Lava Tiles.

[CodeGeorge]

Lava is hard.  Give your opinions! 

I'm 99% of the time a character spriter.  I'm giving tiles a go again. 





Note 1:
I'm going to give into the pressure and reduce the number of colors so don't mention that. 

Note 2:
I'm going to squeeze in the borders a bit more because they make some corners too sharp when tiled.

[Rydin]

It's not moving! When I think of lava, I think of boiling, bubbles popping, ebbing and flowing, gurgling and sploshing!  Your lava here looks rigid and solid, like it's cooled off enough to harden.  Get those inner lava ripples to move around a bit. 

[CodeGeorge]

I thought the same thing.

However it is supposed to be cooled off a bit.  Those are supposed to be cooling (but still hot) rocks in it that are floating in lava.

[Phones]

It might work out if you chipped away at the grid a bit by adding some more tiles that make the square look less like a square and more like a random shape.
If that makes any sense.

[CodeGeorge]

The pattern?

I often over stress about getting rid of patterns.  However even in the professional games there are massive amounts of patterns and everything looks so square.  I'm been trying to stress about it much less.  Does it look more patterned than normal?

[Zoggles]

Overall, I think its a nice design. I just don't like the whole 'flashing' effect that seems to be going on. I'd rather just see a few of the yellow and orange pixels (between the crusts) moving around a bit I think, with the occasional clump of brightness and darkness. Colours themselves work well in putting forward the lava image

Yeah.. a more ragged edge to the tiles would help a bit too.. as if some pieces of the ground had been overheated and had fallen away as a chunk.

-Z-

[CrazyMLC]

I'd make the darker spots move around a little bit to make it look like the lava is moving a bit, and maybe a few bubbles?

[CodeGeorge]

The question is how to make it move effectively in 3 frames.   

I was avoiding too much movement because of this.

[Ultimaodin]

Try enlarging/expanding the yellow and orange sections  in one or two of the frames to give a psuedo rise and movement. 3 frames is pretty limited but there are always paths around the limitations. Complete movement isn't necessary.

[Zoggles]

A quick edit to test 'flow' rather than 'flash', but by no means perfect and was only done quickly. I did however notice that you have 256+ colours involved in these tiles...

-Z-