Tileset Discussion and Preview (Patreon)

Hello.

At the beginning of this month, I shared this long post that detailed my process for the ongoing development of a new character style. Today's post will be less involved, but I'm going to share the progress of some tiles that I've been working on as well.

You'll remember that earlier this year I played through Final Fantasy 6. Recently, I started the next one (or previous), by starting up Final Fantasy 5. It's interesting to see how the graphics have evolved between the two entries. 

The  art for the characters isn't something that I'm looking at much (there's not much to learn from them: the character sprites for FF5 feel like they're from a previous generation), but I'm paying attention to the tiles and environments and studying them as I play through this game. Notably, the tiles are a lot simpler to understand than 6: they're not as visually impressive, but it makes it easier to isolate and consider individual tiles and how they piece together.

One thing that I'm paying attention to is how the tiles feel in-game -- that is, how they are interacted with and how their arrangement affects player collision.

Here's a little clip I took from Final Fantasy 5:

(Note: I'm using a CRT shader to emulate the way the graphics were originally intended to look. Remember that these games were released for television sets, and the art was designed with that in mind. Upscale filters = bad, because they distort the art, but CRT filters = good, because they mimic its intended use. Occasionally I'll turn off the filter to see the pixel art underneath, and it's really fascinating to see how much the CRT enhances the art. I could make a whole post about that some day if people are interested lol-- anyways, It looks like the CRT effect is distorted a bit in the recorded .gif, but not enough to get in the way)

You can see that Bartz walks on the same tile as the front of the counter  (in fact, the counter is about the same height as he is-- I don't think he can see over the top of it :P). His feet are positioned at the bottom of the tile, and the counter-front doesn't go all the way down, so it makes sense that he can be on the same tile.

This is true of some walls, too. Interestingly: not all the walls. Some walls have half-tile bottoms, and the player character can walk on the same tile. Other wall types take up a full tile and the character can't overlap them. I find it interesting how there isn't really a consistency across the entire game-- seems that instead the focus was on the individual tilesets and areas.

These are the kinds of things that I've been paying extra attention so as I play through this game. It's easy enough to look at tile references in maps you can find online (and believe me, I've spent many many hours over the years looking at such images)-- but there's a new level of analysis as I play the games myself with that in mind.

Anyways, here's what I've been working on:

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I've talked about the more generally-gritty SNES direction in previous posts, particularly in comparison to my previous tilesets: hopefully these updated textures speak for themselves.

Medicine Shop:

Note that the front of the counter only takes up a half-tile. Like the FF5 image above, the hero character here is standing on the same tile as the front of the counter. The countertop  makes use of the full collision tile, and I have used that to put objects on top of it on the sprite layer. 

These maps were made in RPGMaker2003, and the screenshots taken from the test-play-- so this is how they look in-game as a final product. Of course, you can mostly ignore the character sprites. Other than the hero sprite (who I showed in the previous update), these characters are from the RM2K RTP, and they are a bit out of place with the tiles. They're not exactly the right size, but I was just using them as placeholders.

Inn & Tavern: 

That fireplace is animated:

The metal stove in the next shot is similarly animated (based on the one from the steampunk expansion).

NPC House:

I hope you enjoy these previews, and as always, let me know if you have feedback and/or suggestions.

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That's it for this week. I'll be back next week with one more release for this month. See you then.

Thanks!