Any thoughts on working with placeholder graphics?

[RaichuBender]

Hey there,

I'm currently working on my Pokemon fan game using the Essentials kit. One of my first roadblocks I stumbled across was graphics, or tiles to be more specific. You see, I wanted to start designing my routes and towns before defining the tilesets. The only problem is, if I use the default tilesets, that limits what I can do and I need to realign every tile later, which can be tedious. Also there's going to be a lot of empty space of the tiles I didn't use. My solution to this is making my own placeholder tilesets which I can easily swap with the real tileset later. I started by creating a simple grid and added the default included tiles from the essentials kit to it and drew some low defined tile myself just to give an idea of what tiles I want to replace them with.

It looks something like this:

It's primitive, but I can at least start creating simple routes with this.

The problem I'm facing now, however is that when I want to add more tiles to it, the tileset becomes very unorganized. I like to keep things simple and clean.

Is there anyone who works in a similar way and can give me tips on how to work with placeholder graphics?

Thanks in advance!

Thomas

 

[Maruno]

I guess the best approach is to have a test map or two, in which you try to create everything you can possibly think of. This lets you figure out which tiles you'll need. Don't worry about a disorganised tileset at the moment; you'll rearrange it later.

You're not going to get things perfect. You'll have odds and ends all over the place even after you rearrange your tiles after playing with the test maps. Don't be put off by the cleanliness of the Essentials tilesets - they were a complete set of tiles before I even started arranging them into tilesets, so there's a reason for their tidiness.

Speaking of, have a look at the Essentials tilesets, and see what kinds of tiles they contain. Floor shadow patterns, paths, tree clusters, variants of grass, cliffs and ledges, interchangeable house roofs, fences, signposts, all that kind of thing.

It doesn't matter if there's chunks of a tileset you end up not using. They don't take up that much space.

 

[RaichuBender]

Ah, thanks for the detailed answer! I guess I shouldn't worry about it too much for now.

I would love to know if there's a handy tool that can help me replace tiles. That would be dope, but doing it manually isn't as big of a deal. Just a bit tedious. :P

 

[Dragonite]

It's probably not a bad idea to familiarize yourself with programmer art which is the fancy way of saying "temporary graphics game makers use until they make friends with an artist or two." As long as you know what they stand for (and don't leave them in for a playable release . . . oops) you shouldn't let a lack of graphical resources (or audible resources, for that matter) get in the way of making games.

In your case, if you need, for example, a path tileset, it might be a good idea to draw the shape of each tile in the set (something like this, maybe), perhaps textured to look like ground or grass or asphalt or whatever, perhaps not.

Does that answer your question?

 

[RaichuBender]

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. I watched a video yesterday of Amethyst (who created Pokemon Reborn) and she showed some tricks on map making, including how to lay out your path and decide where to place trees/boundaries using autotile.. Although I mostly want to make my tilesets myself, it'd be nice if I can get some help from other artists later on.