New 8x16 Graphical Tile Set for 3.1.2v2

[Nomad]

Okay, this has been my main project for a while: a rectangular tile set that can be used without switching to bigtile mode. Tiles are made 16x16 so they can be swapped in for the existing Adam Bolt set without any need to edit the source, but are intended for display at 8x16 font size.

Scale is obviously pretty teeny, so I've tried to keep things clean and simple; as much as possible I've incorporated the original ASCII colours and tried to use the same basic template for monsters within a letter group, so hopefully things should be semi-familiar and take less time to pick up.

This is the first playable version, so some of the graphics are still a bit rough, and I'm likely to keep fiddling with them to see if I can come up with better. There's theoretically both a Windows and a Mac version, though the latter hasn't been tested. You should be able to grab the zip file (8x16TileSetv1.0.zip) from here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?u6dkkm8ai56k5

Testers appreciated and opinions solicited! What's good, what's bad, what's ugly?

[Nick]

This is very cool. Good job.

You don't mention anything about whether you have issued them under some sort of licence. If you want to make them as easy as possible to use, I would recommend licencing so that

1. They can be added to and rereleased by others (this allows for future monster expansion and use by variants) and
2. They are compatible with the GPL.

I believe that one of the Creative Commons licences does this, but can't recall the details.

Sorry to go on about mundane stuff, but in my experience it's easiest to get that sorted first.

[Nomad]

It's absolutely my intention for the tiles to be free for modification/extension/inclusion at will, yep. I guess I should look into some sort of official licence statement to stick in the zip file to say so, but certainly, I'm planning on releasing the graphics for anybody to make any use of.

[Nomad]

Okay, on investigation, it seems the David Gervais tiles are under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence, so I'll be going with that one also.

[Nick]

According to Debian (who IIRC are the most stringent) the Share-Alike variant is definitely OK - it has an extra condition about redistribution, if I'm reading it correctly.

[thapper]

These tiles look great! I toyed with a similar idea for a while but I never got around to actually do any tiles. I'll download and test a bit.

[EpicMan]

It's hard to tell what areas are lit and what are not. I kind of like the graphics style (light walls, dark floor) but it is important to be able to tell whether a room is empty or is dark.

Other than that, I really like these.

[Nomad]

Originally Posted by EpicMan

It's hard to tell what areas are lit and what are not. I kind of like the graphics style (light walls, dark floor) but it is important to be able to tell whether a room is empty or is dark.

Yeah, the floor and wall colours are definitely something I want to fiddle with some more. The trouble with using the ASCII colours for monsters and items is that they really display best on a black background, so it's tough to find a background that will work with all of them and still stand out from the surrounding darkness. I didn't bother implementing the object mask properly until I'd finished drawing all the graphics, so now that's in place it should be much easier to switch new backgrounds in and out quickly. I'll see if it's workable to put some sort of pattern or border on the floor tiles to make them more distinct.

[EpicMan]

You could leave lit/visible floors black and make unexplored/unseen floors shades of gray. That way you preserve the current look and color contrast but the player sees where he can't see yet.

[Nomad]

Originally Posted by EpicMan

You could leave lit/visible floors black and make unexplored/unseen floors shades of gray. That way you preserve the current look and color contrast but the player sees where he can't see yet.

I did have a go at doing it that way, but it turns out the designated darkness/unexplored tiles get reused in various places (backdrops for wielded items and entries in the knowledge menus, padding to the right of the town where it doesn't quite fill the full screen area) so they really need to stay black or you get some odd effects.

I've been trying out a slightly lighter brown with a grid pattern for lit rooms and solid colour for torchlight, which seems like at least a marginal improvement: