Tiles that could use improvement


If you are interested in helping with tiles, vaults, patches or documentation, this is the place for that.

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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 02:34

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

It would be nice if someone could take a shot of spider so I could try to slap something over it.

Though if someone's still in doubt about the shambler and the crypt
Spoiler: show
Image

it seems rather visible
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 05:09

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

IMHO, it blends too much as well and needs a slight adjustment; an altered hue or something.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 09:06

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Seems rather invisible to me. It actually took me a few seconds to find the shambler on the picture.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 09:23

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I got your back Bloax, I like this tile so here's a quick levels/saturation adjustment.

note I darkened the shadow, as most things in the game have pretty dark shadows and I think that helps keep the figures visible.
I also pre-emptively made sure your black lines were actually black so the auto-outliner doesn't double up on you.

additionally: I'm not that into the bog body tile, I kind of feel like the humanoid aspect of the figure should be emphasized. These too, are based on a real thing and I saw some a couple months ago.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 12:27

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I know bog bodies are a real thing, though I kind of put a lot of emphasis on making it look like it's been wandering the swamps for a long, long time now.

I also like how the new Crypt just so coincidentally has a floor color that's just exactly the color I went for with that shambler.
Spoiler: show
Image

is this like any better
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 12:36

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

It's still not very clear. My own tiles frequently have the same issue. But this is why Crawl's a collaborative effort! I put mine and yours together for contrast.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 13:04

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

The problem is just that it completely breaks the theme of the sprite and monster to have it that bright.
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

Did you know that I like ruining crawl every now and then? Go check it out.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 13:11

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Remember, you're drawing for a game. The picture has to serve the player's needs.

Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 16:25

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Bloax wrote:The problem is just that it completely breaks the theme of the sprite and monster to have it that bright.


It completely breaks the purpose of the sprite if players can't see it. Your original version is the same colour and shade as the floor tile, it completely blends in.

I've commented more than once on IRC about your sprites not being visible enough ... Sorry but these are the constraints, you have to design around them.

I think the lightened version of the bog shambler looks excellent anyway. It could perhaps have higher contrast: in other words, keep the lightest bits just as bright, but darken the darker bits like the guts and other innards and so forth. But yes this is definitely how visible it needs to be.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 4th July 2013, 01:15

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I mess with the levels on nearly everything I commit, don't worry.

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Post Thursday, 4th July 2013, 01:50

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Bloax: Perhaps you should try doing some background tiles. Your preferred style would work great there.
For sprites, I totally agree with BlackSheep: Character and enemy sprites, (and in general 'foreground elements'), need to be contrasty and relatively vivid, and no good game deviates much from that. Even horror themed games have high contrast on important things, even though they rely on that 'sudden nasty shock' effect of realizing things are much different than you thought.

Castlevania:SotN[1] [2]
demonstrates how far you can go with 'darkness/grittiness' without causing readability problems. Fairly high for BGs, pretty low for characters. You absolutely can't escape the contrast requirement. Artists often work with these constraints by tweaking the designs (eg. if you can't communicate 'diseased' well, you could go for 'noxious' and/or 'falling apart' or just plain gore.)

I didn't mean to ramble on about this, it's just this misconception bothers me. Game art, esp. pixel art, is not fine art, it's got to be strictly optimized for a range of important factors, which often doesn't leave room for conventional types of 'artiness'. Most game art artiness is obtained by understanding and exploiting the constraints.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 4th July 2013, 06:33

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Think of it this way. Tiles is simply a skin on top of ASCII Crawl.

If I can "see" it clearly in ASCII, I better see it just as easily in Tiles. The advantage of Tiles is less memorization of what each different colored letter 'c' means.
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Temple Termagant

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Post Sunday, 4th January 2015, 21:19

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Saw tentacled monstrosity being in need of replacement in the first post of the thread.
So I thought I would draw some.

Image

Looking some more at the game, though, it does not seem to fit in for the intended purpose, and is probably also unusable as any other creature.

