Keen: Modding

I still can't see the map image because it's on Imageshack... could someone host it on a different website that isn't Photobucket or Deviantart? I'd appreciate it.

Looks great! The geography makes sense.

I noticed the dark forest is at the end of a path and not blocking anything. But you still need the firefly to get into it, so it can't be a level you can ignore. I thought a necessary item should be in it so Keen would need the firefly. The goggles?

Yeah the goggles are going to be either there or in the tree town.

Ah, I didn't remember that the forest path was dark, as well. That makes sense.

This is built using lass' tiles. I added a couple connecty bits to get the iso-perspective and rearranged the tileset since there was need for a new .tls anyways.

Notes:
dark cyan is sky texture
green is ground texture (light/dark green are due to lighting)
yellow is canyon texture
blue is water
purple is empty space

edit 1:
Topographical stuff is 90% done. I hope I've got all the masks in place. Lass has provided the Green texture, so that will be the next thing to go in.

Needed:
CANYON/BADLANDS/DIRT TEXTURE. This will be pasted over the YELLOW areas. (The texture does not HAVE to be yellow; it should probably be browny orangish or something like that) Also, it should be shaded so that there is a light, a medium, and a dark version (analagous to the grass).

LEVEL ICONS
Need level entry points, preferably drawn in the isometric perspective. We also need more junk to throw on the map; slug and lick forts, walls, rocks, houses, swamp stuff, whatever you would find in a boothill, etc.

Misc:
Rivers: I iso-fied lass's rivers, although a couple of the sloped ones look shoddy. She wants them to remain crossable; will have to play with blocking.

Second picture doesn't show...

New picture; try now.

Micro bluffs still look funny to me... I think the 45 degree slope should be changed to less diagonal... will play with that too.

Perspective of that pillar might be more fitting for a level than the world map... perhaps we could move ti to arch tileset?

lemm wrote: CANYON/BADLANDS/DIRT TEXTURE. This will be pasted over the YELLOW areas. (The texture does not HAVE to be yellow; it should probably be browny orangish or something like that) Also, it should be shaded so that there is a light, a medium, and a dark version (analagous to the grass).

Some ideas:

Too dithery for Keen, imko. Take a look at the Keen 4 map. The ground is all very basic, using no more than two colours. That's more the style I have in mind, maybe with some extra scattered details like the Keen 6 map.

However, if we can manage to adapt something like the style demonstrated here into the 16-colour world (but brighter, maybe more like this), more complicated graphics may be viable.

Aside from any judgement of Keenishness, I like the look of the desert, but the grass has far too much contrast. The green-on-green near the top-right looks the best.

More sample textures, created by mixing lass (sample E) and doomjedi's tiles, with colour inversions. Most of them didn't turn out too well...

Ok, I'll see what I can do.

I'm not an expert in tiles, and especially not at making Keen tiles, but I'm slowly learning, please be patient with me :)

Damn, what I so like about you guys - is that you can take a "penni-worth" peace of art (or amination or sprite....), and make a "100 dolllar bill-worth" result from it :)

I actually like at least third (if not half) of your variations, but I'll try to make more to choose from, taking your feedback into an account.

P.S. it was a bit of misunderstanding here - but "below the line" in my spritesheet - tiles that were made for "inside the level tile" - for swamp-type levels.

If only we had one more green. This game gets away with three greens and turns out really nice.

I was thinking about this mod's hybrid Vorticons-Galaxy nature, and in that light more complex textures are certainly suitable. Already the ones we've got are looking more interesting than the ground tiles on the Keen 1 map.

D in the series above looks excellent. In theory, it should look monotonous, but the horizontal band of highlighting gives it a nice ripply effect, and reminds me of those shiny mowed lawns in Theme Park and RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Yes, D looks good, but without the grey pixel. It's probably the best variation so far.

how about D for main texture, C for light texture, and C with light/dark green swapped for dark texture? (might also shear C to align it with the slopes...)

anyways, startin the map now, since stuff is in place. Will be 180 wide by 90 tall (16,200 tiles :0). Breaking it into 9 chunks of 60x30.