7962 replies to this topic

[Nightmeres]

This screen is terrible. I understand and see what your overall projection is. However, there is major style clash. The lower wall tiles kill the gradient texture of the primary, upper walls. The tree tops mesh; it's jumbled and not...right. The green is too dominant, and even with the too dark and saturated scarlet trees, the screen is still unbalanced.

it is a forest dungeon

[Marco]

it is a forest dungeon

That doesn't justify the poor design. Understand criticism, and you could go far.

[Moosh]

it is a forest dungeon

A bad looking forest dungeon. Learn to combine level palettes and your stuff will look less awfully recolored.

[Lightwulf]

http://imageshack.us...5/zelda022.png/

like this

Personally, I like this version of the three. It's what I was thinking when I saw the first two.

About what the others recently said, I think it would be helpful to state what the intent (overall idea) of the dungeon is. Were you talking in another thread about having the dungeon be a floating tree fort? I forgot about it until now, because I was about to comment about the background trees (in the lower portion of the screen) looking like they're underneath the dungeon. I was going to say to use those trees instead of the leafy treetops you have on the bottom and bottom-right of the screen; but if this is a floating tree fort, I understand why there are trees in the background.

I think the best thing I could suggest is to make the treetop in the center be more circle-ish and less oval-ish (i.e. make it wider; it looks a bit thin).

About what they're saying regarding the color scheme, is there a way you could use brown (tan or light brown or earth brown) instead of green for the walls/floors/etc.? I know you need green for the treetops, but it would probably look better (maybe more realistic) if the dungeon walls were not green.

[Nightmeres]

Personally, I like this version of the three. It's what I was thinking when I saw the first two.

About what the others recently said, I think it would be helpful to state what the intent (overall idea) of the dungeon is. Were you talking in another thread about having the dungeon be a floating tree fort? I forgot about it until now, because I was about to comment about the background trees (in the lower portion of the screen) looking like they're underneath the dungeon. I was going to say to use those trees instead of the leafy treetops you have on the bottom and bottom-right of the screen; but if this is a floating tree fort, I understand why there are trees in the background.

I think the best thing I could suggest is to make the treetop in the center be more circle-ish and less oval-ish (i.e. make it wider; it looks a bit thin).

About what they're saying regarding the color scheme, is there a way you could use brown (tan or light brown or earth brown) instead of green for the walls/floors/etc.? I know you need green for the treetops, but it would probably look better (maybe more realistic) if the dungeon walls were not green.

http://imageshack.us...7/zelda024.png/

is that a start?

and yes its a floating tree fort

[Jared]

Nightmeres, I love the idea. But it seems like you're going to need a custom palette. The leaves need to be completely green, and the trees need to be brown. (Also, these don't make sense. How are trees growing out of the stone?)

[Nightmeres]

Nightmeres, I love the idea. But it seems like you're going to need a custom palette. The leaves need to be completely green, and the trees need to be brown. (Also, these don't make sense. How are trees growing out of the stone?)

it is a custom pallet and why do the trees have to be brown, their meant to be green

[Lightwulf]

http://imageshack.us...7/zelda024.png/

is that a start?

and yes its a floating tree fort

Yes. I think the change in color is for the better. I was picturing lighter brown, but to me the colors look okay.

I don't know if it makes sense to have heavy blocks on top of a tree. The branches might be able to hold up heavy blocks, but I would imagine it would sink down into the leaves a bit.
If you don't need them to be pushed individually, you could make the four-block obstacle a big branch (custom graphics, I'm sure) blocking the way. Maybe you could make unwalkable tiles that look like branches (with or without leaves) sticking striaght up out of the treetops. (These suggestions are assuming the blocks are removed via a secret trigger, which I'm not sure is your intention.)

Nightmeres, I love the idea. But it seems like you're going to need a custom palette. The leaves need to be completely green, and the trees need to be brown. (Also, these don't make sense. How are trees growing out of the stone?)

it is a custom pallet and why do the trees have to be brown, their meant to be green

I think there's some miscommunication here. When we say "tree" we are not talking about your green treetops; we are saying that the tree trunk and branches should be brown. Of course the tree leaves are supposed to be green. I think what Jared's trying to get at is that your treetop sprites are mostly green but their darkest color is a shade of brown instead of dark green.

Also, Jared's saying that the dark brown trees with faces on them shouldn't be placed on stone floor. I agree; they should be on earth/ground/dirt tiles. If the tree fort is built on top of giant trees, you could modify the lower tiles of those tree guys to make it look like they are growing through a big hole in the floor. Either that or you could make them look like they're in a big planter box with dirt in it. (Either way needs custom graphics, of course.)
It's either that, or just don't put them there. Stone statues would work better and shouldn't require any custom tilemaking.

[kurt91]

Are you using 4-bit color or 8-bit on your tiles? I did some playing around with the screenshot, and I think I have a couple ideas on what you can do for how things look.

First off, the lower brick-wall tiles you're using don't match the detailed upper ones. I did a bit of messing around in Paint, and found a way to make the tiles look about right. I only did this for the straight walls, but you should be able to work out the corners with minimal effort. The tile I'm using to explain this has the wall pointed to the right.

