Wilderness Campaign Remake

[Adam]

Hi!

I'm working on a small roleplaying game right now (a Wilderness Campaign remake) with 1bit 8x8 tiles heavily inspired by Realms of Antiquity by Adamantyr.



At some key locations small "Fighting Fantasy"-like encounters will appear with additional illustrations. For the sake of simplicity I decided to do all these illustrations monochrome (so I don't have to struggle with aligning colors to the 8x8 grid), but up until now I couldn't even manage to make one piece I'm satisfied with.

Here is my best attempt at the broken mountain road encounter:



I tried to use stronger shadows in the foreground and dithering in the background to emphasize depth, but it only made the background part more busy, and there is no more focus on the broken pass. I'm now looking for any guidance how to work on a relatively small canvas with two colors. Should I simplify the composition, or is it possible to keep some detail without looking noisy?

Here's a simplified version, still not sure if it reads well (but looks surely less noisy):

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Even after I read what that yellow black image is supposed to be it needed me more time to figure what's what, which is not good especially for a game. I'm not expert in this 2 colors images but you should definitely work on readability.

And fields on that map are very noisy, it's not very pleasant to look at.

[Adam]

Thanks! That's what I feared. Do colors help?



Or should the whole composition be simplified?

Hmm. It seems I've been looking on those tiles for too long now, fields never looked noisy for me. Any ideas how to reduce the disturbing noise while still not looking too "tiled".

I failed to find nice "small-canvas" 1bit references, some of those would also be helpful.

[Ryumaru]

I think this image shouldn't break any of the conventions you've given yourself.

first off, 1 bit is just plain hard. I love working within limitations and this is still something I never touch. for readability, focus more on silhouettes and shadow shapes. Even when you " simplified" your image with a bit less dithering, there were still bits that didn't really describe much. Make every pixel count. Dithering with this sort of thing really isn't all that bad, especially large areas of 50% dither are easy to read as a separate shade. Just commit to it if you're going to do it, instead of little transitions like in your first image. There are some relatively " clever" techniques you can use for things like the tree, where the black informs the silhouette and since the tile is on the bottom ( shadow side) you can use the sky color and it sort of reads as reflected light or holes in the foliage.

[Probo]

quick edit with some ideas for the map

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Am I the only one that thinks the perspective of the road is wrong. The part before the break and after don't seem to match up at all. And yeah definitely color helps a lot.

[Mathias]

He said, "Am I the only one"! and his avatar. His avatar, and he said the line!     yesss


A 1-bit scene is such a small space is a toughy.
What is the black chunk in the road? Is the road missing a huge piece there, like a pit, or does the road surface shift up suddenly?

[Adam]

@Ryumaru: Thank you for the edit and your comments. It definiately gives some ideas.

@Probo: Thanks! What I forgot to mention is that I'm trying to follow most of the graphical limitations of the TI-99 home computer. The palette is given there and sadly it does not contain such nice desaturated brownish greens. The greens in it are a bit too vivid in my opininion for this kind of tiles. Nevertheless I'll see if I can come up with something with such "inverted" method.

@Mr. Farenheit: Might be. I have drawn some perspective lines first, but giving and taking some pixels here and there could have ruined the perspective.

@Mathias: It's supposed to be a pit, but since you mentioned it, I cannot unsee it being an elevation.

I'm browsing Spectrum art right now for some guidance how to work with similar limitations. Strangely the nice colorful art like the edit of Ryumaru is rarely used. Most title screens do the it colored outline/light spots on black way.

Edit:

So here's a new one based on the edit of Ryumaru. Changed the view a bit to clarify pit/elevation.

The palette has a lot of yellows/browns, thus a sepia-like shading would also be possible:


I've also tried a totally different approach:


Update2:

Well, I'm not too proud of it, but I took the easy way:

[Probo]

with regards to the map, if youve got a limited palette, maybe you could use a darker green thats friendlier on the eyes to do block colour grass, and then make the game autumnal and have light browns and yellow/gold colours for trees? could add a bit more character as well to have a visible season