AuthorTopic: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles  (Read 9767 times)

Offline Selassin

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I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

on: October 09, 2013, 05:57:39 pm
 Hi everyone, as much as I tried, I failed to make some good dungeon wall tiles(for a game), so I'm asking for your help. I don't have any art experience btw.

 First, I did this: As you can see, It's plain, simple, boring.

 Second: ugly.

 Third: like a wave.

 Fourth: again, boring. Actually I used this image from Castlevania as reference: but It's nowhere near to it.

 So, I'm asking for your help, I read lots of tutorials already but I'm open to any tutorial suggestions, as long as It helps me to make better tiles. Actually I need all kinds of help, suggestions, please!

 Thanks!

Offline Pix3M

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #1 on: October 09, 2013, 06:07:04 pm
You can easily create something interesting to look at if you know that not every block needs to be the same size or shape.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #2 on: October 09, 2013, 06:15:30 pm
Oh, thanks for quick reply!

Ok, I understand that and I can see that I made this mistake at every tile, but my primary question is how can I make good/interesting tiles like Castlevania's. I don't understand what Is going on there, It looks like bunch of random pixels when I zoom in, but from far, It looks really good, I don't understand this magic.

Offline Tapsu

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #3 on: October 09, 2013, 08:12:58 pm
maybe you might try to hint rather than force the viewer to see the blocks.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #4 on: October 09, 2013, 08:18:37 pm
Can you explain what do you mean by "hint" and "forcing"?

Offline Tapsu

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #5 on: October 09, 2013, 08:35:25 pm
By forcing I meant you are trying to draw the outlines as rectangles too clearly, leaving the viewer no choice.

By hinting I meant it could be enough if the viewer thought: "there might be rectangular stone blocks."

That is just from the reference that you yourself provided in your first post.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #6 on: October 09, 2013, 08:43:15 pm
 Thanks, I'll update as soon as I can!

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #7 on: October 10, 2013, 11:06:06 am
Well, okay I understand the two suggestions, but what should I fill the bricks with? I still can't make something good because I still don't know what should the bricks filled with. I'm struggling to make something but it's a disaster, I can't fill the bricks. Is there any logic about this? I tried to thing like dirty parts, clear parts, shadows and highlights but I can't place them well enough. I see that at the Castlevania's example they used some dithering and some splattering, but I can't get anything from it.

Offline numlock

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #8 on: October 10, 2013, 01:22:37 pm
I'm not very good at environment stuff but you can try taking actuall wall as reference I think, that way you'd make what you see instead of copying someone else's vision, your palette and other stuff is important aswell but you can balance contrast later if you have any problems with that.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #9 on: October 10, 2013, 05:26:39 pm
 Just a little hack...  :P

 This sucks, I really can't make tile, there is no logic I guess... Anyway, thank you all.

Offline Polioliolio

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #10 on: October 10, 2013, 07:34:39 pm
Just a little hack...  :P

 This sucks, I really can't make tile, there is no logic I guess... Anyway, thank you all.


Don't give up.

That castlevania image isn't a single tile. Looks like a background piece indicating a cylindrical turret or something. Has quite a few pixels in it.

Start simple. Try working with a 16x16  or 32x32  tile. Don't draw straight lines. Keep it loose. Sketch the pixels in and like Pix3m says, don't keep all the bricks the same size or shape.
You may want to make a few variations with a pencil and paper first. Get a look you like, then try to replicate it in the pixel program.

Good luck!

Offline Tapsu

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #11 on: October 10, 2013, 08:21:11 pm
Just a little hack...  :P

 This sucks, I really can't make tile, there is no logic I guess... Anyway, thank you all.
I like it : )
You seem to have forgotten that you can add one or two medium shades with dithering to make the stone look rougher, though.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #12 on: October 10, 2013, 09:11:33 pm
I like it : )
You seem to have forgotten that you can add one or two medium shades with dithering to make the stone look rougher, though.

 I didn't play with it, just desaturated the photo and chanced it's hue.


Don't give up.

That castlevania image isn't a single tile. Looks like a background piece indicating a cylindrical turret or something. Has quite a few pixels in it.

Start simple. Try working with a 16x16  or 32x32  tile. Don't draw straight lines. Keep it loose. Sketch the pixels in and like Pix3m says, don't keep all the bricks the same size or shape.
You may want to make a few variations with a pencil and paper first. Get a look you like, then try to replicate it in the pixel program.

Good luck!

 Thanks for your support Polioliolio, yes, the image from a tower but I lost the original image, sorry. So far I did these in 16px and 32px:
 I'll try to improve.

Offline Cyangmou

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #13 on: October 10, 2013, 09:24:45 pm
One question: why are you doing tiles with 60x60 resolution?

common resolutions are 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64 ...


Your main problem is that you don't understand form. Without understanding how to render form you won't be able to draw anything which doesn't look flat.

We had quite a similar thread not to long ago with the exact same problems featuring a stone bottom.
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=15738.msg144324#msg144324

On top of that you should compare where the differences between yours and the bette rlooking reference are:

"Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man."

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Offline Tourist

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #14 on: October 11, 2013, 05:42:12 am
The artist who did the Castlevania bricks in your original post was cheating quite a bit.  In a good way, but still cheating.  He or she only made two rows of bricks.  From the top, row 1 and 2 of the texture are unique.  The rest are just a combination or repetition of those two.

Row 3 copies the left half of row 1, and uses the left half of row 2, mirrored, for its right half.
Row 4 is exactly row 3, mirrored left to right
Row 5 and 6 are the same as row 1 and 2.
Row 7 is row 2, mirrored left to right.  Row 8 is just row 1 again.