I also found the wiki page and the tile there (http://crawl.chaosforge.org/File:Tentacled_monstrosity.png) looks quite nice in my opinion, considering the apparent graphics style of the game.
So what exactly is wrong with the current sprite in the wiki in the first place, and what would be the desired general intent of the game graphics?

Other than some fun, maybe my little creation will just serve as a suggestion to shade eyes a bit differently.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 4th January 2015, 21:26

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Tapsu wrote:Saw tentacled monstrosity being in need of replacement in the first post of the thread.
[...]
So what exactly is wrong with the current sprite in the wiki in the first place, and what would be the desired general intent of the game graphics?

That first post was dated 7 Nov 2012 and the TM tile has already been changed since, IIRC.
DCSS: 97:...MfCj}SpNeBaEEGrFE{HaAKTrCK}DsFESpHu{FoArNaBe}
FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
Bloat: 17: RaRoPrPh{GuStGnCa}{ArEtZoNb}KiPaAnDrBXDBQOApDaMeAGBiOCNKAsFnFlUs{RoBoNeWi
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Dungeon Master

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Post Monday, 5th January 2015, 03:47

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Yeah, probably I should go back and update that list, given that probably 60% of the things on it have been changed since I wrote it.

But that's a nice tile; I'll look around for a use for it. Thanks!

e: And done. I took off the ones that have been improved already and added a bunch of new things to compensate!

e2: If you're looking for feedback, be careful of banding, and maybe think a bit about reshaping the silhouette -- the left and right sides are very flat.
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Post Monday, 5th January 2015, 05:19

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

ImageImageImage
First one is yours, second one is the old "in need of improvement" tile and the third is the one ontoclasm and I threw together.

And I can agree with ontoclasm on the silhouette issue - those long 90 degree lines make it look less round and more square (which might be alright for a metal golem but not ok for a squishy tentacle monster).
Another peculiar thing is the 90 degree tentacle at the very left of the image; not only does it look badly plastered on (why is it emerging from the top of its head) but straight lines aren't very common in tentacles.
Image
Here's a very quick and dirty edit.
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

Did you know that I like ruining crawl every now and then? Go check it out.

Temple Termagant

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Post Monday, 5th January 2015, 13:52

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Thanks, I see I didn't pay enough attention to make the thing look like what it was supposed to be.
The plastered tentacle on the head was supposed to be its right eyebrow tentacle, and the bumps on the head were supposed to be more tentacles but I smoothed them too much.

I wonder why nobody complained about tentacles coming out of its mouth?
Or did the intended mouth look like something else entirely? Maybe like edge of a squid body but then the eyes would be misplaced?

Curved the tentacle outlines a bit.
I guess this version is more like I intended.

Image

Let's hope I'll pick a tile more carefully next time I feel like drawing.

========
By the way, I also did some ants to improve some vanilla nethack tiles which looked horrible at 32x32 (never mind the lower row, I am intending to use the same picture in their forum if I find the right place to post there).

Image

Maybe there is some interest in something like this?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 6th January 2015, 02:49

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Crawl tiles generally have more outlines, a bit more detail, and less "shiny" textures. Admittedly Crawl tiles are wildly inconsistent already; the original tiles used a small number of colours with high contrast, now there are a bunch of tiles with hundreds or thousands of colours, really blurry ones, and even alpha transparency. Anyone wanting a demonstration of how bad it is in this respect should take a quick glance at the thumbnails in crawl-ref/source/rltiles/mon/nonliving. Even something as simple as the size of humans' body parts is inconsistent.

But adding yet another style to the mix is unlikely to improve anything.

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Temple Termagant

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Post Tuesday, 6th January 2015, 17:36

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

duvessa wrote:Crawl tiles generally have more outlines, a bit more detail, and less "shiny" textures.[...]
I can see that, especially now that you mention it. The problem with my tentacle monstrosity as I saw it was cuteness, but there really seems to be more to it.

The tentacle thing is supposed to look slimy and therefore reflective, and the ants and insects in general have a reflective chitin shell, so would it be better if they had some reflection but the reflection would be considerably less intense? Maybe I should post a new version with less intense reflections and more diffuse highlights?
On the other hand, for example the boring beetle does not seem to have any reflection at all from the chitin shell, and I already thought it might need some adjustments before I read your post.

