LUCIDSTILLNESS'S PROFILE

Yeah, no matter what 'side' of the debate you're on, it really stinks that a lot of legitimately free content has been lost.

Yeah, the hackers are just going to make everything worse, as hackers always do.

I am familiar with copyright law, chief. What I mean is what you just said about websites not being responsible for the illegal content posted and trafficked by their users; that is a very gray area, and the companies clearly do not trust websites to police their content on their behalf. After all, said websites are reportedly making millions from user-distributed pirated content, so why should they intervene? Places like the Pirates Bay, which openly support piracy, make the situation even worse.

If they wanted to close down a piracy site, why not that place?

@Craze
Thanks. Yeah, I suppose the black is a bit too stark against the background. I might try substituting the black lines for gray ones.

Btw, your story and the screenshot look pretty interesting. Are the odd colours indicating a dream of some kind? The battlers look great, as does the background.

@Far_Oz and Tau
Thank you. So, you used events to create a kind of fourth level for the map; that is quite clever! I'll have to give that a try.

@emmych
Thanks. Yeah, the sprite is a bit tiny in the actual game, so I might try to find a way to work around that. You're right about the pants being too long as well.

@Craze
Ah, well that makes sense then.

@Radnen
Even nicer than before. Those conifer trees look to be more in perspective, and the variations in the water bank look quite nice. I prefer the lighter grass in the second screenshot to the more saturated grass in the first, as I believe the less saturated colour will be easier on the eyes in the long-term.

@Pokemaniac
That is a very nice use of the tileset. The only thing that seems a bit odd is the height of the trees compared to the house, but I suppose they could be young trees.

@Tau
Those screens look very beautiful. I'm curious about what tileset you used, as I've been trying to figure out a way to create that submerged effect. The only problem I see is that some of the mountain pixels don't match in the second screenshot, but I imagine that is a problem with the tileset itself and not your mapping.

Here is the newest version of my wilderness tileset, which I imagine everyone is sick to death of by now. Don't worry, I'll be showing something more interesting soon.



I recoloured the grass to a more realistic tone, tweaked the rock face walls so that they look more organic and more naturally blend into one another, changed the overall colour tone of the tileset, added some new rocks, remade the deciduous trees, blended the dirt paths to reduce pixelation and changed the flowers.

The rock walls are still diagonally contrived, but I think they look nice and asymmetrical. The way the XP RTP handles curved rockfaces is to 'squeeze' the front texture into three increasingly thin increments, then cut this new texture from above and below in a quarter circle. This did create a very smooth curve when I tried it, but this approach was not intended for use with fully diagonal textures and the two don't match when they are put together. So, I did this instead. As always, I am very grateful for feedback.

I would also like some feedback on the new character sprite prototype in the above image. I took what Creation said into consideration, and ultimately decided that a more realistic character sprite would be more visually striking and would better serve the narrative I was creating. I'm sure you will agree that projects tend to take on a life of their own as you work on them, and that is certainly the case with this game. When I started working on it back in June, I envisioned it as a fun little romp that payed tribute to retro games. As I continued to write the story and characters however, I realized that the tone of the game I was creating didn't match the visuals (and you guys also helped me to realize that). I'm not saying you can't make a serious story with SD characters, as many great RPG Maker game creators have done so, but in my mind this style will work better for this game. I would of course love feedback.

@Radnen
The tileset looks very retro and nice. If you sprited it all yourself, it's very impressive and authentic looking! I do agree with Craze that the grass is too bright and defined (finding just the right look for grass is something I seem to be having a problem with as well). I think it would also look a bit nicer if the banks of the body of water were rounded rather than rigidly square. The trees also seem a bit out of perspective compared to the houses, as they appear to be viewed from the side while the houses can be viewed slightly overhead. This isn't really a big deal though.

@Lene
Thank you for the feedback. Yes, I'm still not completely happy with the way the grass looks; the colour seems off somehow, and I think it's missing some detail. Finding just the right colour and detail for grass is proving surprisingly difficult! I like your idea about variant rock faces, and I'll see if they'll work in the tileset.

@Craze
I really do love the menu system you have in your game at the moment. I can't really comment too much on it since a) I don't know much scripting and b) I haven't used VX, but I can tell you that, superficially, it looks quite nice.

Your unique take on the dungeons still looks good, but I'm not sure I like some of the trees and whatnot on little floating islands by themselves; that, somehow, seems more odd than the rest of the level floating. When everything is together, it looks like the background is just framing the dungeon. However, when there are little islands, it seems more like the dungeon is actually floating overhead. Just my opinion.