[WIP] Underground Passage

[Marscaleb]

I've been working on a new area, which as the thread title suggested is an underground passage.
I've got some good tiles for the base layout, I think.  But I'd like to get some feedback before I got too far with it.
I'm open to all criticism, so please be honest with your responses.

[eishiya]

The bottom image is very flat, it looks like a solid flat wall rather than a room the character can stand in, because the values of the front wall and the back wall are so similar. Something more like the top image, where the back wall is darker would work better, since both the front walls (floor/ceiling) and the character stand out well against it.

The tiles feel very noisy, they give me a bit of a PS1-era look where they'd downsample photo textures. It looks lazy, to be honest ): I think these would benefit a lot from some clean-up and simplification to match the character's cartoonier style.

[pyxelbit]

yes, the second one looks flat and everything is really noisy.

and i think the enviroment looks a bit unbelieveable. a huge passage but also like a sewer with pipes, and torches like 5 meters up on the wall. if you want to go for that secret passage in the sewers vibe it should be dirtier with lower ceilings etc. imo. and sewers usually have flowing water between small walkways, pipes everywhere

[Marscaleb]

I've made some updates.  I've got a simple lighting layer set up, and I've reworked the tiles for the second area.


Some palette options (Between the wood platform and background bricks)





I've still got some changes I want to work on, but I want to get some feedback on what I've got right now.

[eishiya]

Although the new bricks in the lighter area look better (they look like something rather than just noise, at least), I feel the fundamental problems haven't been addressed at all - the planes are still not well-separated (especially in the second area), and the art is still very noisy.

[Marscaleb]

[Marscaleb]

So I decided to properly count all the colors and palettes being used, and compared to what the SNES can handle in mode 1 I actually have plenty of room for more.  Previously I was thinking that the drain pipe and torch would have to be sprites to help divide the load.  (I think I might have been making that decision back when I thought these two versions would be in the same "room" and thus need to have both be viewable at the same time.)  With that in mind I think I may go back and add highlights around the torch as part of the normal background tiles.

But for the moment I think I'm going to move on from this area and work on a different scene.  I'll take a look at it with a fresher mind in a few months.  Until then, here's the last update I've been working on.  I cleaned up a couple pixels in the bricks that looked too distinct, and tried to get that second area to look less flat.  Let me know what you think, or if there are any other changes I ought to make.  I'll review all the comments when I come back to it in a few months.