Hey everyone! I'd love some advice on the floor (and maybe wall) textures I've been making for March of Industry!

As background (pun intended) this game is a tycoon game, made in Unity, that takes materials into machines and produces weapons for your east-european country in the post-soviet era. It was started at the 8-bit history game jam in Seattle at AIE campus as part of a bunch of games based on social topics (we did ours on the Military Industrial Complex). From there we liked our result enough that we decided to keep working on it and are entering Beta I believe within the month. We'll also be at Penny Arcade Expo and Seattle Indie Expo at the end of the month.

Release Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tanshkr4Ywc

Our website:http://marchofindustry.com/

Steam page:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/374640/

My website with lots of things from the game:
http://theancientstory.weebly.com/march-of-industry.html

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ANYWAY...We haven't really had much negative feedback from players at cons so far, and in fact we've had people sit down and get pretty involved with it, but when reviewed by folks from the games industry we have gotten some feedback that they had some issues with the floor texture. I'm not sure how much this is folks who see themselves as game designers being picky or if there's some things that could be addressed.

I'm curious how people like the texture for floor and walls and what changes especially veteran pixel folks might suggest.

I built the wood floor to be reminiscent of an old-timey shop. I used slight hue shifts to give variation in the planking. I added various dirt/paint/hole/plate sort of hero tiles to break up the pattern and there are multiple randomized tiles also to break it up. At the edge of the floor I put semi-opaque sets of pixels with greater and greater opacity leading up to the wall. And the walls are designed to be darker at the base and brighter at the top.

I've talked to the main designer about varying the shape of the spaces available to the player, but for now square areas are all we have implemented. I may add various hero environment pieces, things like stairs or landings, that can't be interacted with to break up those spaces without the need for a lot of programming. We'd also talked about having a silhouetted shantytown outside that the factory expands into.

How do you like the floor and walls? Do you think the floor needs to be toned down somehow to make other items more clear? Do you have any color suggestions? Shapes? Size and perspective? etc.

Thanks! And of course come see us at PAX or SIX if you'll be there and play our game! Or sign up for our beta. I think we have like around 5000 folks signed up so far.

PS. We're also going to probably post in the near future asking if any pixel artists specifically want to be involved in an earlier Beta and try their hand at making your own community items that would be implemented in the game as added community content. Have a crazy weapon you want in the game? You can make it at 16x16 and submit it. Will have more details later.

Thanks again!

Edited by Iscalio - 07 August 2015 at 1:41pm