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Offline ptoing

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #15 on: October 11, 2013, 06:20:04 am
You have to keep in mind that it is 8x8 pixel tiles, which can be x/y mirrored as well. All done to save space on the cart and in RAM.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #16 on: October 11, 2013, 11:28:44 am
 Thank you very much Cyangmou, that thread and your posts were really helpful!

 The reason why I'm working on 60x60 tile is, firstly I admit that It was a big mistake, but my game have to support 1920x1080 resolution size, so I thought It'd be better to work that way. Anyway, it was a bad idea.

 So after reading these, I started to work on 16x16 tile:

 After that I tried to make 32x32 tile: I only used 3 different shades of gray.

 I thought some highlight could be good, though I suspect if I used it right:

 Then I tiled it 9 times and played with Hue/Saturation a little:

 So what do you think? What should I improve? Does it suit to dungeon theme?

Offline Polioliolio

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #17 on: October 11, 2013, 02:14:51 pm
Vast improvement over your first efforts. I like it.

If there's an obvious issue with this one, I'd say it's the structuring of the stones separating the larger ones and the smaller ones makes the 'grid' a little clear.

Maybe try to make a larger stone exist on the boundary of the tile.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #18 on: October 11, 2013, 09:16:09 pm
 Aww, enough, I always find something missing, anyway with Polioliolio's advise, first I did this:
 and after 30 attempts I finished with this:
 Tile + hue/saturation:

  I tried to hide grid as much as I could, but every time I see another wrong thing. Anyway, is this one usable for a game?

Offline FRAWG

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #19 on: October 12, 2013, 12:54:10 am
With that most recent one, I would advise playing with the depth of the stones a bit more. They appear a bit flat and the contrast could be reworked a bit. I think you have a great start here and it's been a fun time editing the image to help out.
       
So if we take a look at this, we can barely distinguish your two darkest colors. This may just be a difference in monitors but it's important in pixel art to think about the visibility of your colors. Just raising the brightness of your second darkest color helps out a lot.
       
So the next thing I noticed is that you don't seem to like your food to touch each other on the plate. Sometimes rocks are just pressed up against one another and are just gonna have to get along. Also, the extremely varied rock sizes is part of what contributes to your grid issues, but the best way to fix the grids is using several varied tiles (which I know is something that I always forget or just don't want to do) with the texture you are trying to create.

Lastly, as you can see in the edit, I wanted to work with the lighting and color a little bit. Experiment more with this, as it can really make your pixels pop out more or recede into the background, depending on the desired effect. The midtones are emphasized more and the darks aren't as prominent; they merely serve the effect of shadowing rather than outlining the rocks. The lone tile on the left and the middle column are the greyscale from the original, and the other two are my own experimenting with color a bit. Almost no two are exactly the same hue, though they are similar in saturation. I'm not the best pixel artist in the world, but I hope that I helped in some way.

And yes, I'd say it's usable for a game. Just be sure that with the large contrast in your lightest and darkest colors that this does not conflict with any foreground images.

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #20 on: October 12, 2013, 10:51:40 am
 Thank you very much!

With that most recent one, I would advise playing with the depth of the stones a bit more. They appear a bit flat and the contrast could be reworked a bit.
So if we take a look at this, we can barely distinguish your two darkest colors. This may just be a difference in monitors but it's important in pixel art to think about the visibility of your colors. Just raising the brightness of your second darkest color helps out a lot.

 I thought that dark colors help me to create a creepy mood, but you're right, I'll keep that in mind.

So the next thing I noticed is that you don't seem to like your food to touch each other on the plate. Sometimes rocks are just pressed up against one another and are just gonna have to get along.

 Oh, you caught me! You're absolutely right, I was trying not to let them touch each other, I don't know why though, so this time I let them touch each other and filled some space with rocks.

Also, the extremely varied rock sizes is part of what contributes to your grid issues, but the best way to fix the grids is using several varied tiles (which I know is something that I always forget or just don't want to do) with the texture you are trying to create.

 Good idea, I'll do that.

Lastly, as you can see in the edit, I wanted to work with the lighting and color a little bit. Experiment more with this, as it can really make your pixels pop out more or recede into the background, depending on the desired effect. The midtones are emphasized more and the darks aren't as prominent; they merely serve the effect of shadowing rather than outlining the rocks. The lone tile on the left and the middle column are the greyscale from the original, and the other two are my own experimenting with color a bit. Almost no two are exactly the same hue, though they are similar in saturation.

 Wow, your colors are really good! Something like that would really useful for me to change the mood/atmosphere. I'll try that too.

 So, here what I did upon what you said:





I'm not the best pixel artist in the world, but I hope that I helped in some way.

 You are really helpful, thanks again!

 

 Hi everyone, today again, I need your help and opinion about my game's graphics.

 So far I did some mossy tiles and logs, some water animation from the between the rocks through the bottom of the map and added a little cell for breaking boring background, It looks like this:

(mossy tiles, mossy logs and fountains are generating randomly at random positions based on the number I choose)
(I know that my character is flying right now)

 What do you think? What can I do about mossy logs? I think of a bigger map(s), I made a map editor, so adding more object is not a big deal(except drawing), but before I move on to bigger map, I though that taking your opinions would be good. Plus, character and creep(that mud like creature) are prototype but I don't know what I should do with them.

 In the mean time, I'm digging into lights, but first, I'll scale that cell up.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2013, 09:36:16 pm by PixelPiledriver »

Offline Pix3M

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #21 on: October 15, 2013, 06:52:22 pm
Should have mentioned this sooner.

When dealing with game assets you have to pay attention to how it all fits together in a game screen. Right now, the background is competing for attention.

Quick example to show what I mean:

Offline Selassin

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Re: I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

Reply #22 on: October 15, 2013, 08:25:32 pm
Oh right, this looks much better, I'll try to fix that now.