AuthorTopic: [Feedback] Hearthstead - farming/town life Simulation RPG  (Read 18475 times)

Offline Keops

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Re: [Feedback] Hearthstead - farming/town life Simulation RPG

Reply #30 on: August 13, 2019, 04:05:19 am
For tilesets of natural features like grass and water, I prefer to do tilesets focusing on diagonals instead of verticals and horizontals, i.e. every tile is basically a corner tile. This allows for a smaller tileset, and more importantly, its structure encourages organic shapes by making straight lines harder to create. The drawback to this style of tileset is most existing automappers don't work well with it, though it could be managed with one based on Wang tiles.

I also think those single-column tiles are kind of useless in most scenarios, as IMHO they create distracting shapes in the environment. They're useful for small-scale games to depict smaller features, but for a large-scale game where a tile is the size of a person or smaller, they're not needed. They're also nearly straight lines by necessity in smaller tiles, which doesn't look natural for things like grass.

Hmmm interesting. Do you happen to have any of those diagonal tiles example? Also, how would this translate to the square grid style of traditional farming RPGs?

As usual thanks for your input eishiya, very appreciated!
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Offline eishiya

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Re: [Feedback] Hearthstead - farming/town life Simulation RPG

Reply #31 on: August 13, 2019, 05:52:36 pm
Ah, I think you misunderstood. By diagonals, I just meant diagonal transitions, i.e. corner tiles. They're still square tiles. Here's a simple example using just 2 types of grass, with 4 diagonal transition tiles (in theory you could use just 1 or 2 with appropriate flips, but for organic objects it helps to have variety).


Typically, the chief drawback to using a tileset like this is the limits it imposes on the exact shapes you can create, but some of this can be mitigated with careful tile design. For example, you wouldn't expect to create "vertical" or "horizontal" edges that are an odd number of tiles in length (since they must be created out of pairs of diagonals in a saw pattern), but for noisy organic surfaces like grass, it's possible to make two diagonals tile with each other seamlessly too, allowing for such scenarios.

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Re: [Feedback] Hearthstead - farming/town life Simulation RPG

Reply #32 on: August 14, 2019, 12:16:37 am
Ah, I think you misunderstood. By diagonals, I just meant diagonal transitions, i.e. corner tiles. They're still square tiles. Here's a simple example using just 2 types of grass, with 4 diagonal transition tiles (in theory you could use just 1 or 2 with appropriate flips, but for organic objects it helps to have variety).


Typically, the chief drawback to using a tileset like this is the limits it imposes on the exact shapes you can create, but some of this can be mitigated with careful tile design. For example, you wouldn't expect to create "vertical" or "horizontal" edges that are an odd number of tiles in length (since they must be created out of pairs of diagonals in a saw pattern), but for noisy organic surfaces like grass, it's possible to make two diagonals tile with each other seamlessly too, allowing for such scenarios.

Oo this is enlightening! Thanks so much for sharing that



I was experimenting and made this geometric flat color tileset so I can start implementing maps in Unity and not waste time in final asset production. Now my tileset looks bloated haha but I think I'll keep it and also keep this in mind too :o

So much to learn. Thanks so much eishiya! I _really_ appreciate it!

Ribs out!
Hearthstead: Art thread - Website - Twitter

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Offline eishiya

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Re: [Feedback] Hearthstead - farming/town life Simulation RPG

Reply #33 on: August 14, 2019, 03:21:16 am
Don't forget that what is "minimal" depends on what the tiles are. Some things just naturally need more tiles, or different kinds of tiles, so you won't have the same tile layout for different things. For example, you probably wouldn't need both diagonal and squared corners for terrain, but they could be useful for paved paths.

Since your game will probably have player-modified terrain, you'll probably need a tileset that can handle more weird situations than the diagonals-only one above. IIRC 16 tiles per required pair of terrains is the minimum that's procgen-friendly, which is similar to what you posted before - no isolated/narrow strips of terrains. In farming games, it's common for players to modify the terrain so a tileset where you can easily compute the proper tile for a given environment is probably more important than a minimal tileset.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2019, 03:29:39 am by eishiya »

Offline Keops

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Re: [Feedback] Hearthstead - farming/town life Simulation RPG

Reply #34 on: August 14, 2019, 05:49:18 pm
Don't forget that what is "minimal" depends on what the tiles are. Some things just naturally need more tiles, or different kinds of tiles, so you won't have the same tile layout for different things. For example, you probably wouldn't need both diagonal and squared corners for terrain, but they could be useful for paved paths.

Since your game will probably have player-modified terrain, you'll probably need a tileset that can handle more weird situations than the diagonals-only one above. IIRC 16 tiles per required pair of terrains is the minimum that's procgen-friendly, which is similar to what you posted before - no isolated/narrow strips of terrains. In farming games, it's common for players to modify the terrain so a tileset where you can easily compute the proper tile for a given environment is probably more important than a minimal tileset.

Totally true and the main reason why I will slow down on art and focus on implementation and testing and then improving/polishing art. But your feedback has been invaluable so far. Thanks so much!
Hearthstead: Art thread - Website - Twitter

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