Jungle vines tileset

This is my first attempt at making a tileset, and I think it turned out very well, but I figured I'd let you all see it and offer feedback before I get too far into making complementary sets to round it out.





Notes:

• The flowerless hanging vine has 90%-transparent pixels filling it out, so that it's comfortably climbable. It can be layered with the other vines to make them climbable, too.
• The platforms with the vine ties on them have an extra layer of 90%-transparent pixels to add height, so that if the tile above has something on layer three that reaches the bottom of the tile, the platform tile is impassable. (This allows the platform tile to be layered onto a level-2 vine with level-3 vines above and below it without that tile being a gap in the solidness of the vine.)
• The monkey looks decent on any vine, with the possible exception of if you layer him over a flower - I haven't tested that. I may get rid of him altogether, he seems to be the weak link of the tileset.
• The butterflies can sit properly on any of the three rock tiles, but not on the platforms. I haven't tested them with anything else.

Looks very good! Well done!


...and I like the monkey too

Wow, this is pretty and well-engineered -- and fun. You clearly put a lot of thought into it.

I really like the gentle curves of the background greenery, and the way the spearhead-like tips on the posts, and the matching bases, are interchangeable separately from what colour the flowers on the vines spiralling up them are. Great idea, great execution.

I'm also impressed with how cute and identifiable the monkey, butterflies and sloth are (You didn't even mention the sloth! The sloth is awesmoe) but in my experience, static animals seem weird in KS. Especially in a jungle environment, I'd expect the foliage to be teeming and crawling with critters, rather than populated by frozen, staring animals that make Juni feel like she just wandered into a taxidermy showroom.

Since the animals you made do look so nice, and match so well with the rest of the tileset, though, why not make them into custom objects? Salmoneous gave me a 'boost' recently that helped me finally figure out how to do CO animations, and I'd be happy to pass the help along if you haven't done a KS spritesheet before... or even make the COs for you, if you want.

Of course, some people are happy to use static critters in level design. My opinion is just that, not an Inviolate Law of Tileset Design. 

In conclusion: I look forward to using this tileset in my own levels. It's already giving me Ideas.

Yay!

I intentionally didn't mention the sloth; I wanted to see if someone who didn't know what I was intending him to be would be able to figure it out. (He was intentionally chosen 'cause he wouldn't look too out of place without being animated, though the cuteness factor didn't hurt.) If COs aren't too much more difficult than animated gifs, it's pretty likely that I'll turn out a few of those, too. Is there a tutorial somewhere?

In progress: jungle town/fortress (and it's fighting with me )
Planned: jungle village, lost city, tree/treetop, more?

Oh, and if you use this in a level, drop me a line? I don't think I'm going to have much time to lurk on the new levels forum, but I definitely want to see. ^.^

This is a nicely-drawn and nicely-constructed tileset, especially for being your first.

However, I recommend you change your 90% transparent pixels to ~99.2% transparent pixels, as in their current state they are in fact noticeable.

SiamJai wrote a tutorial on Custom Objects, I think it should be findable with the [search] by anyone who isn't as lazy to use it as me right now.

I happened to have the CO tutorial thread Miss Paula mentioned open  so here's the link: http://nifflas.lpchip.nl/index.php?topic=31.15 ...I think that topic is stickied, too, actually, probably in the KS Editing Support forum. At the moment I've mostly been just referring to Shawnachu's short-version guide that's in the same thread, because once you grasp the basics all you really need (or all I do) is reminders of the exact code parameters etc., and also because this computer doesn't like PDF files.

Making an animated CO is very much like making a regular animated .gif, it's just where you put the frames that's different. And the adorable sloth would be extra awesmoe if it appeared at first to be a static graphic, but then once in a loooooong while it crept forward a tiny bit...

No reason you can't leave in both the static tiles and CO versions of them for people who want to use the animated versions, too. (Though you could free up a couple of tiles if you go all-co for critters.) I was looking at the tileset again, though and wondering why you didn't make one butterfly so it seems to perch on the right side of that one rock which looks like it'd be roughly the same height as the platforms, and thus have one able to be placed on the platforms as well as one each on different positions on the rocks.

In progress: jungle town/fortress (and it's fighting with me )
Planned: jungle village, lost city, tree/treetop, more?

OOH.

Oh, and if you use this in a level, drop me a line? I don't think I'm going to have much time to lurk on the new levels forum, but I definitely want to see. ^.^

Oh, I'll absolutely let you know via PM if I use your stuff, once the level is ready for beta and/or release. The particular level I have in mind for it is actually behind the back-burner now, due to the couple of levels I'm working on more actively at the moment.

