My sprites (Mana, Tanks, SimCity, Fighter and many more)

[Marcus]

Thanks, looks nice!
Yes, 5 Frames looks much better.
I was just not sure if the Gamebuino can handle so many (back-ground-)nimations thus I tried to use as little as possible (thus just disabling every other row of the pattern / using moving scan-lines). I have no experience (and no Gamebuino) in that regard

For things like the Street fighter or others I tried not to use gray backgrounds, but it would look so nice for the Mana demake

[Marcus]

By the way, that's not the waterfall, it's the river/canal

[Marcus]

Here more boredom doodles.

Secret of Mana sprite test in 8x8 - yikes!

mana-mini-mini.png (2.42 KiB) Viewed 6909 times

Zelda ALTTP 8x11 test

gamebuino-zelda.png (5.92 KiB) Viewed 6909 times

Demake of Mana 5x5/8x11 background tiles @ Water falls

gamebuino-mana-demake-dom-bg-falls.png (117.53 KiB) Viewed 6909 times

[Marcus]

After talking to Adekto I reduced the backgrounds to monochrome completely.

I'm sad that there are no RPG games for Gamebuino yet / not beeing worked on anymore.

I do not know if I ever get anything finished, but if someone wants to use some sprites ask and I'd love to help

5x5 is gibing me headaches.
It is limiting, frustrating, repetitive, but still fun to do
Larger tiles would make the visible section of the map too small, it's already a bit much.

I settled for 5x5 tiles for now (and 10x10 chunks for big trees for example), while keeping the 11x8 character sprites. I know, it's not ideal but it would work well. I suppose I could make it work for 10x10 if I had to.

Here's a map &tile test.

managridoverview.png (94.62 KiB) Viewed 6878 times

I experimented with new rock tiles. The river was a tough one and I worked quite a bit on it, but found a wave pattern on accident that might just do it without having to make corner tiles for rivers...

Also I reduced the map to 4 "screens" in another version.

maptiletest_dom_mana-5x5_b.png (127.22 KiB) Viewed 6878 times

I changed the initial ring system to larger, fancier tiles with the selected enlarged. (initial graphics here).
Then I experimented with a slim HP/MP status bars.
I would like the demake to represent the actual game as closely as possible, but I would probably replace the whole head&health number by just one or two pixel status bars without head icon.

manaringmenutest2.png (5.54 KiB) Viewed 6878 times

Sorry for the messy doodle sheets. Perhaps I will make a few nice mock-ups once I have more maps and tiles done; And perhaps a simple tile&walk-around demo if I can ever get around to spare the time to actually program something (and learn how to do it properly...).

[Marcus]

I took my first house designs and broke them down to 5x5 tiles, trying to reduce the necessary unique tiles or at least use flipped/mirrored tiles.

The reduced, resized house requires 14 tiles not counting the flipped ones; A 2 or 3 tile house is possible but looks pretty sterile.

demake-mana-dom_houses_5x5tileset_test-size.png (16.12 KiB) Viewed 6860 times

With the smaller house it does not fill the screen as much.

Next would be to build Potos! Banbanbanbanban


//Edit: Potos mini version map layout

potos-mini.png (2.23 KiB) Viewed 6853 times

//Edit: Tile test, ignore.

domtiletestsm.png (2.31 KiB) Viewed 6837 times

[Marcus]

First "real" tile test (using Tiled instead of an image editor). Some textures are still a bit rough, but I tried to recycle as much as possible in order to avoid having to draw more tiles (optimizing increasing memory usage).

It got a bit larger then initially intended as the houses are a bit broader due to extra tiles drawing the outline, but it would be possible to squeeze it into ~4 screens.

dom-potos-test-tiles55mana.png (1.86 KiB) Viewed 6849 times

It's a bit "flat", but I tried to match the SoM style (which uses colors and texture to create some depth, which I can't in monochrome ) I also removed vines, moss and stuff due to tile design.

//EDIT
Scaled the buildings down roughly in order to see if the village will be visibly better on the small resolution screen;

mana__house_smaller_DOM.png (772 Bytes) Viewed 6848 times

(Look Randi, it's an outhouse with chimney!)

But I think it'll work with the previous design @ 84x48

dom-potos-mocky.png (1.12 KiB) Viewed 6848 times

[Marcus]

Gaya's navel (this).

gayasketch.png (2.74 KiB) Viewed 6820 times

mptestrescle.png (2.1 KiB) Viewed 6820 times

dom-mana-gaya-navel-map_tile_tests.png (10.27 KiB) Viewed 6820 times

[Quirby64]

My nerp, that looks like it belongs in Pokemon. I like the top-right version the most (They are all the same place, right?).

[Marcus]

My nerp, that looks like it belongs in Pokemon. I like the top-right version the most (They are all the same place, right?).

Yes, it would work for any RPG
I never really played pokemon, Zelda-ALTTP and Secret of Mana where my last RPG console games (I've sold my gameboy to buy the SNES back then). So I started with the demake of my favorite game.

A lot of people over at the Buinomon-thread made great sprites and tiles, one of them being Adekto, who has been giving me some great advice so far.

I also stumbled upon
http://www.team-arg.org/TEAM-arg/DUN-manual.html
http://www.team-arg.org/TEAM-arg/ELV-manual.html
even though I did not find anything like that initially, though I feel like there's some room for a more playful stile like SOM even with the limitations of the screen. Even though I settled for the limiting 5x5 sized tiles due to the smaller Nokia screen I would like to create a unique style.


Thanks for your opinion!

The top-left is ugly as it was just the raw map I made In "Tiles" using tiles from previous maps. The water-fall entry is made out of one of the three tree tops sprites

I like the bottom-left water-falls the best, but I would also like a better water texture. I am uncertain if I should go with a wave pattern (looks pretty disturbing if it fills most of the screen), a black texture or even plain surface, or just random "sparkles" (may be confusing with the grass/rough).

Initially (as seen in one of the earlier posts) I even had a "translucent" tile, showing the pattern of the mountain rock under water, but as some of the water bodies are just two tiles wide it looks pretty weird (plus I'd need even more tiles, not knowing if this will work with the memory of Gamebuino at all).

Sadly the choice of water tile influences how well the rock tile works as well. I used a generic one for now until I found a nice water body tile.


Here is one with the original river tile I tried first;

navel-mana-dom2Brivertile.png (5.15 KiB) Viewed 6805 times

Even with "halo" around the sprites it makes it pretty hard to tell where they are and what the background is supposed to be if it fills a large portion of the screen.

riverofeyecancer.png (2.44 KiB) Viewed 6805 times

Here a quick montage with the top right and the old sprites.

pondsofterror.png (1.44 KiB) Viewed 6805 times

The top right of the map designs also features two different water body tile sets. I really can't find one that makes me happy atm I understood using gray for larger areas will not work consistently with different Nokia screens. It would make things easier - - - but part of the fun for me is trying to squeeze details into the limitations (and it could be more if I would ad corner stones and more 2x2tile-sets like the trees)...

Perhaps a animated wave- or sparkling-pattern would make the water more recognizable and also the static sprites would stand out more. I am just unsure if it will work with the limited resources.
So I figured a "calm" surface would work much better, though.

[Marcus]

I just can't get it to look nice at 8x8...

8x8_3b.png (13.55 KiB) Viewed 6723 times

8x8_3b-rescaled.png (45.42 KiB) Viewed 6706 times

Probably trying to cram in too many details. Will attempt a different style later.


Minimalistic & more gray scale tones (viewtopic.php?p=8702#p8702) approach

greyscale.png (4.92 KiB) Viewed 6706 times