The Tree of Knowledge [challenge/normal/large]

Is this the same level you posted about needing music for it? also, this level looks very good and I can't wait to see it be finished

@ lilmanjs16: Yes, long long ago I tried to gather musicians to work with me on this. I think you even posted a link to some songs you had made, but not being a fan of drone I was probably too critical and never heard from you again, sorry. Razor Man made an incomplete track, but otherwise the whole endeavor was pretty discouraging which is probably the main reason I set this level aside. I had thought at the time that for the game and the music to work like they were made for each other, they would have to be made together. Since that time, I successfully collaborated with Ultigonio for The Dying Core which has taught me that if I make the level first the musician will have more direction.

Long story short, I'm making the level first. Then, I'm setting it to music. I plan to seek out artists who have made music close to what I'm looking for and ask them compose for The Tree of Knowledge.

@ lilmanjs16: Yes, long long ago I tried to gather musicians to work with me on this. I think you even posted a link to some songs you had made, but not being a fan of drone I was probably too critical and never heard from you again, sorry. Razor Man made an incomplete track, but otherwise the whole endeavor was pretty discouraging which is probably the main reason I set this level aside. I had thought at the time that for the game and the music to work like they were made for each other, they would have to be made together. Since that time, I successfully collaborated with Ultigonio for The Dying Core which has taught me that if I make the level first the musician will have more direction.

Long story short, I'm making the level first. Then, I'm setting it to music. I plan to seek out artists who have made music close to what I'm looking for and ask them compose for The Tree of Knowledge.

That sounds like a very good idea man! hope it works out for you.

I love the screenshots and it's great to hear you're working on this right now. This reminds me, I still haven't played the final version of Shipwrecked... 

The preview pics are ravishingly beautiful... but I would expect no less.

Despite all comments I don't understand what's the deal with waterfalls in severs. To me the screen-shot meant to illustrate wierdness looks totally fine, only the water is too green-ish.
Screenshots look wonderful!

Long story short, I'm making the level first. Then, I'm setting it to music. I plan to seek out artists who have made music close to what I'm looking for and ask them compose for The Tree of Knowledge.

Here's a great place with free music: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

Quote from: egomassive on February 29, 2012, 01:21:56

Long story short, I'm making the level first. Then, I'm setting it to music. I plan to seek out artists who have made music close to what I'm looking for and ask them compose for The Tree of Knowledge.

Here's a great place with free music: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

Great, yes, but extremely overused. I support egomassive's plan to seek out original music.

Oddly enough, incompetech.com has never made it into my resources list. My plan is to approach someone who freely releases their music on the web. Just as this community is full of charitable level designers, other communities are full of charitable musicians. A level this pretty shouldn't have much trouble swaying their help.

Progress report: Ha ha. Mostly I've been building a level editor to streamline the level design process. That's been going well, but I have to set it aside for the summer. This means that I can focus all my Knytt attention on this, except that I kinda just vowed to push a community level towards completion. This is not to say, I haven't worked on this at all. In fact, I've been reworking the city tilesets. Parallax is a hard thing to do well in KS. With a vast city scape sprawling beyond the foreground, I've struggled quite a bit with how to manage it. I think I've finally come to a method I can be happy with. I've also made some OCO's to fill in the sewers area.

In other news, I've entered this level in to an epic level competition on these forums. I joined mainly for the extra source of encouragement. I may hay to withdraw if my epicness discourages other competitors.

Progress Report: Ha ha ha. I jinxed myself saying I could focus only on this. I've mostly been making cutscenes for a round-robin level. This weekend for this level, I have been trying to tackle a problematic bridge (See attachments 1 and 2.) I can't make anything I'm happy with. The city's main architectural style is interlocking concrete blocks with simple lines and hints of Roman influence. My first attempt is too terrible to show. My second try has the arch. I feel it looks too week and it uses too many tiles. I was happy with the third incarnation with angled columns until I showed it to my sister and she said it was stupid. Your ideas are welcome, because I'm fresh out.

I'm not greatly against either set of pictures, though I guess I can at least understand the objections.  I guess my suggestion would be to simplify and go with something like what you have in the back ground, but on a larger scale because it's closer to the viewer.  When you said roman influence, I was thinking lots of arches, and perhaps you could make the pillars you have thus far a bit larger and perhaps rounder, taking up three tiles from left to right in order to fill out the space and make the bridge look strong enough.

If you're going to do an arch  think it needs to have a higher curve and be quite a bit thicker to look feasible. The second one looks ok to me, though.

Oh, duh, just realized the look you were shooting for.  I guess then my suggestion would be stepped arches, kind of like tetris pieces.  This would let you make a minimum of tiles for a maximum of variation.

I added a new version of the bridge. I inserted it above to make comparisons easier.

I had a few suggestions I was going to sketch up for this, but your most recent version is pretty much perfect.

I think you should use both the second and the third version, depending on whether you want to make it solid or not.