...the CO tutorial thread...

Looks easy enough. I want to get the tileset group finalized first, tho.

And the adorable sloth would be extra awesmoe if it appeared at first to be a static graphic, but then once in a loooooong while it crept forward a tiny bit...

I was looking at the tileset again, though and wondering why you didn't make one butterfly so it seems to perch on the right side of that one rock which looks like it'd be roughly the same height as the platforms, and thus have one able to be placed on the platforms as well as one each on different positions on the rocks.

Good ideas, thanks. ^.^

Quote from: AdeleneDawner on March 10, 2010, 16:25:23

In progress: jungle town/fortress (and it's fighting with me )
Planned: jungle village, lost city, tree/treetop, more?

OOH.

(Remember that this is intended to be used with the plant-focused set I just made; it's intentionally kind of sparse in that area.)

And I have between 15 and 19 tiles left to fill, after I put in diagonals for the horizontal style. Some sort of metal gate, perhaps? Or a drawbridge mechanism? I could probably do both, actually...

Also, this particular set screams for COs to use that level-7 stuff-in-front-of-Juni trick. So I'll definitely be doing that.

Quote from: AdeleneDawner on March 10, 2010, 16:25:23

Oh, and if you use this in a level, drop me a line? I don't think I'm going to have much time to lurk on the new levels forum, but I definitely want to see. ^.^

Oh, I'll absolutely let you know via PM if I use your stuff, once the level is ready for beta and/or release. The particular level I have in mind for it is actually behind the back-burner now, due to the couple of levels I'm working on more actively at the moment.

Thanks ^.^

First:


An update of the vine tileset. The transparency has been changed to 99.5%, and both rocks and one of the butterflies have been reworked so that that butterfly can also sit on the platforms.


Second:


The jungle town tileset is 'done for now' - it still has some blank tiles, but I'm not sure what should go there, and I think it's wise to leave room for crucial elements of the other parts of the set to be added, since I'd like this tileset to be able to stand on its own if necessary.

It may in fact be better to continue filling the town tileset with parts that go with what's already there; I know that there are potentially-useful bits that I'm leaving out, but I believe that those bits are the ones that are least likely to be used. I'd appreciate it if someone else could take some time to play with the set and give me some feedback on which bits seem superfluous and what if anything seems to most need to be added, though.

Also, screenshots:

I think this needs some darker background tiles; the bright ones stand out rather too much when used in the usual fashion.  (No idea how you would free up five tiles in the first set, though.)

You could make the background tiles partially transparent to make them blend with the background.

You could make the background tiles partially transparent to make them blend with the background.

Eck. As a person that uses tilesets often, I personally don't like partially transparent tiles. If I'm using a gradient-esque background, it'd be okay, but if I'm using a special background, like default backgrounds 84 and 85 (the famous tree ones)? Though I guess it's more of a style thing, that's just my two cents.

I could just leave the background as is on the vines set and change the village background to something else. You'd need to segue from one background to the other, but I think that will be ok.

How about this? I'd obviously have to lighten the vertical foreground pieces, and you probably wouldn't want to use it for the whole screen, but I think it'd work:

Wow!

I sense that some underground cavern in Falling Water will now become a whole lot... vinier.

Very nice tileset. I do agree with minmay (will wonders never cease ;-)) that the background tiles do not quite seem to match the rest of the tileset. I'm not quite sure if it's a matter of them being to light, though. It feels a bit as if it could be a matter of tone, as well. The more blueish green of the background tiles suggests that they're very far away, which is unlikely if this is supposed to be a jungle setting. - Maybe experiment a bit with making them ever so slightly 'warmer' in tone, or darker, or both and see what looks best?

ETA: As for the static animals: I think it would be perfectly all right for a sloth, at least, to be static. ;-)

...huh. I guess I misunderstood Minmay's comment.

Anyway, here's an adjustment using Hmpf's suggestion.



I tried just warming the background, and making it a little darker, which definitely did bring it forward, but then the color balance of the whole set looked off - too many warm tones, not enough cool ones. So I changed the stripes on the background to a kind of slate blue color, which looks to me like a good fix - though I wouldn't be surprised to find that I'm wrong; I definitely don't have a feel for what makes a good background like I do for the foreground pieces.

Looking at it with an eye to Minmay's comment, I do see that the background fights with the foreground for attention a bit, even on the new set. I'll play with it and see if I can come up with a better solution.