After that blog yesterday, I've implemented a chunk loading and unloading system that works like a charm so far. Still have yet to implement the way AI handles it, but that'll be an adventure I'll have to save for later. Right now I have the foundation laid out.
Here's another big issue I've been facing.
World ArtUp until now I've been using a tile system. As you'll see, I've been called out on it looking like shit. Now, while I could easily add to the tile collection (what I currently have are just placeholders to show where the dirt, rock, and tunnels are), I've been considering dropping it altogether in favor of something prettier.
(That ugly brown shit color is just placeholder since I haven't laid out any tiles yet.)
So I'm at a wall here. Tiles, believe it or not, actually slow down GM considerably more than they should. This is amplified further in GM8.1, which runs this game like a pussy. I'm not sure why else 8.1 would have terrible framerate in comparison in a large world with few objects (so far). Sizing down the room didn't do much. But deleting all the 32x32 tiles did.
So aside from being ugly, the tile system is also stupidly inefficient. I'm currently in the process of moving tiles to different layers per chunk so when the chunk is deactivated, the tiles are too. Even though GM shouldn't draw them off-screen. Fucking GM. Why not move on? Because I'm busy prototyping.
For what it's worth,
the room size is 32768 x 4096.
Here are my options.
What do you think would make world art look pretty and unique?- Tile system (obviously revamping the tiles)
- Hand-drawn background art (I can't do this by myself)
- 3D modeled background art (a la Creatures, but I can't do this myself)
Or, if you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear. GM also doesn't support image files that are greater than 2048x2048. So other forms of background art are iffy as well.
This game has given me so much trouble but it's also my most rewarding so far.
TL;DRI need a system of doing world art. Please take these into account and recommend something. I'll take any and all suggestions, I just need a foothold of some kind.
- The world is 32768 x 4096 pixels
- Tiles slow down in GM
- Tiles are ugly
- Backgrounds cannot be bigger than 2048x2048
- I have no scene drawing talent whatsoever
- Multiple rooms are not an option because of the need to process AI in different rooms
- I have Googled the fuck out of these subjects
I do have a Terraria-styled lighting engine. I just disabled it for the purposes of debugging.
Also, like I said, all of these tile graphics are placeholders and I'd go through and redo textures to be less repetitive. But this is getting tedious beyond belief. 32x32 tiles in a world this large is NOT the way to go.Tiles repeated that much will never look good, no matter how pretty each individual tile is.
observe:Heheh. That made my day.
But really though, they're just temporary textures while I work things out.I'm at a loss here, guys. Help me out.Also, deleting all the tiles boosted the game from 30 FPS to 50. How the fuck does GM even handle tiles?Poorly.
i laugh whenever random generation becomes a passing fad, i still haven't finished my 3+ year old engine. though to be fair your rooms are almost four times as big as mine, which is cool. i never bothered with chunks and stuff, since that word didn't exist until Minecraft. notch stole my niche asdfgjkl;
i've been thinking of updating the gfx on mine though.. i know how frustrating that part is at least :PI've greatly, greatly considered random generation for this game. But the fact that I'm running into all these other problems tells me I should probably stay away for now.
Dammit hel…. Now you're going to make me put that in as a game feature. And with that I'd probably drop tiles for a data structure to store data. Huh, this could actually work really well….GODDAMMIT HEL.Those rooms… They are big.
This isn't randomly generated is it? It doesn't look it.Anyways, you seem to have overly ambitious ideas for this game, which isn't a bad thing, it just will make it a lot more work. You could try having backgrounds be artwork instead of tiles, to lessen the monotony.The problem isn't tiles, it's the amount of tiles you have and how often they're used. And what they look like, but, you said they're placeholders. Your best bet is making several tiles for the same thing, and alternating them in different ways. Also, adding various random things that make the room more interesting (buildings, wooden supports in caves, spider webs, random shit like that).This comment probably isn't that helpful. Sorry.Nah, it's fine.
When I can figure this problem out, I do plan to redo my current graphics (these are five years old, mind you, and my pixel art has come a long way), and make new ones for atmosphere.If I'm going for atmosphere, I'm going to have to avoid generation. If I want generation though, it'd solve a lot of issues like actually designing the world, but generating atmospheric objects would be pretty ridiculous, and wouldn't look as good as if they were artfully placed.Besides, I don't know much about generation. But I'd love to learn it if it sets this game on the right path.Rez speaks the truth - how about simply using larger tiles, tiles that exceed block collision size?
I'm not sure if this helps with performance. I'm quite surprised by GM being slowed down by tiles…Also, my 64digits RPG "game" suffered from the exact same syndrome. Towns (i.e. complex areas of different tile types intersecting) looked good, but wilderness? Heh.Alternatively, you might also want to "black out" solid areas, negative space helps separate the gameplay-relevant area from solid ground, and increases immersion.Finally, this is unrelated to your problem (or maybe it isn't?), but I think you should take up Cyrus' challenge (maybe with an entire scene, digital art of course). IIRC, you always complained you don't really have a singular style to your graphics. I think comparing your past ith what you'd do today is a good way of extrapolating the direction to head towards.