Tile Sizes

Today was spent playing with tile sizes, as I continue to try and nail down an art style for the game. Although the original graphics were 16px based, I debated using 32px sprites so I could have the characters look the way I was drawing them. This produced a whole slew of problems -- formost among them using 32px tiles completely threw off my scale. I either lost the pixelated look entirely (something I'd like to keep), or my game window had to be HUGE to accommodate the larger graphics scale.

In the end, I decided I wanted to keep the 16px tiles, *and* my 640 by 800 game screen, *and* my 2x zoom. I've grown accustomed to them, and if the settings are good enough for Cave Story, they're good enough for my game. But what about larger entities?

Crocomire. He's big, ugly and mean, but you kind of feel sorry for him.

I still wanted my new, better looking 24px characters. The solution? Something I've been needing to work on anyways - a tile system that can grab different sized tiles. This is essential if I'm going to have bosses (or any characters) that are larger than 16px. One of my favorite parts of Super Metroid is how big most of the bosses are. It gives a great sense of peril and scale, and completely changes how you approach them as enemies. This is not something I want to skip over - sometimes enemies need to be BIG!

With this system in place, I'm currently in the process of re-working my graphics that no longer fit my desired scale - most notably the player sprite. It's a lot of work, but I'm pleased at how things are looking.

Bob is all grows up.

I'll have the graphics for the player done soon. After that comes NPCs!