I’ve working on a 2d platformer game quite awhile now. Our engine isn’t limited to Tiles, but we’ve built an importer to utilize tiles to build out scenery. I’m an artist, and I’ve worked with tiled and have developed many assets for our game. At the moment I find I’m in sort of an artist block.
Perhaps we have too many methods of bringing art into the game, or perhaps I have pushed myself too far to come up with flexible options instead of simple solutions. Whatever the case, I’m reaching out to see if anyone is willing to share tile pallet/template solutions. I feel like I’m in a place where I’m getting too meta about all the ways tiles could be used and combined, and I’ve just sort of had a hard crash. I look at tiles now and its like my brain blue screens.
I can’t help but feel that if I could talk to whoever put together the tile sets for The Curse of Issyos for even like 20-30 mins, or even just see 1 or several of their pallets my brain would be cleansed and I could move forward.
Something about simpler older game tiles. They can be masterfully crafted and provide a straight forward solution. Where I am at now I doubt every move. Should I go by 64x64, 32x32? Border sets over the top of texture sets or combine them?
I’m very sorry to hear about your block, though unfortunately I may not really understand your problem. Your tiles look like they’d be easiest to work with at 64x64, so why doubt if 32x32 would be good? Do you need additional flexibility in placement sometimes?
Did you try asking your team members for feedback? It seems you’re stuck on questions that don’t really matter in the end, and they are preventing you from seeing how awesome the work you’ve done actually is. Indeed you should try not to worry so much and instead spend some time thinking about where you want to go with the game. What is really still missing?
What is the second image in your post? Is that a level blueprint for yourself or is it the input to automapping rules that “skin” this into the eventual level? If so, that’s a pretty nice approach, but keep in mind that you’re doing that to save yourself time. If it opens up a Pandora’s box of questions that are difficult to decide on, try to keep it simple or revert to doing some things “manually”.
I hope this helps. If you are wondering about any changes to Tiled that may be able to make your life easier, feel free to make suggestions as well. Though it sounds like first of all you need to reflect about what really matters for your game. You’ve come so far already!
Thank you so much for your reply, bjorn. I think you are right on all accounts. There is a lot to mull over, and I will probably re-read your thoughts several times.
The second image is sort of a blueprint for my pallets, and indeed hopeful in that they can be used to skin any level area and by swapping pallets could swap the assets to allow a great deal of flexibility in deciding the environments for gameplay areas.
Thank you once again for the kind comments, perspective, and encouragement.
