[TREE] Elk needs help!

[Mathias]

16x16!? What the.

I have no sympathy for crappy game engines. Make some coder friends.

[Doppleganger]

I would suggest lowering the resolution of these trees if your tile size is 16x16 and you have restrictions to the amount you can use. They could be at least a third smaller than they are now and still carry with them all the detail and interest they have now. It would also make it easier to tile, given that there is less to go wrong.

I would pay attention to your light sources though. The tree looks like it is being lit up from the left at ground level. The top of the tree would catch a lot more light in typical daylight.

My suggestion for the tiling, is to craft decent looking tiles out of the perimeter of the tree, and the places that the perimeter happens to fall on when tiled. Which means, that you should edit the edges of the tree so that they mesh well with the areas they overlay when tiled repeatedly. Instead of it looking like a bunch of the same tree pasted over and over, you could create an organic, bushy, and lush forest coalescing in perfect harmony. Part of that is going to be loosening up on that strong lighting, the contrast is so high between the shadows and the highlights, and in such a strange position, that you will probably consistently get grid patterns until it becomes more subtle.

[PypeBros]

If I may afford a programmer's comment, the engine as you describe it (no transparency in tiles or whatsoever) is completely unsuited to a top-down game. How is the player going to be over the grass and below the tree, exactly ? You usually do that by overlapping two layers, one with 'everything below sprites" and one with "everything above sprites". Afaik, even RPG maker work that way.

Or is that more of a "contest rule" than an actual game engine limitation ?

[Crow]

Or is that more of a "contest rule" than an actual game engine limitation ?

It is an engine limitation. If you want more information, go check out http://www.graalonline.com (I suggest checking out the forums, since the website doesn't really represent..it). Old "game" (also a game developer platform, I guess) which is still somewhat vivid and didn't completely lose its charme yet. The awful limitations don't stop us from creating awesome content! 

[PypeBros]

but your engine supports "sprites" or somehow overlays for small things, no ? so you might have "static" sprites at the border of your tree that actually cover another (free) part of an another tree ...

[Elk]

Well yes, it has NPC's that may act underplayer or overplayer...there's many ways, but y'know, resourcewise, on a map having countless of npcs being there will be laggy, I think...at some extent

[Dusty]

While the engine is crippled(what's wrong with 16x16 tiles though? It's a PC game based off of Zelda LttP, so it's double the 8x8 resolution), I think it's more than capable of doing what Elk wants, he just has to be careful. The tileset is on the large side, and you can swap it out and add temporary tiles over it when you need to. The transparency thing is an issue, but meh. The only thing he's trying to do is avoid adding a lot of useless tiles, so best to avoid having lots of variations and such.

[Elk]

Yeah Dusty has a point @ useless tiles...because I need more than just tree's for the entire overworld, like houses and what not,that all has to be on there...I wish tilesets were bigger in Graal :/

The black & darkgray areas are nonblockable areas (tiles you can walk on) and the white and light gray ones are the ones for blocking tiles, like rocks, trees or whatever...

The only "good" thing about it is, I can use 24-Bit instead of 8-bit so it's not a question of colors

[ndchristie]

to me it doesn't look like a question of the tileset size, as you could fit a lot more using morphable tiles and probably not demanding a tree be 12/6 tiles across.  Slight changes to the tops and bases of vierbit's trees (to allow for the non-trans) would show that a system like that is not only far more versatile, but would probably use fewer tiles.

[Elk]

That might be true but vierbit is using transparent tiles aswell...and I have other tiles already made which are for that proportion, it's simply the games dimensions where the player is approx 32x54ish

(i love you btw ^^)