237 replies to this topic

[DragonDePlatino]

A new Koten update is coming soon! Here are the planned features...

Koten Planned Update 1.1

• All enemies, items and NPCs will be redrawn for clarity.
• Main palette will be altered for sharper graphics and more variety.
• Some tiles will be redrawn for clarity. New set of cliffs will be added.
• An "Extras" folder containing 4-directional NPC sprites, sound effects and custom music.
• The last few sound effects, including including all of the fanfares and boss noises. Some sound effects will be redone.
• Link's upward-facing shield sprites will be fixed.

This update originally came about after I got lots of complaints about sprite clarity. So since Koten has been out for a while and people have gotten a chance to use it, does anyone have any complaints they'd like me to address in the next update? I'll be up for tweaking any sprites, tiles or sound effects. By the way, as a teaser for the upcoming update, here's a comparison of the old and new Page 00:

    
 
Also, I have a question...Does anyone ever use .NSF files in their quests? I was thinking of composing a few songs in Famitracker for people to use, but seeing how most people use .MIDIs I'm not sure if this would be worth the effort. Here's the first song I composed. It's a short and simple remix of a very famous song. Props if you can name it and tell me what it has to do with Legend of Zelda!

Edited by DragonDePlatino, 04 September 2014 - 04:24 PM.

[Demonlink]

 

    

 

... The second image is so   and   ish! I see that you changed the yellow for a white tone, it really suits this new update! Plus, dat digdogger = sexy! I'll look forward to your update man, although I don't know what was wrong with the first release. 

(BTW: What's the name of the song?)

[David]

This sounds great DdP! The new enemy colors look awesome and all the planned feature updates are good!

[Moonbread]

It's funny, both really appeal to me.  The former looks more like an NES game's style, whereas the latter looks much more like a Gameboy Color game's style, sort of like the difference between the Dragon Warrior games on the NES and GBC.  I'd probably use both styles for separate quests, personally.

[DragonDePlatino]

... The second image is so   and   ish! I see that you changed the yellow for a white tone, it really suits this new update! Plus, dat digdogger = sexy! I'll look forward to your update man, although I don't know what was wrong with the first release. 
(BTW: What's the name of the song?)

Hey, thanks a lot! Yeah, I originally just wanted to clean up Digdogger a bit but went for a complete redesign with better proportions overall. I've definitely made a lot of artistic progress in the past few months working on Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition!

 

BTW: I won't just give it to yoooooooou~

Edited by DragonDePlatino, 29 August 2014 - 11:38 PM.

[BigJoe]

I had a small issue with certain items not having enough contrast to be made out properly when placed against regular dirt on the overworld. Does the update plan to address this?

 

 

Here is an example.. notice how the outline of the Heart Container isn't completely visible. There may be other items that have this problem too. I think I recall the ammunition numbers looking off.

 

To answer the question about NSFs, I am very fond of using them and have a great deal of fun composing them. I have to say, I've been composing for awhile and my songs haven't neared that level of complexity. Good job.

[DragonDePlatino]

Here is an example.. notice how the outline of the Heart Container isn't completely visible.

 
Thanks for pointing that out! The issue here is that I externally anti-aliased sprites so that they would be smoother on the subscreen. The drawback is that if you set these sprites against anything another than a black background, sometimes there will be some floaty pixelly bits like that. I'll go ahead and add that to my changelist.

Edited by DragonDePlatino, 30 August 2014 - 09:45 AM.

[DragonDePlatino]

Today I was experimenting with some combo setups for Koten Advanced.

 

In case you haven't been following this thread, Koten Advanced will be an offshoot of Koten Basic made completely from scratch. I will be starting on it once I get this last update out and my goal will be to make a 100% NES-authentic tileset that looks good while using as few tiles as possible. So far, all of the tiles I've drawn would only take up 2 combo pages. Take a look at these mockups I made!

 

 

In the upper-left is how a town would look. If you look closely, you'll realize there aren't any "house tiles" here. I simply took a wooden wall, put a door on the front and left the rest to the player's imagination. By using generic wooden tiles instead of tiles only usable for houses, the combo tables take up much less space and drawing screens is quicker.

 

In the upper-right is how a forest would look in Koten Advanced. You'll immediately notice that unlike Classic, I'm not restricted to sticking everything on blank dirt. Instead, I can use grass tiles to give a lot more life to the world.

 

In the lower-left is a canyon mockup. Here, everything is much more dry like in the original Legend of Zelda. It's possible to transition between dark and bright dirt, and lay down some simple pits without too much of a hassle. Notice how the tops of cliffs use a tile setup like EZGBZ's.

 

Finally, the lower-right is a water(?) dungeon. This was a tricky one to pull off, because without slanted walls like in Link's Awakening or Link to the Past, I had to use an orthogonal perspective like in Final Fantasy 3. Doors will still be possible, but for now I'm just going to stick some lockblocks down until I get those working.

Edited by DragonDePlatino, 31 August 2014 - 04:11 PM.

[Demonlink]

Pretty excellent work my friend! You always manage to astonish us with your creativity!  You deserve a hat's off good sir, no really, you do

[David]

Great news about Koten Advanced! Looking at the screens, I think this will be another really great tileset from you. You are really creative as well when making tiles, as I can see. Good luck with the continuation of this project!

[strike]

I will use this. It looks so good.

-Strike

[Koh]

 

 

 

Looks quite good.  Here's a few suggestions.

 

1.  Shadows cast to the right from the buildings, like the tree tiles, to add a lightsource and ground the buildings.  The same could be said for the cliffs/walls, actually.

2.  Shadows for the bridge connecting the rooves; without it, the perspective on it seems really awkward.  Why does the pattern on the planks change on the bridge, anyway?

3.  Cliff/wall edge tiles, that at least bend towards the back at the edge, so it doesn't look like they just cut-off abruptly like that.

Edited by Koh, 01 September 2014 - 09:05 AM.

[Geoffrey]

I have no words adequate to describe how awesome this looks.  Keep it up, broski.

[Shane]

DragonDePlatino, I personally wouldn't suggest adding shadows to everything; it'd create a great deal of complications, especially considering transparency is not an option with such a tileset. And because of that, you'd have to manually make darker versions for every ground tile variations which I would imagine would be very tedious to do, but not as tedious as designing a screen with shadows everywhere. I suggest keeping the tileset simplistic as possible. Hell, even Nintendo avoided adding shadows everywhere in their Gameboy titles. The only exceptions to this statement are the trees, because the GB trees didn't require extra space for shadows to be added in; they fitted in with the 2x2 space. And I think there's a rule here that we might wanna keep in mind for simplistic tilesets such as Koten and GB: If objects require extra tiles for shadows, don't bother with it.

 

And what is it with this recent obsession of shadows on the forums? Mighty strange if you ask me.

 

Edit: Gah! How rude of me to forget to comment on Koten Advanced. I must say, this is a lot better than Koten Basic! I don't like the mountains in all honesty, they look weird. They lack perspective, readability and just feel overall unnatural. I'd honestly suggest you look back at Koten Basic's incarnation and go from there. The dungeon is a little confusing, and I had to stare at it to understand what was going on.

 

But all in all, this is a fantastic start. The top row of screens are really selling me to look forward to release!

Edited by Shane, 02 September 2014 - 08:37 AM.

[Linkus]

Only thing I suggest is redesigning those buildings with proper height and scale. The way those doors and windows mismatch makes me wonder what kind of people like crouching through a tiny door just to enter their homes...