[WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

[startselect]

I started a cave/mine tileset and it is going terribly! I looked at a lot of references but everything I try looks like crap. I'm not even really looking for help with the tiles specifically just if anyone has any pointers or guiding words that would be really helpful!

Things I'm struggling with in no particular order:
* avoiding pillow shading when trying to do non-directional (or straight from the camera, don't know what it's called) lighting.
* avoid walls looking floating.
* avoid greebling up the floor without it looking like planed concrete
* deciding if the walls should be lighter to dark or dark to light.
* figure out how to do concave walls to make it feel dug-out and not so straight and stiff


This is where I'm at (with abandoned starts on the right) and I feel like going forward without a new direction will just be a waste of time.

Thankful for any help!

[pistachio]

Second step (right side) seems to be where you're tripping up. Given the lighting, you're not gonna see highlights there. Shift those highlights closer up top and there you're good, I think.

Also called pillow-shading. From PJ:


Note that also even pretty round rocks have some flatter angles to them, going about the rocks like a diamond shape might help this (think the rocks in Cave Story)

[Vinik]

Uhm, I will try to make pistachios advice just a bit more specific here:

For the concave feel you want, that would likely require a section of generally lighter rock clusters near the bottom like in your second attempt from top to bottom at the right side, because that lower part would be less vertical and get more light and assuming the light is somewhat from the front and above. However the position of each highlight within its "lump" should  definetely be higher to avoid pillow shading like pistachio just said. The mid level lumps shouldn't probably get any highlight to look receded back.

The diagonal surfaces would be trickier to show that concavity, although still very possible.If you really wanna try that now I might have some untextured geometric templates for Tiled that might help you visualizing the lit and darker facets on a 3d-ish autotiled room, but I think you should try to get a nice "flatter" stone wall that also works diagonally first, then try a more 3d/complicated version later if you feel like it.

[startselect]

Thx for the reply!
I've come a bit further, this is my current progress:

I tried for a more dirt/earth wall instead of stone. With larger clusters made up of smaller lumps. I also came to the conclusion that the walls should be darker up top and lightest at the bottom but it's a bit sharp as it is now. Maybe I should transition on the small lumps instead of the larger clusters or maybe it's the colors. My idea is that the horizontal walls have a light bottom, medium middle and dark top while the diagonal walls have a medium bottom, dark middle and really dark top, hopefully it will look concave.
The protruding wall in the center is the one I'm working on, the other textured places are just the same tiles that will hopefully fit there. Still haven't done anything with the floor or the side-walls.
I really want to try my hand at a concave cave/mine wall. If you're willing to share your Tiled geometric templates I'd love to have them!

[Vinik]

Alright, they are on 2:1 ratio, first I'll convert them to typical 1:1 like your walls.  However, I think you got the wall shape just right on your own in the last pass. If we consider only the shape it just needs some tiling tweaking. I also agree on the shading plan as you described, that is how I would do it.

Regarding the new texture, however, it is quite neat, if a bit pillow shaded, but it looks more like some sort of alien biological tissue/hive thing rather than rock, I am afraid. It would look cool on a sci-fi setting . I cannot give much help with that rock texturing,  sorry. Natural textures are a pain to me and I am currently studying them exactly to close that knowledge gap.

Edit: here you go, it is not much but I hope it helps, i was easier to make a new one to match your stuff. These are Tiled ready, just load it as image source and set the terrain tool using the blue tips above each tile as a guide, they should be self explanatory. Notice you have uncomplicated internal corners because your top is just black, you go with weavy diagonals you might have to sculpt the internal corner tiles to fill gaps. Remeber to set the tileset file to have 16x64 tiles, margin16, spacing 16, but use them on a 16x16 map, and set draw order to be right-to-left/top-to-down. I think you got it pretty right on your take:

[startselect]

Thank you very much, that was very kind of you!
I did some more work on the bio-wall on my lunchbreak today and now it looks like this:

Keeping with the texture until I figure out something better 
Within the quality confines of my current texture, I'm not quite pleased with the dark tops or the diagonal very dark tops, the texture just sort of fizzles out. What do you think about introducing a new second-darkest color and use the darkest only for the tops of the cave walls? that would give me some room in my curve to continue the texture without fizzling out. Gonna give that a go next time I get to pixel!
Again thanks for the help!

[startselect]

Here is my current progress:

Don't really know what to do with the floor or the left/right/down walls that you can't really see.

[eishiya]

The walls facing away: perhaps keep them solid/simply coloured, but give them a rocky silhouette instead of leaving them straight?

The rocks still feel like biological tissue, as Vinik said earlier. I think the reason for this is they're all the same size, and look rounded due to the way they're shaded. Try replacing some of the chunks of smaller "cells" with larger rocks, and try playing with juxtaposing solid areas of dark and light colours instead of always smoothly blending between them, to create the look of corners and planes.

[Vinik]

I think what make it distinctly bio-alien is that it glint like guts, and the folds/lumps are too cleverly distributed to avoid horizontal or vertical alignments, it is almost gaussian lol. That is not even easy to do, I often fail to achieve that non-alignment on textures, but it doesn't work too well for rocks, rocks are usually still pretty geometric, you should look hard at some nes era rock patterns. Or you use those above a and make a topdown Contra game 

Also, I just noticed you have handmade a lot of section individually on the room, with occasional copy paste instead of using strict repeated tiling, which is obviously good for variance, but you should consider the trade off between the amount of work and the end result, as that can suck a lot of your time (as you probably already noticed) and prevent you from doing other stuff you need.

A repeating pattern can look good enough if it is done in a organic way, specially if core tiles get just a few variants, and it is much quicker of you know each tiles you need, usually 15 tiles + empty is enough (blue cues in that template), some times even less.

[MysteryMeat]

I think what make it distinctly bio-alien is that it glint like guts, and the folds/lumps are too cleverly distributed to avoid horizontal or vertical alignments, it is almost gaussian lol.

honestly i'd just roll with this, the concept of Meat Mining is too interesting a setting idea to pass up.

Lean into it, see where it takes you.