next »

[Eclipse]

i think my floor is more similar to the Quake one, i like the one with the metal plates you did and maybe i'll use that one, even if the plates are too big for the character, on Quake they are a bit bigger than a brick and always in a couple of four, using a plate per tile will ruin that effect.

here my 16x16 tiles without zoom, i did them from scratch instead of resizing and editing quake textures because they look more crispy, also i think that 24bit graphics in low res just looks ugly\blurry, because you only see a mess of pixels at 320x240, the fact that the game rotate and interpolate the tiles makes them already blurry, if i use a lot of colors like in your resized tiles i think they'll end to look worse on the game



thanks for the brightness tip, i thought about it, i'll do some tries when i'm done with all the main tiles, the floor tiles are already much darker than the walls btw.

For the Doors, they looks like the quake ones, if you played quake you will recognize them at a first look, i'll do the other ones like the ones in quake later episodes (the endlevel passage will look like the quake endlevel wooden door, the teleports will have the slipgate noisy effect and so on)

[saimo]

i think my floor is more similar to the Quake one,

The biggest problem with your tile is that it doesn't tile well:

Basically, you need to draw only and always the same 2 of the 4 sides of the sub-tiles (check the "grid" on my tile).

i like the one with the metal plates you did and maybe i'll use that one, even if the plates are too big for the character, on Quake they are a bit bigger than a brick and always in a couple of four, using a plate per tile will ruin that effect.

Yeah, but at that size it's better preserving the "identity" - putting 4 plates with such a complex texture in a single tile makes everything too confused

here my 16x16 tiles without zoom, i did them from scratch instead of resizing and editing quake textures because they look more crispy, also i think that 24bit graphics in low res just looks ugly\blurry, because you only see a mess of pixels at 320x240, the fact that the game rotate and interpolate the tiles makes them already blurry, if i use a lot of colors like in your resized tiles i think they'll end to look worse on the game

Agreed on the blurriness I just wanted to show another possibility
A couple of notes: why don't your get rid of the broken outline of the Quake symbols? Is the second tile from the right of the first row finished? I think it's missing the contour line at the bottom and that it could use some antialiasing on the diagonal edges.

the floor tiles are already much darker than the walls btw

Yes, but still there might not be enough room for the objects in between like middle barriers. Oh, well, it's something that you'll be able to evaluate as you progress.

EDIT:

For the Doors, they looks like the quake ones, if you played quake you will recognize them at a first look, i'll do the other ones like the ones in quake later episodes (the endlevel passage will look like the quake endlevel wooden door, the teleports will have the slipgate noisy effect and so on)

Ah, OK. No, I haven't played Quake so I didn't know that. Of course your choice is appropriate.

BTW: quick 'n' dirty edit - but you get the idea:

(D'oh! I just noticed that by mistake I saved this as a low quality JPG instead of a PNG as intended The edit used only the original colors and wasn't so messy, of course)

[Eclipse]

i'm not adding antialias and such in many places because the interpolation in the game already add a level of blurriness. I'm costantly testing how the stuff looks in the game as i progress.
As the game makes impossible to do pixel perfect art it's quite pointless to draw the tiles like in normal pixel art but i think it's better to focus more on how the appear when used.
Even if the rotating scenery is quite cool and adds a lot to the game it just ruins any try to do normal pixel art.
On a side it makes the game looks more an old game rather than the pixel perfect games we see nowadays on LCD screens. I don't remember being able to see the pixels so sharply on my old crt monitor when i used to play with my 286

[saimo]

i'm not adding antialias and such in many places because the interpolation in the game already add a level of blurriness. I'm costantly testing how the stuff looks in the game as i progress.
As the game makes impossible to do pixel perfect art it's quite pointless to draw the tiles like in normal pixel art but i think it's better to focus more on how the appear when used.
Even if the rotating scenery is quite cool and adds a lot to the game it just ruins any try to do normal pixel art.

I strongly disagree: in general, the better the source graphics, the better the interpolated ones; specifically, the antialiasing pixels get interpolated just like all others, so the natural "decanting" of colors between neighbouring pixels ensures that the overall blurriness does not amplify (I can't really find the words to explain this concept ). Moreover, when the rotation angle is 0° or a multiple of 90°, the graphics show exactly as they are.

Example with simple lines rotated with interpolation (done with The Gimp):

It's clear that the antialiased line (the one indicated by the red dot) looks better in all cases. This happens because interpolation tries to preserve the source graphics, and thus also their jaggedness or smoothing.

