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I have a second tileset I would appreciate feedback on.
I have a few details I haven't wrapped up, but it's late and I wanted to get this posted before I went to bed. So right now I only have like four squares of the ground finished, so I haven't bothered packing into the PPU space. (I guess it's better to get some feedback on the base design before I push in all the details anyway.)

Also I tried two different designs for the top layer of the ground; one with little rocks in in and one without. IMO one looks much better than the other, but I decided I'd like to get some feedback before I send one to the chopping block.

Beyond that it's the same ideas as the first set; same game and such.




I'm going to try some revisions to my first tileset and hopefully get that posted in the next couple days.

Two look better than one if you can fit them. Have the simple design without the pebbles, and then place the pebbles tile on top of it at various places.

I'll probably do some stuff for the hell of it, but I'll give you some advice on this one first:

First, Why are the trees in the background wavy, but not the ones in the foreground? Second, what in the world is going on with the trees in the background? They're outlined in red. Third, the leaves on the trees should be much less repetitive, and finally, I imagine a tree with a canopy that large would have a thicker trunk. You could make it take up four tiles as the base, but make it get a bit skinnier as it goes up, like the trees in the background.

Oh, and just to let you know, I'm a guy. Out of the hundred or so people I know on this website, I've never come across a single girl. Kind of weird, but I guess this stuff just isn't as popular with them.

My opinion : The trees looks great, the underground looks ok, but the ground looks awful. Either with or without the small stones on it. Also, the edges of the ground tiles looks particularly awful, those edges should definitely be smoothed, using the repeating pattern tile on a border is often a bad idea.

I see carrots.

I could be wrong, but looking at the tileset, I only see left-facing leaves... If this is indeed the case, and you're counting on flipping tiles, you'll have to reconsider this, since the NES can't flip background tiles, only sprites (the exact opposite of the Master System/Game Gear, which flips backgrounds but not sprites).

Well, I don't want to sound overly critical, but I would redo everything.

Ground - my issue with it is, when (in real life) would you see rocks stacked like this? Take a look at real forests and you see grass, weeds, leaves, etc. But never piles of round rocks.

Tree trunks - the background trunks look weird, their shapes are too squished.

Tree leaves - a bit repetitive. I feel like there should be some negative space (holes) or branches. Or maybe go the other direction, and do a more minimalist thing (flatter and less detailed) would hide the repetitiveness.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

To be fair, platformers are represented in a perspective we never see in real life, and since you have to draw a part of the ground that's not ordinarily visible, there's no problem with being a bit "creative".

Video games (especially 8-bit ones!) aren't supposed to be realistic.

Pinobee for Game Boy Advance approached this compromise in an unusual manner: solid areas were solid black beyond a border of surface.

the DKC games just kind of have it look like the whole level is kind of on a cliff so the camera isn't seeing through the floor. Anyway though, I thought that the ground (if it isn't like the side of a cliff) is supposed to look like if you split the ground in half right there and you're looking inside, so in this case, there wouldn't be weird carrot rocks.

I thought the trees in the background looked odd, as the game is supposed to be directly 2D where everything is perfectly facing the camera, but the trees in the background start above the grass by a good amount, so I made my own grass that actually meets up with the start of the trees:


Unfortunately, it kind of looks like a freshly cut lawn.

And I don't think that turned out so well. Unless the level is very dark, those huge black areas stand out a lot, and areas where absolutely no action takes place shouldn't be distracting the player. It also looks cheap... it's just a bunch of "nothing", wasting screen space.


Indeed, that's not the kind of soil you'd find in a forest. I guess it should be mostly dirt with rocks scattered around?

That game looks very mediocre in about every department, not just graphics. The music is clearly only being generated by the GBZ80, and Gameboy Advance game or not, it isn't good, but it especially isn't good when it's not paired with older looking graphics.


I'd think so. More of a dark brown, like chocolate, than the orange color being used, and only pebbles and small rocks, not boulders.

Really quick edit on the ground.

That's better, but now, the rocks are in really odd shapes, as they should be more circular and not fit perfectly together like a puzzle. There should be more soil between them, and none of that should be that orange color, more like dark brown and potentially gray for the rocks. (Like I said, small rocks.) I know you said it was a quick edit though, and it does already look better.

Actually, now, it kind of looks like Captain Crunch.

Ain't exactly a lot of brown on the NES, you know.
But in all seriousness, if you could suggest a better palette, please do. But I personally am really trying to avoid using the same palette for a background object as I am for any block the player can actually collide with. Games play better when there just isn't guesswork about what is solid and what is not.


I figured that was more statistically likely. But I don't really like how condescending it sounds to just flat-out assume that.


Of course. I hadn't done any of the edges yet, other than the top edge. I really wanted to stop and re-evaluate before I proceeded. It wasn't working right.


Oh good it's not just me.


Waitwaitwaitwait WHAT?! Aw, f*** me sideways, I had no idea!
Well, it wasn't working right anyway. Guess I'll have to start over from scratch.
Also I did some flipping with the trunks.


Yeah, the rock tile has been bothering me for the forest environment. It didn't seem so bad when it was blocky in the first tileset, but it wasn't right here. I will likely save it for a cave or something, but I'll have to make the forest have something that looks more dirt.

*******

So, what I was originally trying to do with the canopy was something like this:

But I simply failed to draw something that looked acceptable. I kept drawing again and again until I got the pattern seen above. And everyone keeps saying its repetitive, but I used four tiles plus an offset pattern. Is repetitive really the right word? I honestly do NOT see a repeating pattern in those leaves.

Before I wound up mirroring the leaves, the canopies weren't really supposed to identify a specific tree. I wanted something that just looked like a solid mess of canopy, like you see here:

...But with more detail; using more tiles and looking less blocky.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I'll try this again in a few days.