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[Rostiger]

Good evening, my fellow TIGers! 

I took the liberty of laying out the first stage for Indie Brawl: Quotes home stage, the Outer Wall. I'm not overly experienced in level designing so any suggestions and feedback is welcomed!



The level itself is very basic and features no interactivity with the player, allthough I think it would be a nice gimmick to utilize some sort of parallax scrolling (the three layers of clouds could move at different speeds).

I didn't want to cram too much into the stage to leave enough space for the actual fighting. The visual style should resemble the original quite a bit, allthough I don't want to just plainly rip the tiles, which is why I decided to redraw them, but with the same color sheme as in the original (and of course a similar structure).

The semi-transparent lines is where connectin decoration will go - it doesn't influence the actual game flow.

So, any thoughts?

[Powergloved Andy]

the platforms should have tiled texture blocks to make it look a little big more cleaner.

[Rostiger]

the platforms should have tiled texture blocks to make it look a little big more cleaner.

Uh, this is just the basic layout. There are no tiles yet - it's just supposed to show where the plattforms will be positioned to eliminate level flaws before pixeling out everything...

[Soulliard]

I think the one-tile tall sections of wall should be one-way platforms. And maybe you should get rid of the small wall at the right-central part of the screen. If the Outer Wall has any distinguishing features, it should be that one side of the stage is much safer than the other.

By the way, there's no formal list of stages, yet. The ones in my post in the stages thread are just suggestions. But I do thing this would be an excellent first stage.

[Rostiger]

Yeah, I thought the Outer Wall would be a sure shot, so I just went for it.

I think the one-tile tall sections of wall should be one-way platforms.

I don't know if I understand that correctly - one-way as in only being able to walk to -let's say- the left? Why that?

I agree on the small tile though...

[battlerager]

I think he meant "one way" as in "you can pass through from below, but you can't drop down from the top" 

[Soulliard]

One-way as in, you can jump up through them (and fall through them if you hold 'down'), instead of hitting your head against them. Like the platforms in the test level.

[Rostiger]

Ah, yeah, of course - silly me! 
Yeah, it was actually planned with that in mind.


[EDIT]

Ok, to clear things up a little more, here a version with CaveStorys original tiles and a few little changes to the layout:



Black parts are just deco - no plattforms or walls.

[/EDIT]

[neon]

it's great but the black parts are very confusing.  in general, i think you're going to indicate that things are "background" if you push their shades closer to the background or sky color.  it's a lot easier to read that way.  but it looks great!

[Rostiger]

Ah, that's it! The black parts look a bit irritating to me right now too.
But what do you say? Should the original tiles be used or should I repaint them in a stylized version?
I don't know if there will be a big difference, but I'm also hesitant to just rip them. Also in that size with that style, there's hardly room for improvement in my opinion.
I was thinking of giving the clouds more volumne like in the first layer on the second screenshot, but I'm not even sure about that...
Any suggestions for visual design guidelines?

[William Broom]

I definitely don't think we should rip any tiles/sprites. It makes it look amateurish. I think Quote looks a little out of place amidst the Cave Story tiles because he's got bigger blocks of colour and less detail. If I were you I would incorporate this into the style of the new stage design. For example the standard block tile might be better with only three or four colours and two or three chunks of rock in each tile.

[Rostiger]

Yeah, I thought so too - just wanted to get some reassurance. Might take a little while but should get done in the next couple of days...

[Gainsworthy]

SUPERFLUOUS SUGGESTION:

We need a Float Cat occasionally dropping into the background.

That is all.

Please return to your regular viewing.

[Annabelle Kennedy]

here. its a really really quick /ugly/dirty mock of how i thought these stage would look sorry kovski i sorta didnt adhere to your original map.

[Saker]

cool and fits the style .. but i think kovski design is more challenging though

[Rostiger]

Wow! Style-wise I like it a lot better than mine.

The only worries I have with it that now there is much less space for actual player movement (allthough the proportions fit much better to the size of the player sprites).. Maybe we can somehow blend our layouts...

[battlerager]

I liked Kovski's better, in terms of playability.

Those are some sexy pixels though. 


Somehow... combining those graphics with Kovski's layout? 

[Annabelle Kennedy]

well.. the problem with using actual "cave story' size tiles, is that quote in indie brawl is SIX TIMES bigger then cave story quote.

change the level however you want.. but if you want it to seem to scale with quotes world you have to really enlarge everything a LOT

having those REALLY skinny platforms is out of place in the cave story world because the smallest platform is as big as quote himself.

[Rostiger]

Yeah, you're right about the proportions. It will generally be quite a challenge to balance between proportional correctness and enough space to fight.

It would be a lot easier if the screen resolution was higher, but I don't know how much flexibility there is with resolutions. Let's see what Nightshade has to say about this issue...

[kyn]

Wait, are we using maps the exact size of the screen, or am I just misunderstanding?
I always assumed that the map could be huge and the camera would follow.
Fixed camera kind of blows