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If there was a struggle, i don't see signs of it. It looks great! Top of the class.

The shading of the "triangles" (excuse my lack of vocabulary ) look a bit contradicting to what i was expecting, but it still works nicely.

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http://www.frankengraphics.com - personal NES blog

Your image is shaded well enough that it's clear that those temples are part of the background, but as a general rule, I prefer to have simpler backgrounds when there's no secondary scrolling plane, to avoid confusion.

The struggle is that most of the NES games uses tiny "general" tiles to compose the background, so they could use them over and over again (with a different palette), and I think that's almost a form of art (like on the first level of Castlevania the base of the columns inside are as good to be the shape of the fountain outside and it looks great). But my backgrounds look like exactly what they are, and I think they aren't as great.

BTW Frankengraphics what did you "expect"? Do you mean the triangular pediment or the simplicity of the roofs?

I think the simplicity is great. There could of course be more work done to them, but you might want to save that for other things, and it looks clean as it is and the player's eyes are guided to the foreground by the increasing detail there.

In castlevania 3 level 1, for comparison, a lot of the nametable filled with plain gray tiles than you'd notice when simply playing. It works.

My remark was mostly regarding the light source (assuming it's a moonlit scene). The pillars are reflecting to the right, the majority of the rooftops are reflecting to the left, just as the foreground bricks, but still some other few are reflecting to the right once again. I did a mockup in photoshop. Ok if i upload?

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http://www.frankengraphics.com - personal NES blog

Of course, let's see

Besides unifying the source/direction of light, i also mirrored the orientation of windows to reflect and support the different angles on the buildings, which would take a few more tiles. As always, feel free to use or improve on any of the alterations. EDIT: One thing that could help the perspective some more would be if the pillars in the far end on the short sides of the houses were less lit up. It would also help the scenery composition additionally as a whole to be percieved as intangible backdrop; but once again at the cost of at least new metatiles,and if you can't find a way to reuse tiles, also those.

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http://www.frankengraphics.com - personal NES blog

Thanks the mockup, I will watch light source next time, however the roofs of the building turned right are a bit strange. Anyway I will try an other way, somehow I don't really like this polished background and I'm trying to make something more 'old school'.

Between your background as shown and aiming for something more oldschool, i immediately thought of the ending in battle of olympus with its gritty yet pretty scenery.

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http://www.frankengraphics.com - personal NES blog

The fact that both walls on each building are the same color creates a perspective problem. Very cute graphics though, I'd just pay attention to that issue.

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Got some new version. I don't like to inspired this much by other games, especially when I prefer Castlevania more than Battle of Olympus, but it looks better - I think.

I much preferthe the earlier one. I wouldn't worry too much about foreground / background as you are using temperature at the moment to effectively divide the two (warm is foreground, cool is background).

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Not that it should matter, but i prefer your earlier too (but it's hard to pinpoint why, if it's a stylistic preference or if there's something else) - that said, the bold shadows on the wall piece and column looks very nice in the new one, especially on the left hand building.

One minor thing, i think the new one might look better if the light edge on the roofing panels on the right hand buildings was left and up, instead of left and down.

The shift in roof panels per row also make them defy their expected positions a bit to me, and draws attention. A unified diagonal line might be worth returning to, while keeping ther distinct-ness.

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http://www.frankengraphics.com - personal NES blog

Thanks for the advice, in the end I decided to follow the games where the characters also lack of outlines (Metroid, Kid Icarus) and I will do background just where it's important, and everything else will be collidable or sprites.

I don't know how it will be shown, but a sublevel would look like this. Unfortunately it's more like a mockup, but without the ability to testing it is as it is

This will be the last picture posted. I may rushed the last piece, but wanted to show. I'm working on the graphics and I hope someday we'll get a real game. Everything is a mockup.