It seems the lack of reflections will be somewhat limiting my participation, because I really like dark shadows and bright reflection highlights, maybe a bit like Darth Vader, because I find those sprites more interesting to draw.
By the way, in the nethack tiles, are the highlights also too bright in the lower row (except the heavily WIP wizard sketch)?

As for the black outlines on the ants, I imagined it would be fixed by making the ants darker (would have done so already, but it was difficult to achieve with the the global 16 color palette of nethack).

Thought about trying Bennu and some bears which were on the list, and possibly some wasps if I get that far.
Is Bennu supposed to look as Egyptian as possible (including the side view like that) or should it be rotated to a partial side view, and should it have wings open or closed, and if open should they be open like while hunting (like this or like that) or something else?
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Post Tuesday, 6th January 2015, 22:51

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

duvessa wrote:Crawl tiles generally have more outlines, a bit more detail, and less "shiny" textures. Admittedly Crawl tiles are wildly inconsistent already; the original tiles used a small number of colours with high contrast, now there are a bunch of tiles with hundreds or thousands of colours, really blurry ones, and even alpha transparency. Anyone wanting a demonstration of how bad it is in this respect should take a quick glance at the thumbnails in crawl-ref/source/rltiles/mon/nonliving. Even something as simple as the size of humans' body parts is inconsistent.

But adding yet another style to the mix is unlikely to improve anything.

If there are particular tiles you'd like changed, please feel free to list them. You might not have noticed, but this thread actually starts with a great big list of such tiles, and, in fact, most of the tiles in /nonliving/ are on it.

I apologize that we don't have as consistent a style as you want, but Crawl contains over 1000 monster tiles alone, submitted by at least seven people I can name off the top of my head, all of whom have wildly different styles. I do my best to move these into line with each other, and to redraw some myself, but each individual monster tile can take several hours, so it's rather a long-term project. roctavian has recently joined the devteam, and has been doing a great job of improving some of our oldest tiles.

And despite your implication, I would argue that Crawl looks a bit better than it did in the past. If you think /nonliving/ looks bad now, you should've seen it when I started. For reference, here are some screenshots with the amazing original tiles from what looks to be around 0.5 or 0.6:
Image
Image
Image

Tapsu wrote:Thought about trying Bennu and some bears which were on the list, and possibly some wasps if I get that far.
Is Bennu supposed to look as Egyptian as possible (including the side view like that) or should it be rotated to a partial side view, and should it have wings open or closed, and if open should they be open like while hunting (like this or like that) or something else?

My suggestion would be to examine some of our existing tiles and try to replicate their styles. As minmay pointed out, there is a lot of variation, but ironbrand convokers, adders, fire drakes, and jiangshi are some of the more effective tiles I've personally created, and I feel they're good representatives of the standard style, insofar as we have one. For the bennu, there's no specific stance needed: pose it in whichever way makes for the clearest and most identifiable shape.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 6th January 2015, 23:09

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I played 0.5 and 0.6 tiles - enough that I can point out that many of those aren't the original tiles (such as almost everything in the Shoals screenshot). I was not talking about specific tiles looking bad, otherwise I would have mentioned them. I was talking about the lack of consistency between different tiles.
Possibly I implied that the original tileset was consistent in style, in which case I apologize; I didn't mean to. But I do think tiles have gotten very noticeably less consistent with each other over the years.

Temple Termagant

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Post Wednesday, 7th January 2015, 14:15

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Bennu:
Image

By the way, on some sprites the shading seems to try to take the role of drawing lines (like feature envy in programming) rather than highlights being at the planes that face the light source.
Adder is a simple example, added the contrast versions to clarify the different placements of brightest highlights:
Image

edit: it seems I forgot the cast shadow.
And maybe the legs should be a pixel or two longer to better resemble the kind of bird it is supposed to be?

edit1: did the shadow and changed the legs, I hope the legs do not look so much like duck legs now.
Image

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Post Thursday, 8th January 2015, 16:50

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Black bear:

Image

edit:
New black bear, looking a bit larger than a rat this time, and more round body was characteristic to the black bear in wikipedia's opinion:
Image

And a grizzly:
Image

That should leave the polar bear to be done. Polar bears have characteristic long necks, afaik.

