Art Mockups
There was something about the original Nethack mockup that I didn’t like so I made another mockup to help settle on a theme/style. I had a few other theme ideas, like Vampire Hunter D or something leaning towards scifi, like Aliens, so I made one of each. The Aliens mockup was lots of fun, but I lost steam halfway through the Vamp mockup. I took what I liked from each and ended up with these.
I’d love to keep going, but continuing with the Aliens IP is obviously not going to work. I’m scrapping the sprites, but the environment tiles are reusable. I’m a lot happier with the general style. I like the sprite proportions. Cartoonish, but not overly so like most say an SNES RPG like Final Fantasy. For me a perfect median between cartoonish and realistic proportions. I wanted something a bit more cartoonish at first just so I could reuse some dwarf guys I’d made up, but side-by-side they just don’t work for the kind of environment style I want.
I have a few more set pieces like a small residence, chemical warehouse, and some office tiles. Might put them together into some more mockups, but probably not till I decide on a few design issues.
The palette is pretty inconsistent, partly because of the colour count. Pixel art tends to get dirty looking the more total colours there are. At some point I’ll need to settle on some common palettes, clean up all the near identical black shades, etc.
I also need to work on better transitions between floors and walls. It’s just a little too obvious right now. It work alright for most of the building walls, but I need a more organic approach for the alien area. the growth on the walls needs to grow a little from the floor instead of stopping right on the corner. The more industrial parts like those long corridors with pipes need to be broken up with a support beam or similar. Something that take a whole tile away from the wall.