Tile art for games

[ConnyNordlund]

Hey, I was just wondering if you guys know of any nice reads, tutorials or anything like that regarding tile making for games?
I'm currently working on an indie game thing with 3 other guys and I'm doing all the concept work and in game graphics (glad I didn't have to do the animation stuff too!) and I'm very new to that stuff.

So if anyone knows of any good information on subject, I'd love to see some.

[JeffX99]

IDK - it isn't really that tricky...most of the games I made were tile based, even well into PS2 development. It's pretty basic - just work with your programmer and designer to figure out how much memory you can use and where your tilesets will be stored in VRAM (mostly good to know for troubleshooting). It's a give and take kind of equation related to resolution, memory allocation, color depth, load speeds, etc.

[Kasumi]

So, I'm assuming you're doing pixel art. There's a program called Pyxel Edit. It's pretty much the coolest thing ever as far as making tiles. When you edit a tile that's used more than once, it updates all of them in real time. This lets you easily make edits to ensure that your tiles will link properly.

At the moment it lacks select tools which makes shifting tiles a little difficult. But it does import and export images. What I usually do is just export an image, and rearrange it with another awesome program called ASEPRITE. ASEPRITE allows you to overlay a grid over images, so you can line things up that way when you rearrange. (If it's not lined up to a grid, Pyxel Edit will think extra tiles have been created upon importing.)

If you're not doing pixel art, I don't know what to tell you.

[Suncut]

If you're working in Photoshop it's pretty handy to make your tiles smart objects, and copy them around so when you save changes on the smart object it will update all of them and you can see how the tiling works in real time. For making seamless tiles use filters-> other -> offset to remove edges. Not much else to it, you just need to figure out what kind of tiles the game needs and how they fit together etc. Other stuff is just making good design really, making sure the player understands your tiles and that they aid the playing experience instead of hindering it.

[ConnyNordlund]

I'm working with flash, doing everything in vectors and exporting it as pngs.
I'm just very new to this, just wanting to learn more about this type of art since it's very different from what I'm used to.

Edit: I guess if you want to give suggestions on what you consider to be "masterful tilesets", I'd love to take a look at that. The game we're making is set in the jungle.

[Kasumi]

What type of game is it? A platformer, top down, oblique projection? If I post wonderful platformer tilesets, it won't help much for a top down game. That said, take a look at this topic: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=7930.0 It goes into a bunch of detail about what's good about that tileset. This post: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.p...90392#msg90392 in particular really goes into detail. And look, Jungle Stuff!

It's pixel art, but I bet you can adapt then knowledge.

Here's less restricted pixel art. http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/Genesis/...GrasslandW.png If that site doesn't like direct links, go here to www.vgmaps.com , click genesis, click beyond oasis and look at the maps.

Platformers are a little trickier. I feel like a lot of them rely on wild styles and patterns. But take a look at Earthworm Jim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...Y1DtBd-Y#t=25s

Shantae, Risky's Revenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...BJ-g7fyY#t=86s (Low quality video, but as far as I know there's no way to capture DSiware stuff unless you developed it yourself.)

I'm convinced I know better ones, but they're just not coming to mind.