And there was another interesting shading thing I noticed, there is a tendency to put little highlights uniformly all over the place, and in my opinion shading looses a considerable part of its power that way, as far as helping to understand the general shape is concerned. So here is a very rough illustration based on the plague shambler with the two versions on the left having a more "uniform highlight coverage":
Image
(I don't know if it was really supposed to have a fat belly)
And then I noticed that maybe the shadow is not supposed to be black.
And that all my bears so far are facing the wrong direction (feel free to flip them if they are OK and do not need further changes).

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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 02:34

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Just popping in to deliver a layman's opinion:

The bennu looks good, but I think it really needs the crest that it is normally depicted with. Right now it has a tuft sticking out of the back of its head but it's not quite the same.

I wasn't sure which snake was which in the lineup but I prefer #3. #2 has a bit too much dithering which might be a holdover from older art styles, which I hope get phased out over time.

The black bear needs an outline in order to fit with the current style. It may seem a bit nonsensical since it's already a dark color but it's very noticeable around the face/back.

The grizzly is definitely looking promising and seems to fit well with the current style. It could do with a bit more 'realism' a la the black bear, so a bit more definition on the fur.

I think shamber #2 is still a bit better. The third one is definitely easier to read form-wise, but it's kind of hard to tell what's going on. #2 has that problem too, but it seems to have more definition to the vines whereas they seem depth-less and plastered to the belly of #3. If improvement needs to be made, I'd suggest deciding on some definite characteristics to convey (ex. vine rope slung around shoulders, large gash on lower gut, instead of 'blood, vines, and guts' intersticed randomly).

And you brought up shadows, which got me to wondering what was the norm. It was hard to discern though, since there's so much conflict in the game itself. Maybe someone who knows better could explain if they want a certain alpha/fully opaque?

Anyway I'll stop my backseat pixeling now :D Keep it up!
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 02:53

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Veras wrote:The black bear needs an outline in order to fit with the current style. It may seem a bit nonsensical since it's already a dark color but it's very noticeable around the face/back.
Crawl adds outlines to the edges of tiles automatically if they aren't already there. So a lot of tiles leave out the outlines between solid pixels and transparency. Only the "interior" outlines (or outlines that aren't black, etc.) need to be in the actual tile. Look at some old monster tiles in the source if you don't believe me.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 06:10

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

We've been eradicating outline errors by actually drawing the outline into the images, which also results in better outlines.
and if anyone's wondering why then it's because you can tweak the edges of the sprite to look better outlined when you can actually see the outline (which you can't if you don't have an outline in the first place)
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Temple Termagant

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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 13:34

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I have kept both outlines and shadows pure black, and outlines are the minimum that is needed to hug the image, and pure black has not been used anywhere inside sprite, so it wouldn't be too difficult to update to some specific cast shadow policy.

Black bear:
Image
With outline and with some correction on paw. If recolored, it might be a pig, I guess.

Grizzly bear:
Image
The fur is supposed to be more shaggy than the black bear, so it all gets a bit more even and closer to shading the general shape (as opposed to shading the sum of cylinders of more regular fur, which always brings little puffs of smoke out of my nostrils).
On the side that is in shadow the two colors seemed to be contrasting too much if looked at on black background, so I made them bit closer and now hopefully their areas are not so clearly distinguishable.

Polar bear:
Image
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 14:28

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

That black bear looks like a wolf, and I'd say replace the wolf tile with it if the wolf one isn't "doing it" for anyone. Otherwise, those are pretty darn cool.
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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 15:23

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

There seems to be a problem with the black bear. The space in the tileset appears to be not 32x32, but only 30 pixels wide. Huh? So I guess I better remove 2 pixels from the butt of the bear:
Image
Looks even more fat now, but Winnie the Pooh was also a black bear, so maybe it is appropriate that it looks like a fat pig. But maybe not.

