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Commercial Critique Challenge - Tilevania: pixel's quest

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Ryumaru:
The purpose of this challenge is to give the environments of Castlevania a little love. While they do have a lot of that old school grid-like charm, there's lots of room for improvement! with a focus on design, eliminating the grid, and more organic feel, there are lessons to be learned here that can apply to modern pixel art, and even hi res 2D games.

Here is the NES palette, as well as a link to Kasumi's post on some of it's restrictions:



http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=10784.msg115062#msg115062

The most important restrictions being: 4 available 4 color palettes that all share one universal color (usually black), and that each 16x16 area must share the same palette. Keep in mind that the HUD needs a palette, so if you have 4 on screen, one of them needs to be shared with the hud!

However, as if things weren't hard enough with just those colors to choose from, we also have a tile limit due to how this game handled graphics, says the great Kasumi ( I pleaded with him, but he didn't budge) here is your blank canvas of 128 tiles.



Choose one of these screenshots to give a makeover to ( or find your own!). It can be a near 1:1 translation, or you can go nuts and do your own thing! That goes for placement, design, everything. As long as it fits the restrictions.





Here is an example I put together to get the ball rolling. Mine is perhaps a bit busy, so I challenge you to show me up! Note the extra tiles left over that could be used for stairs and other things further into the level.

Kasumi:
Most of the images in my restrictions post have been dead for months, and I haven't gotten around to fixing them. I'll try to get to that.

I'd recommend the NTSC palette from Bisqwit's palette generator over Nintendulator's PAL palette.



The text says 120 tiles, but it's 128. (The image itself is the right size for 128.)

I'd also like to share these: http://imgur.com/a/kUrra

They're from a cancelled and never released Castlevania II hack, but they might still give some ideas how to play within NES restrictions. (I wasn't involved in said hack, just sharing the pretty stuff.)

Phoenix849:
Good timing, I was just itching to do some NES mockups, though have almost zero experience with it. Also not a Castlevania player, just wanna pixel something nice.

Here's what I've manage to do over evening. Image cropped from VGMaps. Palettes are all over the place, those diagonal stairs unexpectedly screw me over due to 16 x 16 pixel region color limits. So yeah, it doesn't follow restrictions currently. I have to rethink the whole color scheme all together. But I feel inspired, and want to play with different areas. Really excited to see how far you guys can push those graphics.




--- Quote from: Kasumi on March 25, 2016, 12:24:58 pm ---I'd also like to share these: http://imgur.com/a/kUrra
--- End quote ---

Saw this kUrra album earlier and was incredibly inspired by this playing on NES limitations so perfectly. I'd say it's my favourite NES mockups I've ever seen. I'd like to post some sweet stuff by ptoing I've discovered just yesterday. I feel it is relevant for Castlevania thread:
Spoiler

Phoenix849:
Okay, it seems I've underestimated the restrictions due to being inexperienced with NES tilesets:

1. Does HUD also count towards limits? That's why interface and walkable platforms are constantly red/orange?

2. Does the whole first level (VGMaps link) have to use only one palette for outside AND inside areas? Just when I thought I was going to make some sweet forest graphics outside of the castle :(

Gil:

--- Quote from: Phoenix849 on March 26, 2016, 10:58:41 am ---1. Does HUD also count towards limits? That's why interface and walkable platforms are constantly red/orange?

--- End quote ---
HUD counts yes, but I think the 120 is already excluding the HUD (hence why it's only 120), so you don't need to worry about it. Depending on game, recolors even count, so if you have a tile and you want to use it in two separate palettes on one screen, you double it. There's plenty of ways around that though, so you can skip it if you want.


--- Quote from: Phoenix849 on March 26, 2016, 10:58:41 am ---2. Does the whole first level (VGMaps link) have to use only one palette for outside AND inside areas? Just when I thought I was going to make some sweet forest graphics outside of the castle :(

--- End quote ---
No, you can switch tiles per screen, or even on scanline sometimes, depending. For this exercise, just don't mix the two and you're fine. Like, if you make outside and inside areas, and you want to mix those tilesets, you make sure the combination doesn't go over the limit.

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