by doing an edit. Which in this case even
was an improvement that you could've learned something from. Instead you acted like you had the answer to everything. Which leads
to something else. If you want to use graphic for a game it is not just what you think is the best way to do things that will make people end up playing your game. Believe me or not you won't get the reaction you want by doing so and you are also limiting your skills to a certain style. Understanding of other styles is a big part of becoming a better artist and developing your style.

I read your thread about grasstiles and I have no idea how you can reject some of the art just beacuse you can't understand it. You can't expect to be as good as some of the persons who have been practising for 20 years +. I with many thousands love the way some of those artists have done grasstiles. There are also an ulimited way of doing things, no right or wrong way.

So my advice is take another approach to this by not trying to do things in a better way then someone else has.

You won't be able to do the perfect 32*32 tileset in many years(and there are no "perfect" ones) and you have to live with that and just try to improve all the time, otherwise you will end up getting disappointed you couldn't do it.

I made this edit to show you how it might be made more interesting

[Pix3M]

GUYS, Guys, as you should be aware I am working on it, it just takes a while, that thing was just a early WIP, early WIPs tend to look bad. Could you please give me the benefit of doubt sometimes and not put me on the stake yet?

I think it is possible to get some very nifty early WIP's if the shapes and colors are solid.

[API-Beast]

@coffee: Now that looks good, however there is more needed for this than just "looks good". I intend this tileset to be actually usable (in general, not for a specific game) so I can't make the elements too large and too specific. I did that for a previous tileset once, wasn't really used in the end because most people were not able to map properly with it.

Another issue is repition, and that's where small textures become a problem. They are already quite repetive in themselves and this pattern becomes even more visible to the human eye if you reuse a tile somewhere.

[Anarkhya]

On the other hand, that kind of cut cliffs can easily be associated to wall jumping mechanics.

[Mathias]

@coffee: Now that looks good, however there is more needed for this than just "looks good". I intend this tileset to be actually usable . . .

Wow. What? You complained about "bland" tiles.

I personally think coffee's edit blows everything preceding it away. Way more personality and originality, bold and vivid colors. My eye passes over your cliff tiles at lightning speed. There's little to nothing interesting occurring, visually.
As a player, I'd much rather jump around in coffee's edit than anything else I've seen in here so far.

You've come here asking for ideas on how to make your cliff set look better but just completely rejected an edit that 400% improved on your design as if there's nothing to learn from it. Did you really find it completely useless?

Another issue is repition . . .

It's tiles. When is repetition not an issue? Mitigate it with tile variations - multiple visual options for tiles with the exact same functionality/hit collision. Is your solution for a non-"bland" tileset really to make the tiles more generic? Re-think that if you want to create an attractive tileset with minimal repetition.