I am not a site moderator or anything, but I believe questions about how to create art are perfectly fine here.
The size of a single tile depends on your needs but is usually smaller than 96x96.
This is something you need to decide early. If you change it later, you have effectively wasted most (if not all) of what you created until then.
How do you decide on the size? Smaller sizes allow for more tiles to fit on the display at the same time, creating more overview. Larger tiles allow for more details per tile. They also require more time to create. Traditional tile sizes are powers of 2. This used to have hardware-related reasons. It doesn't any more, but that is how tradition works... Anyway, using a popular size makes it easier to build upon or mix with existing tilesets -- provided their license permits. I believe the most common contemporary tile size is 32x32, but YMMV.
The number of tiles in the tile sheet is easier to change. When working with tiled, you can at least change the height of the sheet without harming existing maps. I don't know current versions of tiled; maybe they have added a way to port maps even when the tile sheet width changes. Otherwise it is easy for programmers to create a converter.
Too narrow tile sheets make it hard to arrange tiles such that transitions happen between adjacent positions in the sheet. Too wide sheets may cause a gratuitous need for scrolling when used with tiled.
Your 96x96 pixels would translate to 3x3 tiles of size 32x32 or 6x6 tiles of size 16x16. Personally, I think 3x3 is too small, but go with what works well for you.
Outside of using programs such as tiled, the tile sheet size is of little importance.
When you are unsure about something, it may help to look at how other do it.
OGA is a great resource for that. William already gave you some pointers. And all art here is open, which means that you are not only allowed to learn from it; you are allowed to use it and build upon it. Sometimes with implications on how you are allowed to license the resulting combined work. (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
A Möbius strip has a twist: When you exit to the left near the bottom, you reenter from the right near the top. With a torus, you reenter from the right near the bottom.
What you describe is called the projective plane. I have yet to see it in a game. On the other hand, torus games are fairly common. Examples from the top of my head are Globulation2, KoboDeluxe, Pacman, and Widelands. Whenever the world is finite but there is no border, it usually is a torus.
The 36'50'' of my "Symmetric 7 player multiplayer map template" refers to the submission prior to its edit. That is it only accounts for the template itself. The example took another 28'58'', so the total is more than an hour. Therefore, when judging, please only take the template into account.
@ vk: I had planned to submit it in Documents, but the art submission guidelines say that Documents submissions must be usable in a game on their own. Which a template clearly isn't.
It seems obvious, but: Have some page which (automatically) lists all challenges with links to them. Link that page from somewhere, e.g. the front page. That alone would be a huge improvement (or does it exist and I did not notice?).
I agree that adding even a single new animation for all existing layers of the universal sprite sheet is a lot of work. But it takes a lot less in order to be useful. For example carrying. Assuming that the base would share hips and below with the walkcycle, shorts and such could easily be adapted. (Not copied because in the walkcycle some pants pixels are eclipsed by hands.) So could hairstyles. Carriers are workers, they don't need fancy armor. Male ones can be topless, even. So it would only take an arty person to do the base animation and techical/semi-arty people could build upon that to achieve basic usefulness. More stuff can be added later, as needed.
- Jumping. It's the one blocker that prevents a true platformer using LPC art.
Also, for an JRPG style game, I find it unplausible that a narrow abyss should
be non-clearable. Plus it adds tactical possibilities if the weight of your
inventory limits the distance you can jump.
- Running (in contrast to walking). Apart from combat games, it could be used in
sport sims.
- Swimming.
- Carrying (overhead, for example). Useful for archaic economy sims (like
Widelands). This one I would directly incorporate into my game Gossip;
the others occured to me while pondering games I'll probably never make.
I am not a site moderator or anything, but I believe questions about how to create art are perfectly fine here.
The size of a single tile depends on your needs but is usually smaller than 96x96.
This is something you need to decide early. If you change it later, you have effectively wasted most (if not all) of what you created until then.
