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Critique: Retro-inspired grassland/forest environment.

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Brandross polycounter lvl 2
I've been working on this set of prefab sections for building environments with a sort of "HD SNES" look, with some thought as to how they might work in a strategy/RPG game friendly towards low-end hardware and mobile devices.  Right now, it's still just a mock-up in 3D Max, and there's a fairly lengthy to-do list attached to the project, but I'm kind of at the point where I could use some outside opinions as to what works and what I need to focus on a bit more.

Thoughts?
(Edit:  The top image in the post is from the most recent version of the set, for the sake of comparison.)



Replies

  • gsokol
    Hah, cool!

    Its quite strange seeing what is quite familiar from a top down perspective, from a 3d one, haha.

    I think that, for a kit like this, steps and bridges might be useful.  Kind of a staple for top down adventure games I think.  People might want to traverse along the plateaus.  

    The repetition of your grass tiles is a bit much.  Obviously you will have a lot of tiling, by nature of the tile pieces, but I think you can reduce this a bit by pulling out some detail from the grass, and removing a lot of the contrast.  I think the tiling on the cliffs is totally fine, but you would want a nice, clean read on the ground since this is where the player is navigating.

    Might be nice to have trail tiles as well.  For dirt paths, or paths of thicker vegetation, etc. 
  • X-One
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    X-One polycounter lvl 18
    Have you thought about using camera facing sprites for your tree leaves? I'm not sure what perspective you plan on going for, but at the ground level 1st person/3rd person view the cross/plane method can look pretty rough with a limited face count. The sprites might lend to the old school feel a bit too. 
  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    gsokol said:
    Hah, cool!

    Its quite strange seeing what is quite familiar from a top down perspective, from a 3d one, haha.

    I think that, for a kit like this, steps and bridges might be useful.  Kind of a staple for top down adventure games I think.  People might want to traverse along the plateaus.  

    The repetition of your grass tiles is a bit much.  Obviously you will have a lot of tiling, by nature of the tile pieces, but I think you can reduce this a bit by pulling out some detail from the grass, and removing a lot of the contrast.  I think the tiling on the cliffs is totally fine, but you would want a nice, clean read on the ground since this is where the player is navigating.

    Might be nice to have trail tiles as well.  For dirt paths, or paths of thicker vegetation, etc. 

    Yeah, the simple grass is not nearly as hard on the eyes as the old texture.  Might get changed again, since I'm not sure if this particular look fits as well with the style of the cliffs as I'd like it to.  I actually did have paths in an older version of the set  but I wasn't very happy with them, so those are currently getting redone.  ( The old version can be seen at http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2509404/#Comment_2509404 )

  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    Minor update; a quick test of the new prefabs.  
    -Added paths, stairs & cave entrance.
    -Altered grass & water textures.
    -Remembered to properly set exposure control, smacked self in forehead.
  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    Larger map.  Added in medieval house parts.
  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2

    Fairly large update this time.  Aside from fixing some color issues I finally finished off all of the 45* angle pieces, so maps won't have to look quite as blocky now.    The basic terrain tiles are at a point where I would consider the set more or less usable, but it's still a bit short on accessories and decorations.  (Having more than one type of tree to work with particularly sticks out in my mind...)  I'm also probably going to have to do something about that water texture.  If anyone has any more thoughts on what needs to be improved, I'd be grateful to hear it.

  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    Just for fun, I ran one of the renders through a few filters and came up with this mid-90s style image.  Not sure if it would fit with the pixel art thread or not, given that it isn't really hand-drawn or anything.

  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    Finally got the time to make a few updates.  Aside from a few minor fixes, I added a new type of tree and a water texture that is a better match for a small pond.
  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    I think the new trees could still use a little work.  They don't look quite as good viewed from the side as they do from above.  Not that big an issue if they got used in a top-down only game, but I'd like to be able to let the camera pan around them without the scene looking bad.  If nothing else, the new trees made a for a nicer-looking pre-rendered background image than the old ones.

  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    As a test of the latest version of the tileset, I re-created a section of the original Zelda map.  I've found that remaking areas from older games is actually a fairly effective way of pinpointing issues with my prefab sets that I might have otherwise overlooked if I was only using my own test areas.  
  • Eric Chadwick
    If you're inspired by Zelda style, you might try reducing the amount of fine noisy detail in your textures. One reason the Zelda texture worked so well is their limited amount of detail. They really worked to minimize tiling. The more fine detail you add, the more the tiling artifacts show up. Something to consider.


  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    If you're inspired by Zelda style, you might try reducing the amount of fine noisy detail in your textures. One reason the Zelda texture worked so well is their limited amount of detail. They really worked to minimize tiling. The more fine detail you add, the more the tiling artifacts show up. Something to consider.


    Although Zelda is definitely an influence on this project, it isn't really my intention to totally replicate the Link to the Past look.  I've also been referencing a lot of the pixel art used in the SNES-era Squaresoft and Enix RPGs, which tend to have a lot more detail.  I'm more or less trying to find a happy medium between the two  styles.  Right now I'm thinking I might do some variants of the grass texture with alternate patterns, visible weeds, flowers, ect.;  Just do what a lot of those old games did and use the alternate ground tiles to break the pattern up a bit. 

    I actually did do some rather more directly Zelda-inspired work with a dungeon tileset I made a little while back.  I'd only intended to do the room with the "S" bend to check the seams on my tiles, but ended up doing the rest of the 1st dungeon as well!  (Admittedly, the cut-and-paste nature of the map made it a fairly quick build, but still...)

  • Eric Chadwick
    Nintendo (and most game makers) tend to use very low contrast for the floor tiles because the player and enemies have to be easy to read. This is a good read on the subject http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Defining_the_Rift’s_Visual_Style
  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    Nintendo (and most game makers) tend to use very low contrast for the floor tiles because the player and enemies have to be easy to read. This is a good read on the subject http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Defining_the_Rift’s_Visual_Style

    Thanks!  The grass texture is something I've never quite gotten nailed down to my satisfaction, so hopefully I'll be able to come up with something which will read a bit more clearly.
  • Brandross
  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    Wow, it's really been three months since I had a chance to work on this?  Anyway, I finally got the time to clean up the assets a bit more, add a few parts, and create up a larger test map.

  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    I made up this little overgrown shrine/dungeon entry thing for an afternoon project.   Not too bad for being a quickie model, though the mapping on the "tree stump" part still has a few quirks.

  • Brandross
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    Brandross polycounter lvl 2
    While this isn't the first time I've used the NES Zelda map as a template to test my prefabs, this is the first time I've opted to try and make a more organic-looking redesign of the map.  A chunk of the original map is posted at bottom for the sake of comparison.  So, without further ado, here is an 8-bit game with a 16-bit art style portrayed with polygonal graphics.

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