Jump to content

Photo

Koten - Reimagined Classic

Tileset

  • Please log in to reply
237 replies to this topic

#16 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 30 March 2014 - 07:03 AM

Quite possibly. More exposé on the subject, in use, would be nice.

 

One thing that I would want to see in this sort of tileset, is a wider variety of ground types, and some mountain tiles for making ledges, and whatnot, without deviating too much from the 'classic' feeling. I would also desire that tiles in a series be a bit more seamless (e.g. grass, sand, mountains), so that there isn't a clear, square separation between them.

 

My own project is forcing me to redraw the majority of the classic tiles in an 8-bit mode, with more modern eye-appeal. I would much rather work with original graphics, than rip them from later Zelda games. The major components missing from the classic tileset are freeform dungeon and cave combos, so if I decide to go in this direction, I will end with having quote the number of custom tiles for that kind of thing.

 

It would be nice to see something like that for this project too.


  • DragonDePlatino likes this

#17 DragonDePlatino

DragonDePlatino

    Pixel Dragon

  • Members

Posted 30 March 2014 - 04:13 PM

Quite possibly. More exposé on the subject, in use, would be nice.

I originally intended to include only the default Classic tiles, but after a bit of experimentation I think I'll add just a few tiles to fix some of Classic's problems. Here's a little badland example:
 
badlands_by_dragondeplatino-d7c9swf.png
 
I started out with some traditional cliff tiles and gradually simplified them until I arrived at this. They're incredibly bare-bones, but they're newbie-friendly and they get the job done without taking up too much screen space. Not to mention, they're compatible with the existing cliff tiles! And if you're an eagle-eyed follower of my art, you'll realize these are incredibly similar to another tileset I created for an on-hold sprite comic.

I also went ahead and killed two birds with one stone by making your transition tiles and finding a new use for the darkened Csets. With just 4 tiles, I can create a smooth transition between the bright csets and dark ones! You can see a little example of that in the upper left. I've yet to experiment with this more, but I feel it will make biome transitions smoother and give quest designers more to work with in the ways of paths.

And last but not least, all of the relational water/pit tiles are finished! I'll start working on the dungeon combos later. I found a nice example of how to set them up in v2.5 in some sort of "Tonberry.qst" while I was lurking around on the forums.

Edited by DragonDePlatino, 30 March 2014 - 04:15 PM.

  • Jared likes this

#18 Astromeow

Astromeow

    RESPECT DA OBOE SOLO

  • Members

Posted 30 March 2014 - 04:21 PM

I know its beta so I dont expect cherries, but In my suggestion

 

Diaganol cliffs need better contrast.

 

Dither the waterfall into the pit animation

 

The black pit area, perhaps you should make it more descending, as in you can see a few pixels of ground come off the border. Hard to describe but here is a pic of what I mean

 

zelda034_zpsf0cd85cc.png



#19 Cjc

Cjc

    Cor Blimey!

  • Members

Posted 30 March 2014 - 05:05 PM

Having Tile Cset uniformity is awesome, and something other low-color (8 or less per tile) sets should strive to achieve.  The hookshot and pound combos are also really well drawn.

 

I agree that the pit is problematic, but such is easy to fix.  We can see the waterfall disappearing into the pit, but not the bedrock (right now the ground looks thin and crispy).  If you overlaid the pit edge on top of your general mountain tile for the north side it might work better.

 

Currently (Pardon the Ascii art):

     \ \

     / /

|^^^W^^|
|          |

---------

Possible Fix:

     \ \

     / /

|XXWX|

|          |

---------

 

Where ^ is your current north pit edge, X is your mountain tile and W is your waterfall

 

 

Really loving the set so far, keep up the great work!



#20 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 30 March 2014 - 06:07 PM

What else can I say? Wicked!

 

I like this direction, and it will make things much easier for quesmakers that don't want to spend endless hours manipulating layers and visual effects.

 

Have you done any horizontal or variant (e.g. shallow) riverbeds?

 

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for NES-esque freeform dungeons. The cliffs are gorgeous; the slight shadow missing on the left edge of the right cliff (with a ridge, there could be a small, inward shadow, with a left-pointing light source; which would also improve and clarify the lines of the edge against the ground).

 

Quite a nice initial showing, overall.



#21 Koh

Koh

    Tamer Koh

  • Members
  • Real Name:Dominic
  • Location:Monsbaiya, Virginia

Posted 30 March 2014 - 06:23 PM

Those cliff tiles look at lot better.  It actually looks top down now, instead of "What in the world is the perspective, again?"  So, you have my praise for getting that to look a lot better.  People called those so called quirks charm, but it's still inconsistent overall when it's like that, regardless if it's supposedly charming or not.



#22 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 30 March 2014 - 07:15 PM

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.

I

 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.



#23 DragonDePlatino

DragonDePlatino

    Pixel Dragon

  • Members

Posted 30 March 2014 - 11:46 PM

I know its beta so I dont expect cherries, but In my suggestion...


Well, to answer your and Cjc's suggestion, I've redone that screen and added it to the OP along with tons of other screens. It might be kind of an odd correction, but I'm really averse to adding more tiles to complicated things. Honestly, I view adding more tiles as a band-aid of some sort. More is less!
 

Really loving the set so far, keep up the great work!


Hey, I would've liked to give that a try but I haven't gotten to the pit tiles yet. But I can certainly understand where you're coming from. I'll make sure to design the interior of my pits to be pure black instead of transparent so I can pull off a "fading" effect like this with layers. For now, I've completely redone that section.
 

On the right cliff, the edge closest tot he sun, fades too much with the background....