Start by shrinking the width of the tile in Paint by 75%. You should have a set of bricks that look thinner than the upper ones. Now take the second row of bricks and copy/paste it onto the missing space for the tile. Finally, recolor everything 1 shade darker than it is currently. Your absolute darkest brown should probably go to black (if you're using 4-bit mode. If you can manage the additional color, make another shade of brown), and each shade of brown should be turned into the next shade down. The resulting tile should work for the set of bricks lower down, and should match the existing detailed bricks fairly well.

Next, like everybody has been saying, try to squeeze an extra shade of green into your palette, so you can replace the dark brown in the leaves with a darker green. If you need the space for the added colors, try to recolor those two Game Boy-style trees to use the same colors as the bricks behind them. They stand out in a bad way, and don't look very good with the rest of the graphics you're using. The colors they use look more red than brown, and I don't see anything else in the screen that uses the same colors.

Finally, the floor tiles you're using here just don't have the same level of detail as your other tiles. Can you think of some way to add detail, whether it be adding some wear-and-tear to the squares or showing the edges on them?

[Nightmeres]

Yes. I think the change in color is for the better. I was picturing lighter brown, but to me the colors look okay.

I don't know if it makes sense to have heavy blocks on top of a tree. The branches might be able to hold up heavy blocks, but I would imagine it would sink down into the leaves a bit.
If you don't need them to be pushed individually, you could make the four-block obstacle a big branch (custom graphics, I'm sure) blocking the way. Maybe you could make unwalkable tiles that look like branches (with or without leaves) sticking striaght up out of the treetops. (These suggestions are assuming the blocks are removed via a secret trigger, which I'm not sure is your intention.)

I think there's some miscommunication here. When we say "tree" we are not talking about your green treetops; we are saying that the tree trunk and branches should be brown. Of course the tree leaves are supposed to be green. I think what Jared's trying to get at is that your treetop sprites are mostly green but their darkest color is a shade of brown instead of dark green.

Also, Jared's saying that the dark brown trees with faces on them shouldn't be placed on stone floor. I agree; they should be on earth/ground/dirt tiles. If the tree fort is built on top of giant trees, you could modify the lower tiles of those tree guys to make it look like they are growing through a big hole in the floor. Either that or you could make them look like they're in a big planter box with dirt in it. (Either way needs custom graphics, of course.)
It's either that, or just don't put them there. Stone statues would work better and shouldn't require any custom tilemaking.

http://img571.images...66/zelda026.png

is that what u meant?

Edited by Nightmeres, 09 December 2011 - 02:01 PM.

[Lightwulf]

Pretty dang cool! It would be even better if you add small leaves to the ends of the branches for those branch tiles, but I think it will work as is either way.

You did a good job of fixing the darkest green color and replacing the tree guys with stone heads.

Now the trees in the background don't look right (they're tan/brown). You might need to recolor them to make them green.

Also, I don't know if you saw what kurt91 and Furion were talking about. Basically, the lowest brick tiles you have don't look right because they stay the same size instead of become even smaller.
If that confuses you, look at the first row of brick tiles: in the top half of the tile the bricks are a couple pixels high while for the lower half the bricks are one pixel high (not including the black lines). Rather than making the second row of bricks all one pixel high, it needs to look like they are descending even further. You'll have to go with at least a few pixels depth of plain black.

So, for the tiles in the lowest brick row down, my suggestion is to have a couple of rows of bricks one pixel high and then a few pixel rows of plain black. After that, either just cut it off there (by putting transparent pixels for the rest of the tile on down) or do a scatter pattern (diagonal pattern with black and transparent pixels).

Edited by Lightwulf, 10 December 2011 - 12:23 AM.

[NoeL]

One suggestion Nightmeres, which was already hinted at before - people can't walk across leaves. They're way too heavy and would fall through. If you could change the shot so that you're walking on the branches of the trees instead of the leaves it would look more realistic. That's what I did with my forest temple, although I was pretty lazy with the branch graphics (coincidentally, the tiles you're using for the walls are the tiles I drew for that temple ). Here's a screenshot:

Edited by NoeL, 10 December 2011 - 04:53 AM.

[Schwa]

Once again, since I have no better place to show them, yet, and I don't want to keep everyone in the dark forever:



Many ground enemies, including these Octoroks, though they will not walk straight into a water or pit, can be attacked and knocked into the water or pits for a one-hit kill.

Other enemies, like in the second shot, fly right over the water. The Boon and the Ache both are immune to Water KOs and Pit KOs, because they fly right over it. Don't try following them in.

Oh, and I'm experimenting on the Subscreens a little, too, primarily with the text (I don't know that I like the three-color "Life" text, I'll mess with it a little), and that one extra unused gauge next to the Heat Gauge. I'm not sure yet if I'll follow through with what I'm thinking of using it for; still debating.

That is really good! Some of the perspective on the right looks a little abstract, but the colors of this shot are extremely delicious on the eyes and the graphical style raises my spirits, it feels very upbeat. Nice tektites too, they look like they might try to make a nest in my hair...

Edited by Schwa, 10 December 2011 - 03:07 PM.

[HollowKnight]

I've been away from Zelda Classic for a while and got an idea for a sort of quest with a treasure hunter sort of deal. Hopefully I'll have the attention span to finish it, but as for now I'm just playing around with Gameboy tiles because they are the ones I'm going to use.

Opinions?

I was going for a simple look and I think it came out alright. I wanted it to be sort of a snowy ditch almost, like an empty riverbed or anything with walled sides.

[Cukeman]

wow that's a very evocative snow shot