As for using it as a wolf, I think the present wolf is more identifiable as a wolf (at least I hope so).
And if Bennu were to have a crest, how small would the bird image need to be?
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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 20:51

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Image?
Spoiler: show
charredcoconutbear.png
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

Did you know that I like ruining crawl every now and then? Go check it out.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 9th January 2015, 23:31

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

that just looks like a dog to me

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Post Saturday, 10th January 2015, 07:37

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

more like a bloodthirsty, steroidal tarsir
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Post Saturday, 10th January 2015, 21:03

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Bloax wrote:Image?
Spoiler: show
charredcoconutbear.png
Tapsu wrote:[...]shading the sum of cylinders of more regular fur[...]

The cylinders of individual hairs in the fur are not in the same direction as the general shape, this is why you see a dark spot on the forehead in my version while the general shape should have a highlight there. That way there is some hope that the brain derives that it must be fur without having to draw individual hairs at this tiny scale. This kind of effect is somewhat difficult to achieve and I am not trying to claim that I did it very well.

That being said, you can modify the sprites as you wish, I guess my preferred license would be cc0. I don't know what license you would usually expect, though.

========
Some more comment about the adder shading example. In my version the adder is shaded holding the head up sideways, not up like cobra. Also, if characteristic features of real adders are attempted, then I strongly feel that the neck curve of the adder should be different and also the body and tail should be curved differently.
However, if users expect the neck direction to be up, this may be worth considering.

Also, my opinion is that banding is a final polishing issue, and should not be a priority over consistent highlights. But that is just me, I guess it is obvious that the current adder sprite works very well without consistent highlights.

Another user expectation is tentacles of real octopi in water being curved (that was a funny one, a few posts back). In order to best understand why the tentacles tend to be straight lines, often at right angles, a video may be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7AqaKzJU3c&feature=youtu.be&t=30s. So, yeah, not perfectly straight, but the principle of tentacle movement creates straight lines. So should tentacles be drawn as straight lines? I think no, because user expectation trumps realism.

Most of the time there are some reasons to do something in a certain way, and there are other reasons to do the exact opposite.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 10th January 2015, 22:09

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I agree that shading should be consistent; however, I'm having trouble seeing the lighting direction you intend:

Image

My adder is certainly not perfect, and yours is probably better. My intent was a jewelled, scaly texture and a lighter belly -- vis this picture: http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/4179/PreviewComp/SuperStock_4179-38750.jpg Yours is plastic-smooth and the same shade of green everywhere; that's fine, of course. However, you also have several conflicting light sources, whereas Crawl tiles generally only have one -- ahead, above, and to the viewer's left. I have no idea what you mean about shading being used for lines.

The lighting thing is even more evident on the black bear, which has like twelve different highlight spots in various places. Bloax's has a more definite light source, but is very oddly textured and has a bizarre puffy demon face. And both suffer from being dark and grey, which is going to be just as invisible against the dungeon floor as the existing one. Yes, obviously black bears are black, but the sprite needs to be bright and easy to see.

The grizzly bear is a lot better; the only thing I would want is for the back half to be less flat. It's in the shadow but it can still have texture.

The polar bear's neck is way too long. Polar bears do have longer necks than most bears but this one's neck is as long as its torso. Otherwise it looks good.

I took the liberty of editing your bennu, giving him the sun disc and reshaping his wings and neck:
Image

Other minor notes: 32x32 is standard size. The current black bear happens to be smaller, but there's no reason for it to stay that way. Crawl is licensed under the GPL, so any tile submissions are at least under that license; however, many artists specify that they are submitting under CC0.

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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 03:10

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

ontoclasm wrote:I agree that shading should be consistent; however, I'm having trouble seeing the lighting direction you intend:

Image

My adder is certainly not perfect, and yours is probably better. My intent was a jewelled, scaly texture and a lighter belly -- vis this picture: http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/4179/PreviewComp/SuperStock_4179-38750.jpg Yours is plastic-smooth and the same shade of green everywhere; that's fine, of course. However, you also have several conflicting light sources, whereas Crawl tiles generally only have one -- ahead, above, and to the viewer's left. I have no idea what you mean about shading being used for lines.

