Help with Cave tileset for platformer [C&C][WIP]

[Tidbit]

Hey gang, I've been working on a platformer with a friend for a while and I've finally gotten around to making some proper assets for him to use. I currently have four-five character animations and a cave tileset in the works since caves will be the main area focus for the game.
Here are the tiles, and here is a very early mockup of the tiles in action
 
(the spikes and other assets are just placeholders)
They are 16x16 and use a total of five colors so far. I've already noticed some repetition in the ceiling tiles but I think I'm in the clear for the others so far. I'm going for a bit of a classic-ish feel for the tiles but I'll gladly change the style if it fits the character better.
Any ideas and or suggests for BG tiles or things I can use to help fill out the levels aesthetics would be much appreciated.

[Tidbit]

Minor update on tiles and example:


Would really appreciate some feedback guys, this thread has close to a hundred views already and I'd be shocked if there was no one on this board that had at least something to say  .

[pudman]

Just a thought but I would shoot for a multi layered background, something that scrolls at different speed to the foreground or even 2 layers of the background that scroll at different speeds to each other an the foreground. That way you can do simple 'fillers' but they look a million dollars.

[PypeBros]

Well, your tileset is very generic at the moment. It also feels like you rotated one block (either vertical or horizontal) to get every angle you needed, which makes it feel very unnatural.

[Tidbit]

Well, your tileset is very generic at the moment. It also feels like you rotated one block (either vertical or horizontal) to get every angle you needed, which makes it feel very unnatural.

The rotated tiles were for a placeholder while I worked on the real angled tiles. Do you have any suggestions to break up the monotony of the tiles? I've never done cave tiles before so I'm a little unsure of what direction to take.

edit:

Alright, I finished the angled tiles:

Just a thought but I would shoot for a multi layered background, something that scrolls at different speed to the foreground or even 2 layers of the background that scroll at different speeds to each other an the foreground. That way you can do simple 'fillers' but they look a million dollars.

I believe this is what you meant doing? I altered the original sheets colors and then made three other copies with darker hue-shifted versions of those tiles to be used in the background. I think my tiles were really helped with the addition of the more natural looking slopes as well.

[pudman]

Parallax scrolling was what I meant (the name came to me as I toddled off to bed). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RZRE0M3Hvc is not my video but a great example of it. I think the last pic works great just needed to have greater contrast between your fore and background to bring out what the player is on. As for monotony rocks are not the only things in caves, lamps/torches, bats, glow worms, spiders, tree roots, water, just a few ideas to add to your foreground. It will really depend on gameplay as well and the type of game you are making.

Excuse the crudeness of the art but it was a rush job. Just a few ideas hopefully it will help you out.

.....don't know how to post pictures on here yet hahaha, so you just have to imagine how great it was.

Ok reading the faq helps

[PypeBros]

Do you have any suggestions to break up the monotony of the tiles? I've never done cave tiles before so I'm a little unsure of what direction to take.

http://sylvainulg.deviantart.com/art/art-of-rayman-caves-of-Skops-289262119
http://sylvainhb.blogspot.be/2011/12/art-of-shantae.html

Essentially, select environment which you find interesting and study why you find them interesting. Then try to apply those results to your game. A backstory may greatly help.

[Wanyo]

While I agree with the tileset being a little less than exciting (I agree with the others, look at game tilesets you find interesting and see what you like about it), the differing styles of the character and the tiles are most jarring to me. I assume you were going for a separation between character and interacting tiles but it's so far detached that it feels like a completely different style. It probably has to do with the sharp maroon/brownish border that is far more saturated than everything else while all the rest of the colors are far less saturated.

[Decroded]

While I agree with the tileset being a little less than exciting (I agree with the others, look at game tilesets you find interesting and see what you like about it), the differing styles of the character and the tiles are most jarring to me. I assume you were going for a separation between character and interacting tiles but it's so far detached that it feels like a completely different style. It probably has to do with the sharp maroon/brownish border that is far more saturated than everything else while all the rest of the colors are far less saturated.

agreed it needs work but dark saturated red hues are quite good to make a sprite pop from background.

[Wanyo]

agreed it needs work but dark saturated red hues are quite good to make a sprite pop from background.

Very true, I like that it helps it pop while at the same time it feels unnatural stylistically here.

Maybe if the dark saturated reds were just on the borders instead of throughout or perhaps change the dark saturated colors to match the insides of the sprite?

WTB extra time to make edits for people! >_<

[r1k]

the character seems in a different style to me too.  I think its because he has outlines while the tiles dont.  Id try making him without outlines, just to see how it looks.  It might actually help him stand out more since more area will have brighter colors.  Of course, this could be bad if he needs to be on other backgrounds.

[Tidbit]

Very true, I like that it helps it pop while at the same time it feels unnatural stylistically here.

Maybe if the dark saturated reds were just on the borders instead of throughout or perhaps change the dark saturated colors to match the insides of the sprite?

WTB extra time to make edits for people! >_<

Alright, so I messed around with the character a bit and came up with three other variations:

I like the one on the left which has the deep red for the outline with colored outlines on the inside, which I think looks pretty good. I think the biggest problem is that the tiles are far more complicated than the character which is simple and rather cute looking. I'll check back in a bit with an updated tileset that will match the character a bit more.

[coffee]

I don't think It's a matter of the character being more simple than the tile. I believe it's the different kind of palette style you've chosen for him. I would probably drop the outline on the character completely since everything else don't have it, like mentioned before. I also made it a bit bigger cos the extremely small version makes you have to squeeze things together so hard it might miss the actual style you are looking to have overall, or at least ended up with on the tiles. I also wouldn't change the tileset to match the character. Your tileset has a lot more effort and thought behind it than your character have atm.