Example with a tile of yours, to which just a few pixels have been added for antialiasing:


Anyway, the theme is yours so the choice is yours

[Eclipse]

yes in that case i've planned to add a bit of antialias but i think i'll never use that tile, because of a limitation of the game, the wall tiles were used randomly making the levels so i cannot do a real angle, or a wall that faces right or left, i can only do random looking blocks so i can't use that tile in any efficient manner.
Making a first mockup i hoped there was a logic on the Castle blocks but apparently even the tiles for the room angles are placed without a precise direction, so i think i'll just make more generic blocks like the ones in the previous image

[saimo]

because of a limitation of the game, the wall tiles were used randomly making the levels so i cannot do a real angle, or a wall that faces right or left, i can only do random looking blocks so i can't use that tile in any efficient manner.
Making a first mockup i hoped there was a logic on the Castle blocks but apparently even the tiles for the room angles are placed without a precise direction, so i think i'll just make more generic blocks like the ones in the previous image

Tiles are picked according to the strict rules explained in the developer's manual. You can do corners

[Eclipse]

because of a limitation of the game, the wall tiles were used randomly making the levels so i cannot do a real angle, or a wall that faces right or left, i can only do random looking blocks so i can't use that tile in any efficient manner.
Making a first mockup i hoped there was a logic on the Castle blocks but apparently even the tiles for the room angles are placed without a precise direction, so i think i'll just make more generic blocks like the ones in the previous image

Tiles are picked according to the strict rules explained in the developer's manual. You can do corners

I saw that but on the levels corners seems to be used wrongly in many places, same thing for the tiles near a door, sometime a tile is used on the left side sometimes the same tile is used on the right one

[saimo]

I saw that but on the levels corners seems to be used wrongly in many places, same thing for the tiles near a door, sometime a tile is used on the left side sometimes the same tile is used on the right one

Nope, all tiles are used as expected, otherwise the castle walls (or other tiles like, for instance, the transparent barriers) would look wrong in many places.
This is the footnote that should enlighten you (it assumes one knows what has been said previously):

32. Contextual tiles indexes for tiles that do not follow the frame composition rules, depending on the sides where similar tiles are found, are: 0: none; 1: N; 2: E; 3: N-E; 4: S; 5: N-S; 6: S-E; 7: N-S-E; 8: W; 9: N-W; 10: W-E; 11: N-W-E; 12: S-W; 13: N-S-W; 14: S-W-E; 15: N-S-W-E.

Examples:

• tile #0 (that is, the leftmost tile) of barriers* is used when it is not surrounded by any other tile of the same kind;
• tile #3 is used when above (N) and at its right (E) there is a tile of the same kind;
• tile #11 is used when above (N), at its left (W) and at its right (E) there is a tile of the same kind.

*We are saying "walls" here because that's what they are in your and in the "castle" themes, but in other themes they could be something else.

On top of all this, you have 2 rows of tiles, organized in the same way, from which tiles are picked randomly - f.ex., in the first example above, the actual index chosen is either #0 or #16 (16 = 0 + 16, as each row is made of 16 tiles).

I hope this helps.

[Eclipse]

as you can see from this shot corners in Castle theme doesn't look right, that's what leaded me to confusion



if you look, the left angles on the room has the same graphics, and the right one too, instead of having four different tiles.

This shot is from Passages, but they looks like that in many other places, there's even a map that has a corner inside a perfectly straight wall

But now i saw that there are duplicated tiles for the corners on the bmp so maybe the error is not on the map file itself but on the bmp and they only need to be flipped

[saimo]

Here is a piece from the original tiles of the theme "castle" (I've indicated the corners and also left the transparent barriers for reference):

As you can see, all corners are different.

And here's a screenshot from the same mission you used:

Everything is fine.

Maybe you inadvertedly overwrote the original tiles in your file?
EDIT: ah, wait! Now I see you are not in the first room, but in a room in the middle! That explains it all: the corners you see have 3 tiles around them, 1 of which is hidden as it's in the other room. Basically, the tiles you see are either the #7 and #13 or their variants in the second row.

[Eclipse]

oh ok now i think i finally got it, i'll try to do my corners when i'll have more spare time castle corners still looks strange to my eyes but i got that you can also have a tile that makes two corners

[saimo]

oh ok now i think i finally got it, i'll try to do my corners when i'll have more spare time castle corners still looks strange to my eyes but i got that you can also have a tile that makes two corners

And also 4 (see the rightmost tile)

[Gigaknight]

Love the retro art style, I certainly have to download this game some time.

[saimo]

Love the retro art style,

Glad to hear this

I certainly have to download this game some time.

That would make me happy. The demo is only a few MBs, so it takes little to download. Enjoying it, though, does require some time and concentration

[Gigaknight]

Played through the demo, kinda reminds me of a 2D Doom. Is there a chance of a sequel? Maybe a multi-player game? 

[saimo]

Played through the demo, kinda reminds me of a 2D Doom.

Yes, there are similarities.

Is there a chance of a sequel? Maybe a multi-player game?

Short answer: very, very, very unlikely.
Long answer: please have a look at this is interview.

[GreatFox]

Got my copy today, it was packaged like common retail box, that means professionally. I the simple design of cover and CD.

Short story even shorter: awsum

[saimo]

Got my copy today,

Ah, great!!! It's always a great relief to hear that packages reach their owners

it was packaged like common retail box, that means professionally. I the simple design of cover and CD.

Short story even shorter: awsum

I'm glad you like it so much
And, stay tuned: the game itself will get better soon

[Eclipse]

an English interview with Saimo, quite interesting to read as it explains how BOH was born and why

http://www.ppa.pl/artykul-Interview.with.Simone.Bevilacqua.author.of.BOH.-7_22_1206.html

[saimo]

@Eclipse

Thanks for providing the link to the interview


@Everybody

Since the next update will allow BOH to run on Linux, can anybody please test the Linux demo (available on the DOWNLOADS page as usual)?
Moreover, also the other demos have been updated to let everybody check out the new features.

Thanks.