The lighting thing is even more evident on the black bear, which has like twelve different highlight spots in various places. Bloax's has a more definite light source, but is very oddly textured and has a bizarre puffy demon face. And both suffer from being dark and grey, which is going to be just as invisible against the dungeon floor as the existing one. Yes, obviously black bears are black, but the sprite needs to be bright and easy to see.

The grizzly bear is a lot better; the only thing I would want is for the back half to be less flat. It's in the shadow but it can still have texture.

The polar bear's neck is way too long. Polar bears do have longer necks than most bears but this one's neck is as long as its torso. Otherwise it looks good.

I took the liberty of editing your bennu, giving him the sun disc and reshaping his wings and neck:
Image

Other minor notes: 32x32 is standard size. The current black bear happens to be smaller, but there's no reason for it to stay that way. Crawl is licensed under the GPL, so any tile submissions are at least under that license; however, many artists specify that they are submitting under CC0.

I think compared to the prior bennu the reshaped neck pushes his face up so that it blends oddly with the wing (At first I thought the edge of the wing was a strange grey top-beak part)

Probably the wing needs to be brought out to the left so you can see a little more of it's wing shape, or the head needs to be moved back a little bit so it doesn't meld oddly with the top of the wing shape.

I agree that the odd highlighting spots on the bear look weird, and I think making the face paler would make him less "dog like" Black bears are a tough call though because they do need to not blend into the background.

Typically I put a light border on dark sprites and a dark border on light sprites, just so they don't blend, but it does create a bit of a jarring effect and does takes you a little bit out of the game, so I could certainly understand the desire not to do so.

Another option would be to create a lighter visible pattern on the dungeon tiles. Something vaguely like is done for the sigil* floor tiles as a general rule I think would both help visibility of darker icons and create some visible interest for the way the dungeon looks.
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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 05:16

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

  Code:
bennu (b) | Spd: 16 | HD: 14 | HP: 62-92 | AC/EV: 6/16 | Dam: 27(holy), 18(drain), 18(napalm) | evil, see invisible, fly, regen | Res: magic(140), fire+++, poison, rot, neg+++ | Vul: drown, holy

You guys shouldn't forget that the bennu is basically a flaming, (unholy?) egyptic phoenix of hurt and not a plain bird.
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 06:13

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Bloax wrote:You guys shouldn't forget that the bennu is basically a flaming, (unholy?) egyptic phoenix of hurt and not a plain bird.
unholy and also holy, apparently
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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 06:23

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

It's holy just to annoy undead players, really.
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  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 06:45

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Bloax wrote:
  Code:
bennu (b) | Spd: 16 | HD: 14 | HP: 62-92 | AC/EV: 6/16 | Dam: 27(holy), 18(drain), 18(napalm) | evil, see invisible, fly, regen | Res: magic(140), fire+++, poison, rot, neg+++ | Vul: drown, holy

You guys shouldn't forget that the bennu is basically a flaming, (unholy?) egyptic phoenix of hurt and not a plain bird.

Here's a flaming version, should someone have a desire for such:
Image
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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 12:43

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

ontoclasm wrote:[...]I have no idea what you mean about shading being used for lines.[...]

That was a long explanation just to say that one sentence, but it did clarify things a lot. The problem with the adder appears to be that the lighter belly color seems like a highlight, while the real intended shading was done with the darkest colors at the back.
And I did say that I was forcing a different pose for the adder in the same silhouette, and that can be counter productive for clarity. What I meant was something like this: http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/21/94821-004-629D4B1A.jpg where the neck is sideways. And the light direction is the arrow that lights the head. And I "cheated" by creating a little modeling clay figure (you can imagine how complicated that was to make), but then I specifically rotated it under the light so that it did produce those two small highlights (I like small highlights) on the neck in reality, honest.