Also try not to post these huge upscaled images (Now I did since it already was there). It's handy for people that want to help you by doing edits.

[Tidbit]

I don't think It's a matter of the character being more simple than the tile. I believe it's the different kind of palette style you've chosen for him. I would probably drop the outline on the character completely since everything else don't have it, like mentioned before. I also made it a bit bigger cos the extremely small version makes you have to squeeze things together so hard it might miss the actual style you are looking to have overall, or at least ended up with on the tiles. I also wouldn't change the tileset to match the character. Your tileset has a lot more effort and thought behind it than your character have atm.




Also try not to post these huge upscaled images (Now I did since it already was there). It's handy for people that want to help you by doing edits.

I love you so much right now. That really helps me out a lot, as the character I was using was an edited version from a really old and outdated project of mine and I guess it was restricting me more than I had realized. Thanks so much for the edit, I'll pop back on later with my own take based off that <3.

[Tidbit]

Aaaight guys, sorry for the delay in providing a new update. I took Coffee's sprite and made two other variations of it.

The middle one is a bit of an experiment with the style and posture correction and the one on the far right is a more direct translation of the style to my character from before, which really looks much better with the applies changes. I did my best to keep the same dimensions as I am working with some restrictions for the character. I also tweaked the tiles to tone them down a bit and to provide more contrast between the character and the tiles which I think turned out pretty nice.

[Decroded]

i like the middle one. left is leaning back a bit and right is a bit short

[Tidbit]

i like the middle one. left is leaning back a bit and right is a bit short

I do as well but I can't really use that size as I'm working with a set or restrictions for the character, I could always change those but whats the fun in that?

[Decroded]

Thanks for posting at 1:1 scale 

In that case, he looks fine and should match other sprites you add in.
Since he is really pushing the boundary, he might bleed up 1 pixel when you make him run but that might look acceptable.
Just a suggestion though that it can be interesting for gameplay (as well as visually) if the hero is say 1.5 tiles high, and needs to crouch to fit through smaller gaps.
You can afford it too with that resolution.

I also feel the sprite's colours are a little subdued and could do with a touch more saturation and/or you could further tweak the colours of the surroundings.
Notice for example, coffee's version has a brighter and more saturated cluster for the belt buckle?
This helps give him visual priority.


The thick white line in your tileset is a bit overpowering and taking away from the all-important border on the edge of the playable space, so I had 5 minute fiddle to blend it and make some sharper, more planar edges...

[Tidbit]

Thanks for posting at 1:1 scale 

In that case, he looks fine and should match other sprites you add in.
Since he is really pushing the boundary, he might bleed up 1 pixel when you make him run but that might look acceptable.
Just a suggestion though that it can be interesting for gameplay (as well as visually) if the hero is say 1.5 tiles high, and needs to crouch to fit through smaller gaps.
You can afford it too with that resolution.

I also feel the sprite's colours are a little subdued and could do with a touch more saturation and/or you could further tweak the colours of the surroundings.
Notice for example, coffee's version has a brighter and more saturated cluster for the belt buckle?
This helps give him visual priority.


The thick white line in your tileset is a bit overpowering and taking away from the all-important border on the edge of the playable space, so I had 5 minute fiddle to blend it and make some sharper, more planar edges...

Ahh, I love those tile edits! I really appreciate your opinion on them and will get to working on them right away, the cleaner look on the lower rocks definitely looks way better than before. As for the sprites colors, I used the exact same colors from Coffee edits so I'm not sure why the yellow of the belt buckle seems to be different. If anything, I play around a bit more with the tile colors and try to maybe tone them down a bit and see if that helps with what you were saying. I'll also have a walk animation to post that I've been working on and the others will probably come in the next few days or so now that I actually have the time to work on them.

[Decroded]

I used the exact same colors from Coffee edits so I'm not sure why the yellow of the belt buckle seems to be different.

I think you should ramp it up a bit instead of toning it down to help the sprites pop.
The 3rd frame was edited by compressing the Levels a bit in Photoshop...

[Tidbit]

Alright, so I went a head and tweaked my entire tileset and toned down the colors a bit for them as well, while also using the new character colors you posted above. Here is the result:

I like how the tiles look now, but things seem a bit... thin now. Although, I might decide on using dynamic lights for this game so the number of viewable rocks on the floor, ceiling and walls might not be an issue.

[Johasu]

  You really don't want your terrain to take more attention than your sprite(typically).
Thin may be good for this case.  Your terrain is already 60% of the mockup and the other terrain in the background fills almost the rest.  If you go much "thicker", your terrain may pull too much away from the action.

Are you running off of a 2x zoom or anything?  That might help a lot to bring the attention squarely onto the subject and it will also make the tiles feel much more fleshy up close.

[Tidbit]

You really don't want your terrain to take more attention than your sprite(typically).
Thin may be good for this case.  Your terrain is already 60% of the mockup and the other terrain in the background fills almost the rest.  If you go much "thicker", your terrain may pull too much away from the action.

Are you running off of a 2x zoom or anything?  That might help a lot to bring the attention squarely onto the subject and it will also make the tiles feel much more fleshy up close.

Yup! I'll be running this at 2x. And you're right, the terrain being a bit thinner does help pull more attention to the character over all. Thanks for pointing that out, been looking at these tiles for so long it's hard to see them in a different light 

[Decroded]

try simple adding 2 or 3 different patches of dark rocks and scatter them around within the dark void.
also add a variation where the platform blends further into the darkness using say 2 tiles wide (dont need to fill tiles to their edges).
little things like this will add alot since ur repeating small tiles across a larger canvas.