Help with tiles.

[Fly]

Hey there..My main job right now is making tiles for games.

What you should do is this... (first of all use Sharprm's method because thats what I use)

Also what you want to do is probobly go ahead and start with a bright pink or bright what ever color square which ever size tile you want, 32x32, 25x25....then you take the tiles and use a black pencil tool.

Just worry about the shape first. It seems like you're worrying about the texture from the beginning. After you get your first lines in and clean them up thats when you work on the texture.

Try to stay away from making a pattern on the tile if its rocks... Keep it random.

OH AND ONE BIG THING..... This really helped me when I first started...
Say you are making a 25x25 pixel tile.   Draw the shape of some rocks you want in about 50x50 size of pixels.. (do not copy paste 4 of the tiles) Just draw one big one... After you draw the big one... Find an area inside the 50x50 of a 25x25 piece that looks pretty unpaternized. This way your edges wont look so straight.

You're just new and making the edges straight because you arnt use to it yet... So try that trick. If you dont get what im saying ill upload a picture.. I'm just in a rush. reply if u need an illistrated explination.

Hope that helps man..good luck tiling

[araknidkid]

thanks for the help, though now I need assistance with another tiling topic

texturing!

You know, making grass look like grass, dirt look like dirt (that one is really hard for me) and especially water.

[baccaman21]

Hey there..My main job right now is making tiles for games.

What you should do is this... (first of all use Sharprm's method because thats what I use)

Also what you want to do is probobly go ahead and start with a bright pink or bright what ever color square which ever size tile you want, 32x32, 25x25...then you take the tiles and use a black pencil tool.

Just worry about the shape first. It seems like you're worrying about the texture from the beginning. After you get your first lines in and clean them up thats when you work on the texture.

Try to stay away from making a pattern on the tile if its rocks... Keep it random.

OH AND ONE BIG THING..... This really helped me when I first started...
Say you are making a 25x25 pixel tile.   Draw the shape of some rocks you want in about 50x50 size of pixels.. (do not copy paste 4 of the tiles) Just draw one big one... After you draw the big one... Find an area inside the 50x50 of a 25x25 piece that looks pretty unpaternized. This way your edges wont look so straight.

You're just new and making the edges straight because you arnt use to it yet... So try that trick. If you dont get what im saying ill upload a picture.. I'm just in a rush. reply if u need an illistrated explination.

Hope that helps man..good luck tiling

25x25??? what kind of crazy ass pixel dimension is that? please explain... 20years+ making video games and as far as I can remember pretty much everything I've ever done has fallen into nice clean binary numbers... divisible by 8? you know, 8's 16's 32's 64's 128's - where the hell does 25? fit into that?

as far as tessalation is concerned - (back OT) it's pretty straightforward... the other guys have explained it well enough so I won't bother going over it again...

as far as texturing is concerned... don't fall into the trap of creating 1 tesellating tile and repeating it ad infinitum... over the entire screen and then falling for the next trap which usually follows which is creating a bunch of other tessalating block variants in an attempt to 'break up the pattern' - it never works... unless those blocks are pretty big in the first place and cover the majority of the screen area... OR the pattern you create is nice and subtle... instead... look here for nice example of subtle tiles... 

[Fly]

25x25??? what kind of crazy ass pixel dimension is that? please explain... 20years+ making video games and as far as I can remember pretty much everything I've ever done has fallen into nice clean binary numbers... divisible by 8? you know, 8's 16's 32's 64's 128's - where the hell does 25? fit into that?

as far as tessalation is concerned - (back OT) it's pretty straightforward... the other guys have explained it well enough so I won't bother going over it again...

as far as texturing is concerned... don't fall into the trap of creating 1 tesellating tile and repeating it ad infinitum... over the entire screen and then falling for the next trap which usually follows which is creating a bunch of other tessalating block variants in an attempt to 'break up the pattern' - it never works... unless those blocks are pretty big in the first place and cover the majority of the screen area... OR the pattern you create is nice and subtle... instead... look here for nice example of subtle tiles... 

first of all im not an idiot.. I know everything is divisible by 8.. I personally would never do it 25x25 thats fucking retarded..


I worked on a game a few months ago where I did tiles 25x25. The program could stretch the tiles.. I could make a tile that was 256x256, and then a tile that was 2x2 and we could use them both... I could make 57x23 size tile..and it would stretch...

oh and btw, in programing...25x25 is a fucking power of 2... 5*5 (5^2) = 25 ...so you can use 25.