As for the opinions about which is better, if you read carefully, I would rather keep the old one. My version looks way too much like modeling clay because that is exactly what it is.
ontoclasm wrote:[...]The lighting thing is even more evident on the black bear, which has like twelve different highlight spots in various places.[...]
Is it another explanation about how the below is not being understood or is it a real problem?
Tapsu wrote:[...]
Tapsu wrote:[...]shading the sum of cylinders of more regular fur[...]

The cylinders of individual hairs in the fur are not in the same direction as the general shape, this is why you see a dark spot on the forehead in my version while the general shape should have a highlight there. That way there is some hope that the brain derives that it must be fur without having to draw individual hairs at this tiny scale.[...]

edit:
Actually this also reminded me of the rats, when I saw the new rats the shading made it painfully obvious that it is not fur. Unfortunately I don't have the image of the old rats readily available for comparison.

And I was a bit surprised that the example of well drawn sprites was not the turtles. Lacking the reflection from the shell that should be somewhat reflective makes them a bit bland, though, but this is just my extremely personal opinion.

And then there is the intriguing question of having the black bear rather than the brown bear in the first place. Is the black bear more common, or was it meant to be as small as possible for lower level challenge, or something else?
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Post Sunday, 11th January 2015, 17:38

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

One of the issues with the bear tiles, too, particularly the black bear one, is the way the bear is standing. The front legs don't look straight enough for a standing bear, they are too dog-like with that slight bend in them.
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Post Thursday, 19th February 2015, 19:29

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Tapsu wrote:Is it another explanation about how the below is not being understood or is it a real problem?

I understand what you mean: fur points different directions, and thus different parts of the body reflect light differently. I just think your drawing does not achieve this effect. [url=http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/wp-content/uploads/blackbear1.jpg]Here is a picture of a black bear in vaguely the same pose as yours. You're correct: parts of it that "face the light source" are still dark (the shoulders & the top of its head) because of the fur. However, the light source is consistent, because all the bright parts face the light. Your sprite has a highlight on the back side of its hind leg. What's illuminating that?

Furthermore, while realism is nice, it's more important to have the lighting and shape be clear. I chose that particular black bear picture because it's a good example of how pixel-art lighting should look: large, broad panels of brightness that describe the form of the subject. In the real world, lighting conditions might make for dull, flat color, or lots of tiny subtle highlights, but neither of those work well in pixel art. If the light source in your mind is making your image look muddy or hard to read, the solution is to change the light source, not say "it's realistic."
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Post Saturday, 21st February 2015, 02:26

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Sorry if this was addressed on page 1, but are the super-dark floor tiles really 100% necessary? In several branches, especially Depths, I find that I can't really see where the floor ends and the black, unexplored tiles begin.

Or maybe I'm the only one who misses the brighter floor tiles?
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Post Saturday, 21st February 2015, 05:38

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

archaeo wrote:Sorry if this was addressed on page 1, but are the super-dark floor tiles really 100% necessary? In several branches, especially Depths, I find that I can't really see where the floor ends and the black, unexplored tiles begin.

Or maybe I'm the only one who misses the brighter floor tiles?


I think it causes issues with Ghosts. See https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=8488
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Post Saturday, 21st February 2015, 13:14

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

I fixed two zombies (bee and beetle) and made a new one - human zombie. I also going to do ork, elf and cobold zombie and do some corrections to current zombies.
ImageImageImage

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Post Tuesday, 24th February 2015, 03:46

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

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Post Wednesday, 25th February 2015, 01:56

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Attempt at improving the reaper tile:
Image

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Post Wednesday, 25th February 2015, 18:29

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

Image
Needs a bit more UNF and shadow trickery.

otherwise very nice concept, me likey
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  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Wednesday, 25th February 2015, 19:00

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

IMO cloth and bone should look like cloth and bone, rather than plastic and plastic

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Post Wednesday, 25th February 2015, 21:17

Re: Tiles that could use improvement

ImageImage
Some ideas for a new azure jelly tile, although it still needs to look "frosty". (A few people have already commented on how the first one looks like a metroid so you don't need to bring that up :p)

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