i think it has some depth issues seeing as its tiled so bad, if youre gonna make a game with only one room, this small, you should really think about making it without tiles

a small tip i would point is that the bottom of the wall tiles should have grass, or else, they would look as if they wee floating over the ground. like you did with the other structures.

indeed. i looks better. just the dirt on the graves should be more... uniform, more like a tube, so these wouldn't look like cliff edges. something like this maybe?

(ignore the dithering)

Yes, that's good... I want to give the impression of freshly turned earth, so I'll texture it a bit....



I'm  also trying to break up the monotony a bit. Added some cracks to the graves, flowers (should they stay or go?), and I'm thinking of adding vines to some of the walls. Maybe corner pieces to the stone walls as well...

How do the open graves look?


Edited by absinthelord - 28 May 2008 at 1:21pm

How many colours are do you want to use all together in your game? I suppose it really depends on the target system, if the game requires a modern PC to run, you can use as many colours as you want, but you really would only need one extra, darker green colour (which looks like you've added here). The dithering doesn't look as good as the true shadow, and traditionally dithered shadows were mainly used for sprites because they'd need to move around above the tiles, darkening them under your character. For stationary tiles, it's always best to use non-dithered colours. This also helps if your character is going to have a dithered shadow under him, because if you move one dither pattern over another, it flashes from dithered to full-black as you move over it.

Looking cool so far, keep up the good work.

now everything has been placed over a black box D:

be more subtle with those shadows... they're eating a lot of space from the ground. remember this is going to have a very dark feel given by the palette used, so shadows arent-or better shouldn't be- that big. they are also drawing too much attention from the viewver.

in my honest opinion, you don't need to have shadows for the elements in the background, as the point of view used doesn't require the use of depth.

After some research on popular top-down games, I was quite surprised to find that the shadows are minimal. Usually just areas under tables and so on... SOM2 has some cool illumination and shadowed tiles (or at least gives the illusion of such) I'm going to try and split the difference with it, but there will be inconsistencies and problems. If the stones have shadows, so should the back wall, making tiling difficult and loosing the effect of grass growing on the front edges (it would be too dark). Here's what I have in tiles so far without the shadows....



If someone has something to add on the shadows, I'd love to see an example.

Ooooo, I like that gate!! And the colors do look good and spooky while still being vibrant. I think I'll play around with this, thanks...

I do think your color choice is more moon-enlightened, while the AddamsF. is more sunny.

I insist: depth is not really created by shadows(in this case, in this point of view) because Perspective doesn't exist, therefore making the use of shadows unnecesary(and almost imposible) since the only lightsource posible is the one placed above the field(or in the determined case of a lightsource placed on the field, e.g a campfire.). Thats why most popular top down games only cast a shadow below the characters and structures with elements below it.

since is a tile based game, it may be comprensible that some things may look repetitive. but indeed, you should have a wider variety of object at your disposal.

and we have only seen a screen of the earliets stages.

Here's an example with the dirt and scattered grass and a turned grave. Some small shadows as well.... (quickly done).



This seems like it has a few more possibilities.

Oh I forgot about that grave direction issue, and also forgot about american cemetery! (I saw few samples in some war films...)

I also think the ground is a good idea. Now seems more desaolate, gives more atmosphere!
I sugest, in the final game, to give even more the grave feeling, to add fog
I like also the "scattered grass", looks more detailed than the flat one. Maybe make also some more imperfections, like a tile with some random stones or some tall grass spots.
Now is the wall that looks out of place to me... Still don't know how you can fix that, just a feeling; sorry I cannot be more helpful

hmmmm? is that highlight on the iron fences needed...too clean and shiny, me thinks. Maybe changing them colors to the blue shades used in the stones?

Yup, that's way nicer.

I found the grass a key ingredient. I kinda likes that something was 'living' without the need for life. That it was just a little bit looked nice too. Of course something like a crow would do the same but the tiny splash of green really worked for me : |

Do as you think its best, I'm just devil's advocatin'


Edited by jalonso - 01 June 2008 at 3:39pm

everyone, thanks for all the terrific suggestions. Now I'm at the point where I really need help... I need to animate decent sprites. The ghost is proving to be more of a challenge, as I'm having to animate moving "fabric" like material. Here's the sprite base for the ghost:

Well, my tile sizes have been 32 x 32, so the sprites should be roughly about that size. A little taller than 32 is ok, as this game is being made using depth sorting, but definitely no taller than 64. No frame restrictions, and no real color restrictions here, as I'm using Flash to create this game.

I like everything but the angel
Really well done!

The ghost seems okay, but the animation is not as smooth as the tentacles in your avatar!

Yeah, I tried a couple different bottoms on the ghost. The trick with the pointed one was to not make it look like a giant sperm cell. Here's a couple:



What about the transparency or staggering? Can you give me an example?

The ghost looks great on the tiles.... The last thing I need to deal with i the boy, the main character. Here's the initial design:



It's a simple four frame animation, makes for easy coding.
He needs to have a black outline to show up well against the background and still retain a color value that is complementary to it. Human sprites are not my strongest thing, so any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Yeah, it was a bit fast. No matter, I've decided that the hero needs to be a little more on the vulnerable side, so I dug out some old Charas sprite bases and edited them up:



And it goes well with the background. I created this death sequence which I love (inspired by Dragon's Lair):