Tiles 'n' props 'n' stuff

[LoTekK]

Haven't really been able to work on the shmup I was mocking up earlier, and my boss has put together a multi-scrolly prototype at work, so I'm putting the shmup on hold for now. Been putting some tiles and stuff together for the project, though you'll notice they're a bit haphazard in terms of theme. To an extent, scale, as well (though we have a far background layer as well, which is where the shrunken stuff will go). Tiles are 40x40/80x80, and will have a bit of NPA stuff happening to them after I throw them into Flash (mainly lighting and whatnot, plus a bit of overlay to variate the colors just a tad).



Palette needs some reworking and resorting. For now most of the 40x40s are sharing the same palette; same goes for the 80x80s; primarily for the sake of my sanity, since I'm simply adding a new frame in PMotion when I make a new tile, but also for the sake of not needing the nightmare of re-harmonising everything later on. Some of these need some serious revisiting, and I really need to do something about some of those non-45-degree diagonals (in particular, the two doors). Also, the tree's still pretty early; I've got maybe an hour into that, so I'll probably do a bit of reshaping, and subsequently lots of pixel cleanup.

Palette-wise, I don't think any of these tiles use more than maybe 8 or 10 indices apiece. I could probably add more, but if this works, I'll probably keep the low color-count for sanity's sake.

C&c and suggestions are more than welcome.

[Manupix]

Those tiles are beautiful! The tree too.

The vines may not be so great, compared to the rest. I can't really point why, but they look a little cheap.

What are those doors (those below the diaphragms) for? To be pasted upon any other tile? Nothing wrong with them anyway.

[Sinistral Erim]

I'd say the vines are too thick overall (don't taper towards the end like the side-viewed one, which looks cool) and lack shape. I love the colors on those doors/platforms.

[LoTekK]

Cheers, I figured there might be something up with the vines on the walls, but couldn't quite put a finger on it. Been home sick today, so I only did up a couple of small changes. Fixed the vines somewhat, and did a bit of cleanup on the tree:



Looking at it again, I think I may redo the second set of vines from scratch. Think they may need a bit more than just minor tweaks.

Edit:
manupix, sorry, forgot to answer you. Yeah, the doors are meant to be stuck onto whatever tile happens to be suitable at the time.
rikfuzz, thanks, no mockup handy at the moment. Still need to settle on a proper theme at some point. :p  

[rikfuzz]

Much better on both!  Don't suppose you have a mock of the tiles in situ? 

[EyeCraft]

Looking pretty cool! Any chance we can see any of the characters (or a mockup as rikfuzz suggested)?



Need to groom your highlight clusters a lot more. They are almost noisy/random in their shape. Also there's a pretty big jump in value from your midtones to your highlights, making it hard to transition between them smoothly (I upped a couple of values in the palette when I was editting, also you have 2 greys that are basically identical in your palette, could remove one). These two factors combine to make for a lot of jaggedness with your highlights. There's also a lot of jaggedness with your silhouettes, particularly on the vines. Use harmonious pixel line work for silhouettes to minimise jaggies. In fact I think you need to be more careful with your pixel arrangements in general, there's single pixels and jagged clusters in any place that isn't strictly rectilinear tile work.

And then, AA!

[LoTekK]

cheers, EyeCraft, those are some yummy edits. Yeah, I had a bit too much separation between some of the shades, which was part of where some of my trouble was coming from. Thanks for the pointers on the vine silhouettes. I wasn't too sure how best to approach those, and I kept bouncing between harmonious and irregular, and ended up with a bit of a mess. :p Come to think of it, looking at them again now, I may have gotten a bit lazy with the vines, as far as buffers/AA. -_-

Can't show a mockup with characters just yet, though I'll try and put a bit of time aside today to construct something vaguely scene-like with the tiles later today.

Still no mockup, but I did some buffering/AA to a couple of them, and did a bit more cleanup on the tree. Haven't touched AA for that one, and I'm not entirely sure I have the willpower to do so. :p



edit:
Did up a fan vent thing, with and without mesh cover: