Exult Forum

These were each made from one "wall". There are 16 variations, all seamless. Before I proceed with the completion of this aspect of the project, I need to know which design is better enjoyed & appreciated by the community. People who look at my screen like one or the other, 50/50. I need to choose one. I know which one -I- like best, but its the potential players that matter. So please give me your opinion! This will also help me when I draw everything else.

(edit by Dominus, fixed the subject)

The 1st tile looks smoother, the 2nd one looks a bit pixelated.

Guess I would vote 1st one.

My vote would be for the first one.

All I can say is that the first one is more aesthetically pleasing to me.

I concur with above two statements. First one looks better.

Thanks all!

I'll wait for a few more replies, though its looking like the first wall will be used. The votes on the Savage Empire Remake Faebook page are also for the first wall.

It does seem more realistic to me. It was drawn as an experimental variation. In the meantime, I have been working on a palm tree.

After zooming in and examining the two, I'm also going to have to say go with the first.

I would agree with you that it appears more realistic than the second one.
It's better at showing the rim of light that appears at the edges of curved objects.

first

Definitely the first - it has a smoother look to it.

I actually like the SECOND one better until I zoom in my browser 400% and see that the first one is more anti-aliased.

If this is the actual game size, I think the 2nd one is more subtle and less cartoon-y. If it's going to be scaled up much larger, then the 2nd one.

Oh, BTW, the other 15 variations don't ALL have pictures of penises on them do they?

The first one's better, but there are problems with both. You should make a tileable texture of a real stone wall photo, then skew it 45 degrees or whatever the tile's at, then manually create the side seams.

I appreciate the votes and the comments! I even got a laugh from the penis comment, hehe!

Kevin, I had originally looked into using "real" textures. I actually tested the idea using the exact methods that you describe, but quickly decided against that for many reasons. I have certain goals that I am trying to attain with the project:

I am learning how to do pixel art, and I am having a great deal of fun!

I am learning to create low-res seamless tiles & textures from scratch.

I am trying to keep things "old school". This project is a homage to Ultima & early gaming, before the advent of photo-realism & fully 3d games.

I want to recreate The Savage Empire using as many original graphics as I can manage, while making it recognizable as S.E. within the highly interactive Ultima VII engine.

The first one is much better.

Thank you all for the votes! The first one it is. I have been detailing that set since last night & will hopefully have them finished this week. Don't forget to check out my other new post with more graphics, & remember, I'm still looking for animators!

Good points all around. In fact, before reading your post, I was busy in the GIMP creating an example. Guess what? The freaking power failed momentarily due to a storm and I lost my work. Perhaps a sign from on high...

However, you could compromise by creating a modifier from a real surface on top of the hand-painted one, giving it a gritty touch of realism:

http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/misc/

Glad the damn power didn't go out this time.

I basically skewed the original so it was square, then created a tileable image of the same dimensions from a different texture. I added that as a layer using the "Multiply" layer blending option in the GIMP, composited it, then re-skewed it to the original perspective. I copied the layer to the left and right to make sure it was tileable.

One thing I had to do was convert it to/from RGB/indexed a couple of times, as skewing it in RGB mode alpha blended the edges which is generally undesirable. A bit of a trick but it worked well.

I like old-school graphics too, but a little love never hurt anyone (debatable).

Thanks Kevin! The modified wall looks great and reminds me of an experiment that I had tried. I placed a brown version over a gray scaled version before merging layers, and ran the eraser over it, giving the wall an alternating brown-gray look. I do RBG/Index tricks a lot, and I find that copying an RBG image into an indexed "canvas" is more accurate at color conversion than by manually converting an image to indexed & choosing the Ultima VII color palette.

I like your idea and will probably toy around with it once I get the other details with the cracks and pits finished. I may brighten it up though; the gritty look while more realistic takes away from the "Far Cry" inspired color scheme. The idea is to give Eodon a paradisiacal look to the environment, with the grittiness being seen more in the Myrmidex areas, as well as seen in some of the other dangers that the player would face.

Keep the ideas coming! I do need all the help that I can get!

Though you have already decided on the left one, I want to reassure you that your decision is the right one.

Thank you Skutarth! I will be wrapping them up soon.

I know my vote won't matter by now, but I would prefer the second one. In my experience so far, gradual shifts in such a low resolution can make things look too blurry and undefined, and additional contrast provides better results.

Crowley, I do appreciate your feed back! I still have the original walls set aside, and I can test both sets. I wanted to go with more detail, and was looking at many mountain graphics on Pixel Joint, other old games, and Ultima VII's as well. Coming up with the design for what I am trying to do was very challenging indeed!

I think that I am going to grayscale the second set for the Jukari lands, as I want things to look smoother in a cooled lava environment, plus I want to avoid redundancy.