How do you decide on the size? Smaller sizes allow for more tiles to fit on the display at the same time, creating more overview. Larger tiles allow for more details per tile. They also require more time to create. Traditional tile sizes are powers of 2. This used to have hardware-related reasons. It doesn't any more, but that is how tradition works... Anyway, using a popular size makes it easier to build upon or mix with existing tilesets -- provided their license permits. I believe the most common contemporary tile size is 32x32, but YMMV.
The number of tiles in the tile sheet is easier to change. When working with tiled, you can at least change the height of the sheet without harming existing maps. I don't know current versions of tiled; maybe they have added a way to port maps even when the tile sheet width changes. Otherwise it is easy for programmers to create a converter.
Too narrow tile sheets make it hard to arrange tiles such that transitions happen between adjacent positions in the sheet. Too wide sheets may cause a gratuitous need for scrolling when used with tiled.
Your 96x96 pixels would translate to 3x3 tiles of size 32x32 or 6x6 tiles of size 16x16. Personally, I think 3x3 is too small, but go with what works well for you.
Outside of using programs such as tiled, the tile sheet size is of little importance.
When you are unsure about something, it may help to look at how other do it.
OGA is a great resource for that. William already gave you some pointers. And all art here is open, which means that you are not only allowed to learn from it; you are allowed to use it and build upon it. Sometimes with implications on how you are allowed to license the resulting combined work. (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
Thanks, that makes me happy to hear.
I forgot to mention that the chocolate floor was inspired by a remark ryan.dansie (http://opengameart.org/users/ryandansie) made in this thread: http://opengameart.org/content/candy-pack
Excuse me if this is a stupid question, but what are the benefits of converting something to a specific palette?
Definitely a torus.
A Möbius strip has a twist: When you exit to the left near the bottom, you reenter from the right near the top. With a torus, you reenter from the right near the bottom.
What you describe is called the projective plane. I have yet to see it in a game. On the other hand, torus games are fairly common. Examples from the top of my head are Globulation2, KoboDeluxe, Pacman, and Widelands. Whenever the world is finite but there is no border, it usually is a torus.
The 36'50'' of my "Symmetric 7 player multiplayer map template" refers to the submission prior to its edit. That is it only accounts for the template itself. The example took another 28'58'', so the total is more than an hour. Therefore, when judging, please only take the template into account.
(It seems I can't edit the submission comment.)
@ Redshrike: is it clearer after the edit?
@ vk: I had planned to submit it in Documents, but the art submission guidelines say that Documents submissions must be usable in a game on their own. Which a template clearly isn't.
It seems obvious, but: Have some page which (automatically) lists all challenges with links to them. Link that page from somewhere, e.g. the front page. That alone would be a huge improvement (or does it exist and I did not notice?).
I agree that adding even a single new animation for all existing layers of the universal sprite sheet is a lot of work. But it takes a lot less in order to be useful. For example carrying. Assuming that the base would share hips and below with the walkcycle, shorts and such could easily be adapted. (Not copied because in the walkcycle some pants pixels are eclipsed by hands.) So could hairstyles. Carriers are workers, they don't need fancy armor. Male ones can be topless, even. So it would only take an arty person to do the base animation and techical/semi-arty people could build upon that to achieve basic usefulness. More stuff can be added later, as needed.
Character animations that I miss:
- Jumping. It's the one blocker that prevents a true platformer using LPC art.
Also, for an JRPG style game, I find it unplausible that a narrow abyss should
be non-clearable. Plus it adds tactical possibilities if the weight of your
inventory limits the distance you can jump.
- Running (in contrast to walking). Apart from combat games, it could be used in
sport sims.
- Swimming.
- Carrying (overhead, for example). Useful for archaic economy sims (like
Widelands). This one I would directly incorporate into my game Gossip;
the others occured to me while pondering games I'll probably never make.
In case it is useful for anyone, here is how to achieve the effect in povray:
#declare Distance = 100;
camera {
orthographic
location <1,-1,-1>*Distance
direction <-1,1,1>
right 8*x
up 6*y
}
light_source {<1,-2,-3>*Distance 1}
box {-1 1 texture {pigment {rgb 1}}}
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