AuthorTopic: GrassTileset: Issue with single width tiles  (Read 4813 times)

Offline Chonky Pixel

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Re: GrassTileset: Issue with single width tiles

Reply #10 on: February 02, 2020, 05:57:21 pm
Wow, Vinik, that's some awesome info there! And those templates are amazing! I had to painstakingly create mine from scratch after working out what all the combinations were. Having it all laid out like that is really useful.

As I understand it, if your tiles have reflective symmetry (like they seem to do here) then (if you ignore slopes) you should be able to use the 16 piece tileset. Each tile is just half the length and width of the full tile size you want to use. The 16 piece set contains everything you need - inside corners, edges, outside corners, inside pieces. This means you're using less memory, and far fewer rules in your rule tile.

This doesn't tend to work as well for more complex or organic tile patterns (rocks, leaves etc.) as things like shading and variation can stop things looking good when made out of such small tiles.

The tile download is interesting too. It uses a less geometrically perfect triangle pattern with a random element added to the triangle widths and heights. That means that it's always possible to join up corners and edges - you can carry on the diagonal, or swap its direction and the pattern still works.

I tend to work with more organic textures, so when I need to match up to the next edge or corner I'll just work whatever I get into the design. Create new leaves, make a wide rock, that kind of thing. To a certain extent, by making the patterns so regular you're making life really difficult for yourself. Adding slopes into the mix was, in retrospect, a very brave thing to do. ;)
« Last Edit: February 02, 2020, 06:05:17 pm by Chonky Pixel »

Offline Vinik

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Re: GrassTileset: Issue with single width tiles

Reply #11 on: February 03, 2020, 01:19:09 am
As I understand it, if your tiles have reflective symmetry (like they seem to do here) then (if you ignore slopes) you should be able to use the 16 piece tileset. Each tile is just half the length and width of the full tile size you want to use. The 16 piece set contains everything you need - inside corners, edges, outside corners, inside pieces.

Yes, if your tiles have a significantly repeated pattern or are mostly unshaded/untextured, you really can use a half sized 16 piece tileset to fill in for all the 47 pieces of the larger 8bit set.

This method of breaking a larger tile into smaller tiles is generally called meta-tiling, and in this case, four smaller metatiles would make up a larger visual tile.

However, and Chonky bullseyed it here, the smaller the metatiles, the harder it is to apply pretty organic patterns in the filling, and you might end up with a tiny pattern being very visibly repeated.

I think your styling is simple enough that you can start with the 16 piece, make the ramps as alternatives to the outer corners, and if you fill the need for the thin shapes, extrapolating the design to fill the other 31 pieces wouldn't amount to much more a lot of mirroring, splitting and rotating the basic ones.

Do take some time to browse Surt's examples on the open game art site, they are as informative as they are beautiful, and I learned a lot from them.

Edit: if you guys ever feel like going down the rabbit whole on the technical and mathy aspects of the full list of autotiling methods this is the place:

http://www.cr31.co.uk/stagecast/wang/2edge.html

For a more practical explanation on implementation, nothing beats this tutorial:

https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-use-tile-bitmasking-to-auto-tile-your-level-layouts--cms-25673
« Last Edit: February 03, 2020, 01:39:07 am by Vinik »