To a great extent, the original Zelda tileset is 'charming', because it brings back so many fond memories. It has that cozy, velvet slippers sort of feeling. There's nothing wrong with modelling something on that,k or with making improvements to perspective; or both. It depends on if you want to replicate the 1986-1988 NES feeling, or not.
I like this project, and if the creator doesn't mind, I would like to use some of his designs as templates for 8-bit 256c tiles for TGC at some point. On
e of the things that I need to draw, are better mountain tiles for the game, along with better dungeon room tiles, for different room shapes. I am wanting to do slate-coloured mountains, that have perspective to themal scale versus the Link sprite, but more about halfway between FF style overworld stuff, and Zelda overworld stuff; or perhaps, in Z1 scale, with a FF type of shading. There is some stuff in Crystalis that i could borrow, but I;d rather make them myself.
My next, and bigger trick, will be to make walls for dungeon rooms, all in either golden, or dark blue;violet/grey hues, with different brick, panel, rock, stone, or other textures. The main 'Golden Cenotaph' is literally golden inside, and out, but I want to steer away from single wall types, and start to get creative with rooms, and room-based puzzles.
I also have to do an entire city under a mountain for the dwarven delves, which I think will come out rather cool. I was thinking of using Gleeok;s Z3 scrolling in that, but I need to make a demo quest for myself that uses his Z3 scripts, and see what i can do with them.
Back to the topic at hand: If you don;t want any critique, feel free to tell me to put a cork in it, but here are my observations:
On the right cliff, the edge closest tot he sun, fades too much with the background. Some more dark spots, making an inner-shadow on the ridge, in the opposite manner as the outer-shadow on the opposing faces, would probably make it clearer. I know I mentioned this before, but I think I wasn't too precise on the details.
I don;t know what colours you have for grass tiles, but it would be nice if they were seamless. It would also be nice to include mountain, lake, and other terrain tiles that incorporate grass. That is, the curves around a lake, or in the dips in hills and dales, the grass needn't stop at the border of the tile with the curve. Look on the bottom of the right cliff, and note how the grass stops, with a tan border between it and the mountain.
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guess that with a four-colour set-up, you can't fix this directly, however, you could include tiles in the grass set, that the questmaker can sneakingly add as FFCs, that are transparent, around the shape of the mountain, to make tufts of grass (using the grass cset) right up to the edge of cliffs; and even some shrubbery, or other greenery that grows on, or up its side. THis way, a questmaker could use the tileset as-is, or use FFCs to add more detail, at their discretion.
Grass also is nearly seamless horizontally, but vertical tiles have a 'line; that clearly separates them. A good grass undercombo is also prudent, so that a questmaker can make more rounded grass patches (rounded corners, and such, using FFCs, and when Link cuts the slash combos with grass, it doesn't go from grass to sand, but from grass to 'less grass'.
A variant 'plain ground' tile series, with grain, like loose stones, and sand, would be a nice addition. The flat, empty tan look is probably what most people hate about the classic tileset, and adding definition with your cset changes should be workable. You can of course, make this an additional tile series, and leave the tan tiles, and let questmakers swap them as they wish.
I can't tell if the starting screen 'green' tiles are supposed to be mountains, or forests. They look sort of...hmmm...between the two?
The bombed open door on the blue dungeon screen has a rather off appearance, that is hard to quantify, I would need to see more bomb doors to know what I'm looking at.
If you ever want any help with sprite-drawing, let me know. I could lend a hand, now and again, to take my mind off the immense about of work that i should be doing in TGC, on my books, and for the Guild; instead of smoking and watching anime and Zelda LPs, to cure my depression.