Hmm...Again, I'm really averse to adding more tiles but proper grass tiles seemed like a high priority to me. I've managed to barely squeak by by adding just 6 more grass tiles. They should work well as FFCs since I've designed them to fit along shores and cliffs. And all of them are slashable so no funky leftover corners like LttP had! :D

I was using grass undercombos as terrain detail, but I guess that really won't work at this point. I went ahead and fixed the undercombos at the expense of one less ground detailing tile.

And finally, to fix the cliffs I've redrawn the highlighted cliff and edited my NES palette's orange a bit. I guess that means this isn't a legit NES tileset anymore but it's not like most people would be able to tell the difference...

Oh, and I'm not really in need of another hand. And you really wouldn't want to work with me because I've been tweaking my palette every other hour! It would be a nightmare to keep up with me. XD

#24 Mero

Mero

    Touch Fluffy Tail

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Tamamo No Mae
  • Location:Rainbow Factory

Posted 07 April 2014 - 10:43 AM

Since you helped me by spriting your Trosling Kraken for me I think it's time I return the favor. I'm going to go ahead and make some palettes for you. Might also attempt to make some tiles for this from my expanded overworld sheets that Lightwulf made for me. :)



#25 Eddy

Eddy

    ringle

  • Moderators
  • Real Name:Edward
  • Pronouns:He / Him
  • Location:London, United Kingdom

Posted 08 April 2014 - 05:00 AM

Holy crap, this tileset looks freaking amazing! I'm really looking forward to what's gonna come out of it, similarly to the Firebird Tileset.



#26 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 09 April 2014 - 08:19 PM

How soon do you think you'll finish this? I'm considering using it for The Last Emperor, part II, or some other future quest of mine. I want to use a different tileset for each quest I do.

 

FWIW, this is the NES palette I'm using for Last Emperor, because the default classic palette seemed too bright to me:

QIiP9I2.png



#27 DragonDePlatino

DragonDePlatino

    Pixel Dragon

  • Members

Posted 10 April 2014 - 03:42 PM

How soon do you think you'll finish this?

 

Hey, Anikom! I started this project on March 20th and it's currently April 10th...if you look at the first page, you'll see that so far I have 53/114 of Classic's tile pages finished, which means I'm just a little over halfway done! If I continue at this pace I'll probably be finished within a month, but no promises as I generally don't like to work on big projects unless it's the weekend. A lot of the pages so far were quite quick because I was just c/p'ing monster sprites in, but I also have a lot of very easy GUI ahead of me. Only time will tell...

 

Oh, and thanks for the offer but I've recently decided on my NES palette. It isn't shown in the screenshots but it's most certainly the best NES palette art-wise. It's the default palette of YY-CHR. The palette isn't very accurate to what you'd see on a television, but it works well for art and looks beautiful on monitors. One also needs to hue-shift a lot to get some proper contrast for your sprites...just going from left-to-right when you're selecting your colors won't work. :B

 

nes_palette_by_dragondeplatino-d7c5uc6.p



#28 Koh

Koh

    Tamer Koh

  • Members
  • Real Name:Dominic
  • Location:Monsbaiya, Virginia

Posted 10 April 2014 - 04:19 PM

*snags that palette*  Save the trees.



#29 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 10 April 2014 - 04:48 PM

Yeah, it matches the output of my TV. Does your palette only have 4 shades of grey? Why constrain yourself to 52 colors though? Why not just restrict yourself to 2-bits per 8x8 tile? That would keep the look but give you more artistic control I'd think. The only reason I'm using my palette is because it's classic. 12 hues is sufficient though, so I doubt you even need anymore (relating to music theory at least).

#30 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 10 April 2014 - 07:14 PM

He's restricting himself only to hues and saturations that were actually available on the RPC02 series PPU; however there are many versions of this: The most basic three are PAL, NTSC, and RGB, of which there are at least six RGB versions with different colour sets.

I guess the goal is that the appearance of any game should match a game that was made on the real NES/FC, although if you use PAL colours, people used to NTSC colours will find them off, or vice versa. The RGB colours are also quite different, so you may want to think about at least three versions: PAL, NTSC, and RGB.

The closest RGB set to the home systems is one that was actually used on home consoles, the Titler and C1 series models, which is about the same as the one used for the Duck Hunt arcade machine, although not identical. The SMB arcade machine PPU has a very different palette to the home console. If you were to put the arcade Vs. SMB on a ROM, and load it on a home NES, or FC, it would look bizarre.

I don't know why the arcade systems used different palettes, but I think it was to prevent coin-op owners from easily swapping games. THe biggest change is palette arrangement, but there are some H/S/B changes too.

1980s/90s Chinese 'clome' systems had their own PPU versions, which had further colour differences, because it was designed to work like the real Ricoh chip, but made in China. The exception is the real HK FC, and the real HK NES, which used the genuine Ricoh parts: The clone systems have slightly different colours to the genuine models.

The nice part, is that once you finish the tileset, you need only make three main palette versions, for PAL, NTSC, and RGB. The PAL and RGB colour sets have a wider variety but the NTSC set has some important hues not available on the PAL and RGB sets.

Keep in mind that the PAL palette isn't what the game creators intended the game to look like. The NTSC PPU is what people like Miyamoto-san would have seen when developing games, and to a lesser extent, the RGB set used for the PPU on the AN-510. At present, the palette you are using is what people in the UK and Europe would have seen, but not what people anywhere else would have seen.

The Hong Kong models may slightly differ too. I don;t recall, but I seem to remember that they used the NTSC chip, with PAL conversion on the mainboard, rather than an actual PAL PPU.

Even the PAL PPU has a few regional changes.





Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: Tileset

0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users