Man, this had a fantastic turnout. Wanna give some thoughts on the other entrants before addressing some of the responses to my own.
Colin: I really like what you're doing with the mountains. I don't usually see GB mountains worked like that, but man it adds a lot of character. Like others have said, it's impressive that this is just using LA tiles.
Feenicks: It feels slightly empty, and yet I can't put my finger on
why. Which I know makes this not the must useful feedback, so I apologize. It's not bad by any means though.
Bagel Meister: I really dig your take on this screen, with the water completely dried up. At first, I almost wanted to complain that it's too one-note, but the more I like, the more it hits me that that's the point. Really drives home the dry/arid nature of it. Big props for creative reimagining.
Orithan: I really like all your custom tiles, and the whole screen had a weird mix of melancholy and mystery that I appreciate.
Mitch: This screen is
almost perfect. I love basically everything about it. So with that said, here's my nitpick. The waterfall. It feels... too flat? Like, the cliffs all taper off as they descend into the chasm, but the waterfall keeps going unchanged. The more I stare at it, the more it seems like a flat thing going vertically down the screen's Y axis instead of into the pit, and I wonder if making it grow darker as it goes deeper down might help. Ultimately though, it's a nitpick. The rest of the screen is beautiful, and I adore the chasm on the whole. It's probably where my vote would've gone.
Zack: I really like the pillar by the grave. Gives the sense of it being some kind of monument. The water detailing is also great.
Now to turn to my own screen. The first thing I wanna address is several comments on it being two screens. It is just a single screen, and not set up with secrets either like Chris suggested, just some layer Hell. The scripts hides layer 2 and 3 when you enter the building, and draws a black box, while a different script changes the scripted elevation when you climb the stairs and swaps some solidities around to let you walk over it.
Incidentally, this whole thing's based off an area in Stellar Seas, so obligatory plug to play my quest. Colin in particular left a lot really good feedback, so I wanna address some of that.
the water to ground transitions inside the building do not fit very well at all, I think you ought to do water to sand to brick and maybe do a gentler water boundary animation that is less animated. That or have the water carve out more of the floor such that there is elevation descending into a pond inside instead. If you go gentler on the water animation, I'd use a waterfall animation that is split into two small flows or obviously more likely a trickling waterfall instead of a raging flow.
This is actually a really good point. I threw the screen together somewhat last minute, but having a more definite elevation change for the water would've looked better. Screen real estate being at a premium though would make it hard to fit all in one screens.
The floor on the inside of the building is one tile too high. I notice there is a small step up into the building from the outside, but I don't think that vertically climbs high enough to make the interior walls only one tile high. I'd make the back wall of the building inside one tile taller (i.e. add one more tile of height to the bottom of the current wall)
With this one, I don't mean to imply that the interior wall is only one high so much as imply that the interior wall isn't being shown for gameplay purposes. Like how some RPGs will cut away walls when entering houses. I worry making the bottom wall a tile higher would really cut down on the amount of space I can use, which is already a problem with ZC's screen size and more complex setups like this.
The broken ceiling looks like torn paper where the waterfall punches through it, the hole graphics in the ceiling need a couple of pixels of depth to imply the ceiling isn't 2-dimensional. The wood frame in the left hole looks more like a ladder that sort of disappears when you get to see from the inside.
Now that you say it, I definitely see it. I'll have to work on that a bit.
The back-left wall tile on the inside shouldn't have that grass bit on it.
Yeah, that's an embarrassing tile error I overlooked. Whoops.
I don't like how the green thing sits right in front of the grave, it sort of looks like an obstruction to the grave. I'm guessing it's supposed to be a sword or something given by the grave.
That particular object's a common collectible in Stellar Seas. When I was designing the screen, it just felt right to put it there. I do see what you mean though, and especially without context, it does look a bit noisy.
And then to quickly respond to TK
I also love how you are incorporating some of my most favourite trees (by Jupiter in the tile database)
Massive shoutouts to Jupiter! His trees are a cornerstone of any of my DoR work.