25x25 you are right is retarded...and there is no reason for it. But the main thing is, this was an example... im pretty sure its easy for the human mind to understand in numbers of 5's... It would be easier to explain something with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, ..... Instead of 8's.

so please..dont bash people. I was trying to help someone ..I didnt tell him to fix his tiles by making them 25x25.

understand now?

[TehSilentOne]

mm...

2^5 = 2 to the 5th power (power of 5)..
2^2 = 2 to the 2nd power (power of 2)

it doesn't matter what the person thinks in, as the computer thinks in binary.

[robalan]

Sorry to continue a line of conversation that didn't need to start, but 25 is not a power of 2.  It's a square, sure, but not a power of 2.  Powers of 2 are 2^n.  Squares are n^2.  2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc. are powers of 2.  You're also right that the human mind understands things in fives well.  That's why the roman numeral system is based on fives.  Of course, we use tens, but whatever.

@TehSilentOne: I'm not sure what you meant to type, but what you typed was not correct.  Both of those are powers of 2.

Enough about math and common tile sizes.  Lets see some new tile attempts from araknidkid and move on.

[EyeCraft]

Reducing the visibility of the grid in tiles...wow, what is the technique for that...I don't exactly know what I do to minimise it happening in the tiles I make, it kind of just came with practice. You basically don't want any details on the tile that stand out any more than anything else on the tile (this is for ground tiles and the like), and also, you want an even distribution of detail, highlight and shadow, so no one area of the tile is much darker than any other part. They all need to blend and be faceless, pretty much, so when you tile them over and over no detail which stands out stands out 1000 times or whatever.

[baccaman21]

first of all im not an idiot.. I know everything is divisible by 8.. I personally would never do it 25x25 thats fucking retarded..


I worked on a game a few months ago where I did tiles 25x25. The program could stretch the tiles.. I could make a tile that was 256x256, and then a tile that was 2x2 and we could use them both... I could make 57x23 size tile..and it would stretch...

oh and btw, in programing...25x25 is a fucking power of 2... 5*5 (5^2) = 25 ...so you can use 25.

25x25 you are right is retarded...and there is no reason for it. But the main thing is, this was an example... im pretty sure its easy for the human mind to understand in numbers of 5's... It would be easier to explain something with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, ..... Instead of 8's.

so please..dont bash people. I was trying to help someone ..I didnt tell him to fix his tiles by making them 25x25.

understand now?

 

Hmmm...       

right... fly... heads up buddy... 

1. I'm 36 - I have no reason to flame anyone or bash anyone... I'm past all that shit...  So, please don't feel I was bashing you - I wasn't - seriously, I wasn't... my tone was meant to be... WTF?!? as in HUH!? as in OMG!? as in "Well I never... that's a strange dimension" (in a stiff upper lip kind of british ww2 film kind of way) - my tone is always meant to be jovial... kind of "hey there chap...", Slap on the back... matey punch...

2. I never said anything about you being an idiot... you've interpreted that I'm afraid... :S

3. I was just curious that's all as I've never come across such a bizarre pixel dimension. forgive me for making you feel that had to come back an flame me in such a fashion... reading it back I can see how tone may have been misconstrued so I forgive you for your use of language...

4. Yeah I dig what you're saying about you using that number as an example... (that's all you had to say tbh... )

I can only assume that the game you were working on - a few months ago - (that stretched the textures) probably did so prior to compiling to make sure that they conformed to the dimensions I'm referring to... sounds curious either way - :S

(I think I should put in my sig that I always speak in a kind of "Jovial" manner... It makes me sad when people misinterpret my posts as me bashing them... I guess it's hard to get that across in the written word...)

[Brian the Great]

The way I make tileable tiles is by making use of the scroll function that moves and wraps the image around.

[eqko]

just for the record, what IS it with people misinterpreting bacca's posts lately ??
I for one did read it exactly as he meant, a genuinely interest in the dimensions he hasn't heard of before ...

oh well back on topic ...

small tip perhaps if you use photoshop for pixeling (me ducks for cover) you can use filter -> other -> offset
to get the efffect of getting the edges of the tile in the middle while having the middle at the edges to be able to paint away the edgetiling (did that make sence ?)