Okay so one issue with this tileset that I should at least think about; no trees on it.
Very easy reason – the scale of the buildings and lack of a second layer of tiles makes a tree impractical… however… that doesn’t mean I can’t at least use some design constraints/constants that this tileset already has and do my best. I shaded the ground a bit to imply where the tree is. I’m not sure how stupid of an idea this is, please let me know.
Look in the boittom right corner; now if the decision to cut them off at the top like that is a bit weird, it’s not inconsistent with this tileset at all – because the buildings do something similar if the space behind them is needed, as I’ve already shown off in this thread once, but as a reminder;
I think what I’ll do is use mostly the exact same object palette (if not the exact same one – the way the palettes on this tileset work, I could have rooftops that use the same colors the grass does (if only I had space, I would have done that) for another tileset that’s slightly less train station oriented.
Shrubs and other smaller trees can often be found in towns, lining the sidewalks of the streets, in plazas, or in the small backyards of homes, so I think you could use the (evergreen-like) single tree tiles which feature in some of the other available tilesets just fine? (Ex: See Forest Valley here for the type of trees I mean.)
I have planters for bushes and the like already there, the key difference is that these are planters. I should have mentioned these previously, that’s my mistake.
The other thing that might have made it harder to see is the layout of the tileset, which I will freely admit probably only makes sense to me. Some tiles were placed where they are because that’s just where I had space (or in the case of the gravel/sand path tiles, where they are on other tilesets), not because putting them there was necessarily a good idea.
A generic-ish CG I did for Beno yesterday in about 10 minutes. I still have the .PSD file for it. It’s not color-reduced. I’m not going to stop you if you want to do anything with it.
Tileset time, let’s have a look at Cynon’s Metropolis, with some explanations after the fact;
So I’m getting rid of the FE6 wooden bridges, on the grounds that those tiles don’t really make a whole lot of sense in a city that’s built up like this, except for smaller piers. Bridges that are more solid and have concrete foundations work a little better, with battlement-like railings.
They’re a little hard to make out, but they’re on the far right of the picture, above the train rolling stock and second story English buildings (I should have placed those where the crates are).
If that explanation doesn’t really make a lot of sense, then here’s a test map. This map isn’t really supposed to make sense, it’s more to show as many tiles being used at once as possible.
One thing I’ve noticed is how little time it takes for maps with this tileset to get really big, really fast. I’ve thought about making a version of this that is scaled similarly to the tileset below, and I may have already finished most of the rooftop tiles.
We’ll see how much I like that idea. Regardless, it will still have trains on it.
…and here’s an update to the tileset I was working on for @TheAtlas for Tale of Valor, using some elements made by WaVe as well.
You may notice that this map is kinda big, perhaps a little too big. So I started working on a variant of this tileset that has smaller buildings, to allow me to showcase a larger geographic area.
A red barrel might be a good indicator that it might be a bit explosive. I should have enough space on the object palette for it, too – since I have a barrel that only uses one tile on the object palette as opposed to 4.
The trains are back! The locomotive is edited off of a sprite from a Thomas the Tank Engine game for the Amiga, I believe.
Please comment if there’s any tiles on the tileset image below that don’t make sense as to what they’re supposed to be, or if there’s tiles that you’d like to see that aren’t currently here.
Or if there are tiles that I could arrange in a more readable way, because what makes sense to me might not make sense for everyone else (the stone bridge tiles are the most obvious culprit of this I think).
But again, feedback is much appreciated. That’s how good tilesets can become better tilesets.
I’m at it again with music, also;
Composed by FelixTrapper and Tyvek Linhaal for an RPG Maker 2000 game they made over 20 years ago. Download the song here.
Would it be easier to have a map tile for an explosive barrel or would it be easier to create an “enemy” on the map that used a barrel as its map sprite, much like the crate map sprites which are in the Repo and can exist as “units” to be destroyed, shoved, etc.? I feel like the latter would be more practical for gameplay functionality, compared with having to create new terrain data and tile change effects/actions?
Dig the locomotive sprites though. Makes me flash back to Railroad Tycoon…
As of now, I’ll just let whoever makes the maps with this tileset make that decision with some little red barrels. The traditional color of barrels that Definitely Are Safe.
Also experimenting with some water tiles from Treasure of the Rudras. Next I think I’ll try and re-add some of the river tiles… maybe some corn stalk tiles, maybe think about arranging the gray sloped wall tiles in a slightly sensible way.
Been working on a cave tileset that I intend on releasing and making battle platforms for. I started playing around with some FF6 tiles, realized that the rock wall tiles I was using wasn’t working too well, but that some wall tiles from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon seemed to be working out just fine.
The cave wall and cave floor tiles do not use the same colors, even though they’re very close to each other. Mystery Dungeon’s shading isn’t agreeing with how I like to use colors. Palette 3 is barely used at all (I tried to make a lavender colored ore but it doesn’t show up that well), and Palette 1 isn’t used at all, but I’ll probably use a type 2 tile animation on palette 1 to have glowing lanterns and maybe a shimmering crystal.
I took some suggestions from the discord server on what to add and included some tiles from the city tileset in the previous post (trains, stone brick walls that I edited from the IS lavacave tileset…).
Some notes: The top set of stalactites uses the hill/mountain terrain type, the bottom set uses the forest terrain type – the tiles are not identical. I may or may not get rid of one set, depending on how I use some colors on palette 0.
… there might be someone around here who knows why this song was converted and posted for this weekend, and specifically this weekend. If you don’t know, don’t worry about it, it’s just the theme to Delta Force.
So that cave tileset is turning out pretty good, I think. Here’s a look at the test map with two different color palettes.
You may also note the water in the north parts of the map is not vanilla style water – it’s modified from water in Treasure of the Rudras, because I thought vanilla water would look weird due to a difference in ambient lighting.
I don’t see any reason to commit to one or the other right this second, because I could realistically put both on the final version of this tileset…
…cause I still have a lot of space to use. I’ve used 4 color palettes for everything here, but honestly, one of those palettes is barely used at all, so it might as well be 3. I’m probably going to make use of the same lightposts and lanterns that I used on the city tileset, which means a type 2 tile animation (color cycling). Good thing I already have that done and can just port it over. 8)
So, how much space is left on the object palette? Well…depending on your outlook, either not that much or quite a bit.
This is very cool. Will definitely be using this for a map set in a silver mine for my hack when it’s done.
If you want suggestions for more tiles, maybe some wall torch tiles and some sideways stairs. Also idk if it would be possible to do vertical rail tracks and corner tracks for an intricate mine cart rail.
If you have palettes left maybe a lava variant of the water could be cool.
Vertical tracks are definitely something I thought about, the problem is that, given the size of the train cars, the turns might have to be a bit wide.
