[WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

[Vinik]

Exactly what eishiya said about texture breaking solid colors! But I would add that making non-noisy nice flat floors which occasionally break surface with details - and also do not look repeated - isn't trivial at all from my experience so far. It feels a bit like making a zen garden to me, it asks for a zen-like state of mind where planning and making tiling rules wont help deciding where to show details and where to hide them, and it has me staring blankly at tiles without really knowing where to start, I wonder if anyone shares that sentiment

However, the chunks on your floor are pretty despite being too pronounced. So I bet that if you greatly reduced the contrast like eishiya mentioned (it would add new color entries) and simplified some of the contours to avoid single pixels standing out, it would be very usable, even if you kept the current texture scale.

[yrizoud]

A lot of rooms will have long stretches of horizontal or vertical walls (2 to 6 tiles long), so at this point I would start drawing longer, multi-tile patterns that do tile with the 1x1 ones at their edges.

[startselect]

@eishiya Thank you! I also disliked the top rocks, not just their monotone sizing. I tried varying the sizes and also change to shapes to more of a edge highlight at the top of the diagonal tiles.
Also, I tried changing the floor texture to have larger stones in general. I tried the solid color second floor but it ofc looked terrible as always. So i tried having the same texture as the first floor but stepped up one notch on my color ramp. Didn't have time to do a nicer transition today but moving forward I will make it transition without cutting through single floor stones.
I'm still including it in this update because I feel there is something fundamentally terrible with it and I hope for input on it before moving on to not waste the work. I added a new color to lower the contrast and I feel it works at that but it looks pretty bland

@Vinik I wish my problem felt like a zen garden. I'm still at the pick up turds in a public dog park state of floor texturing

@yrizoud I do have plans for that, I'm actually hoping to use this both as a cave and a mine so I will make some different larger walls for that use as well as a set of props for each. But that's way in the future when the floor at least matches the quality of the walls.

[eishiya]

Here are some solid-colour ideas. The transition tiles are just colour swaps because I'm lazy, I recommend making unique tiles instead.

I stuck to two colours to avoid unnecessary detail and contrast. If you want to add more, be very careful to avoid over-detailing and too much contrast. Additional low-contrast colours may be necessary for detailing the lighter area, your existing palette doesn't have anything to support them.

Edit, a random suggestion: Consider making the bottoms of the rocks where they meet the floor not be so dark, but rather the same colour as the floor or lighter. Without that outline, they'll look like they're rising out of the floor rather than laying or hovering on top of it.

[startselect]

@eishiya I removed the bottom outlines and the effect is so nice! Great advice!
I also grabbed your single color floor tiles which are just amazing! I changed the transition from light->dark but kept the dark->light transition. I also added a drop shadow to raise the light floor a pixel above the dark floor which I think turned out quite nice without adding any visual distraction. Next up I'm going to do 2 more versions of each transition and maybe a few more small detail variations.

[eishiya]

The drop shadow looks nice

I'd really prefer you made your own base tiles instead of using my own, so that you can apply what you like about mine in your own work and make sure you understand it. Plus, mine are a bit noisy since they were intended as just a proof of concept.

I like the new tiles you made, although there's one issue I see - you're using some vertical rock shapes, which makes the floor look like we're seeing it from directly above, rather than somewhat from the side. Keeping all the shapes horizontal helps create the illusion of perspective.

For making new tiles, consider making your rocks have sharper corners instead of having them round like mine, so that they look more like the tops of the rocks in the walls.

[startselect]

Alright, I re-did all the floor tiles trying to keep the horizontal and with sharp corners. Also made a second set for variation.
Then I did a few rock props to sprinkle with.

Next up I'll do some wider wall sections and doors/openings/whatever to enter/exit parts of the cave through.

[eishiya]

Looks a lot more cohesive
Looks like you stuck rather closely to mine as a blueprint, and even kept some tiles practically the same (the ones used on the far right), but the ones you changed look a lot better.

The props work well to break up the solid areas without overdoing it.
It looks like you've gotten the hang of doing blocky rocks, these are a massive improvement over your first tries in this thread. To push them even further, consider making the very large surfaces chipped/irregular by breaking up the straight colour edges in a few spots (not too much, to keep the overall blocky forms), e.g.:

[startselect]

Oh maybe I changed the wrong tiles, I might have redone my own set again by mistake, or I didn't map the tiles and they never showed up in the part of my canvas I post to pixelation. I'll check and fix tomorrow!
Regarding the rocks, I did that on some rocks on the wall tiles but I must have forgotten when I did the prop rocks, thx for noticing!

[eishiya]

Oh, so you did! I guess that's why I only thought of it now and not before - the walls already looked great :'D