Small scale AND small palette doesn't really work for photos, which is why pixel art was invented ;).
Maybe enlarge either your palette or the block size? Though this method probably works best for a full screen background.

Care to share your bg pic, palette, screen of your game etc?

Sorry for the delay...

Here are some pics of what i've tried so far. The source pic is huge though...

One of the above has been scaled first, then indexed and the other was indexed then scaled. I can't remember which is which.

I thought with the relatively nice and even block shapes in this wall that things would work out. I was wrong.

Below is a screen cap from Amiga Gods. I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from this game but hopefully i can make something that looks a bit better. Not that Gods looks bad but i will have larger sprites.

I also went and watched a long play of Torvak... yeah, it's the kind of thing i'm trying to do. The controls looked a bit awkward but there were some cool creatures in it.
Hopefully i can do some better AI for my monsters too but i might be getting carried away. One level and a few monsters and traps will be a good start though.
Anyway, i think i will go with something hand drawn and tiled with addition detail stuff added in places. Then i might be able to do a game mock up.

So Mark Coleman did Gods? I though i read somewhere that a woman was the artist?

Gods seems to have a pretty big palette which probably helps it look so good. I want to go with something more limited to begin with to simplify things.

This is the palette i've used for Bogan. I've already had to expand it a little as it needed some more earthy, subdued tones and more shades between black and white.

I'm trying to find some time to do a block background but it's harder than i imagined to make it not perfectly aligned.

I've chosen my palette to, hopefully, cover all of the character and background colours I will need. I think it might look a little cartoony in some instances though.

I might end up creating creatures on some levels by simply dropping the level of the R, G or B (or combinations of them). But that would technically give me more than the colours in my palette. Though I could still feel relatively happy that I made the original pieces with the limited palette.

DBs icons look really good. Hopefully I can make something that good myself, at some point.

As to my block tiles. I'm doing them in 100 by 100 so it should be big enough, haha. The latest, unfinished, version of Bogan is 60 pix high. I thought he should walk past a wall with a tile size bigger than him.

Well, really it was because I thought it would be easier to build the map by making it out of a uniform tile size which could accommodate the character actions like jumping and attacking. Once I have a set of tile for each block type I need, ie. surface on top only, surface on two adjacent sides making a corner piece, platform adjacent to top only, etc. then I can make a level map from them as if they were Lego.

Thanks Hapiel, that's pretty cool. But i've gone with drawing the BG instead of trying to convert it from a picture.

After wasting some time this morning trying to make a palette using colour ramps i just jumped in with my existing palette, after tweaking the greys to make them a little darker. (I'll return to the ramps at some point though)

I used a technique i saw in the Noobtorials thread (I think it was there) and lined in the blocks in the center diamond of a 100 x 100 pix canvas, then rotated the corners and filled the middle.

I spent a while adjusting the blocks so it didn't band too badly and started colouring. I've ended up with this:


Which looks pretty good tiled across a mock up and matches the style of the sprites i've done already. I first started it with a rougher surface and decided it would take too long but it might be a better result in the end so i will revisit that too.

Here are a couple of level mock ups saved in MSPaint. I guess i could use the one saved as a GIF (which effects the flat colours strangely) as the BG and get free texturing?


That's the current version of Bogan, he's going to become 60 pix tall in next incarnation. The little creature is a Shield Smurry and is 30 pix tall. The bottle isn't done using my current palette. It and a bunch of other items will have to be done for the game too.

Blending into the background on the far right is a stack of three flame shooting traps that will also need a redesign, judging by how they look here. I'll make them 50 pix tall and 25 deep so i can stack them two high on a tile and they will have more presence.

I'm going to try do some platforms and floor/wall/ceiling tiles now. These would be loaded over top of the BG and the code would refer to them for collision detection, etc.

Lets see how much i can get done in the next few hours...

Really? I thought the highlights were pretty minimal and the main colour was the darkest grey i'm using. I thought the sprites were showing up pretty good.

I haven't got time to tweak anything now but if you want to do that to show me what you think it should look like that would be cool.

Also, i've made some floor tiles...:

I did the grey first and like the look. Then i started on the ceiling and realised that the floor should probably have a bit of dirt on it, ie. brown, leaving clean grey for the ceiling that nothing walks on. (Except now i just got an idea for a roof crawling enemy...)

Which do you think would look better? I'll need to use a different texture/colour to do the end on walls too.

Progress is very good !
One critic is that you rely too much on single-pixel detail; When the screen will be filled with scenery and characters, everything will draw as much attention, and it may look messy.
In these brick tiles, you should use 2- or 3-pixel wide lines every time there is a big boundary between two shapes.

You can't possibly create a perfect multi-purpose tile set on your first try.
Instead, start the actual level design as soon as possible, and add new tiles as you need them, in the context of the rooms where you'll need them.

Oh no, rather at the "gameplay edges" of the solid walls, or at borders of cornerstones, so that they "pop" more.

Looked like bat heads, and from they way you place them, corner stones carved as such. But you may have trouble placing them as actual corner stones if they don't fit a simple geometric shape.

By the way, your image had 61 colors, though a good half is redundant. It may be difficult for you to keep up if you don't either :
- stick to a color-indexed mode,
- or keep a graphical view of your target palette somewhere, for easy eyedrop (like the following image)