AuthorTopic: GR#036 - Tile Layout [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]  (Read 66381 times)

Offline Olothontor

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #30 on: February 06, 2010, 10:05:56 pm
Bigger chunks make no realistic sense, though... hmm.

I'll see what I can do for you, no guarantees, however, considering that I've pretty much DONE everything so far...

Anywho, your post grants me the opportunity to post another update. Been mostly addressing the building.

« Last Edit: February 06, 2010, 10:14:47 pm by Olothontor »
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Offline Mathias

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #31 on: February 07, 2010, 04:08:00 am
Your building doesn't make sense. Why tile it? The idea behind tiles is that they're re-usable in different combinations, in order to adapt to the given circumstance. It looks like you've simply drawn a building and chooped it up into 24px squares. Doing that, you leave no room for re-usability. If your building can't obey the grid then you'll have to take a different approach, and I wonder if you've thought of it yet.


Though, I say your buildings can easily be adapted to tiles. See my example below.



I stuck with the graphics you'd already created as much as possible so you could see just how close you were to making competently tiling buildings. You were almost there. Countless other architectural features are possible with additional tiles.



And here's a snapshot of my construction file, which will tell you even more than the above image. I hope it speaks loud enough.





You'll notice many problems and missing tiles. If this was my game, I'd create entire full sets of buildings for my map-makers to work with, but hopefully I've done enough to get my point across, which is my only goal here.


WARNING: Your colors are out of control. Check your palette thoroughly BEFORE doing anything else. One wrong pixel will multiply until every tile has stray colors.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2010, 04:09:54 am by Mathias »

Offline Olothontor

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #32 on: February 07, 2010, 07:03:57 pm
Thank you, Mathias. Dear God, thank you.

I will get right to work (I will also refrain from directly using your work, I will simply use it as a reference).
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline Olothontor

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #33 on: February 08, 2010, 12:04:35 pm
I couldn't have done any of this without Pixelation.

And I'm not even saying that to be sappy, I'm utterly serious.  ;D
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Offline Olothontor

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #34 on: February 08, 2010, 06:24:26 pm
Alright, update:



The door is kinda... fail...
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Offline Mathias

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #35 on: February 08, 2010, 08:16:56 pm
Haha, you're welcome. Feel free to use the tiles as I've posted them, I don't care. Even if the game profits. They're just modified versions of yours, anyway. Seems like yer getting the hang of it.



I'm gonna go ahead and move onto those pesky tree tiles now. You told me in a PM that you're having arbor-related nightmares, and that you hear the voices of trees in your head, taunting you when you venture outside. Hopefully this next bit will assist in that. Or it might just make it worse.

This post isn't comprehensive. It only covers tiling theory, pertaining to making a solid tiling texture depicting repeating objects that span multiple tiles. How does that work? WCII's trees are the prime example here. The rock tiles are good too, but screw them, we're doin' trees.



The following animation states this, but for clarity I'll say it now - the basic principle at hand here, is that you can create a square tiling texture with obviously repeated objects (not just a little detaily pattern) simply by spacing them apart a distance equal to your grid's X and Y dimensions.

(I hope the framing timing isn't too annoying; tried my bestest)



The above GIF is large, including seemingly unnecessary parts of the canvas, because I wanted to include some of my working area, for general consumption.
Especially notice the Master Tiles, sitting in the pink cloud. Minus some "special tiles", that are only revealed in-game as the tree tiles are chopped away by the worker units, the included Master Tiles are all you need to replicate any configuration of trees - works the same as most other tile-sets in WCII.




Next up: Tree Transitions. I'll cover it later, but here are some helpful animations 'till then.


Successive screenshots, recording the effects of a worker unit chopping out one tree tile at a time. Notice how the adjacent tiles react each time.
This is the game engine doing this, not me. Yes, only one tile is being removed at a time, though it appears that two or more are removed a few times.
If you scrutinize what's going on, you'll probably agree this is simply the way it has to work.
Can you find the "special tiles", mentioned earler?





Same winter grove as above, disambiguated, before any chopping occurred.




Large area of tree tiles disambiguated with simplified tiles.




(all credit to Blizzard, I'm just intrusively deconstructing what they created)
« Last Edit: February 09, 2010, 12:33:33 am by Mathias »

Offline Olothontor

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #36 on: February 08, 2010, 08:55:42 pm
Simply amazing.

Thank you.
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline krasimir

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #37 on: November 08, 2010, 12:42:36 pm
Love this tutorial, a real eye-opener!
Playing: online RPG with  over 4 dozen pixel units and a ton of pixel enemies.
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Offline Olothontor

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #38 on: November 08, 2010, 02:16:43 pm
That tutorial really did help me out, although my sprites don't do it any justice (it deserves its own thread, honestly).
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline RCIX

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Re: [WIP] Flak - Game Sprites and Tiles [WARNING: Image Heavy Thread]

Reply #39 on: November 08, 2010, 06:09:11 pm
I'd C&C if i could, but 90% of the images don't show up for me :(