Delving Deeper Into Tileset Sprites

From my previous posts, you may recall the tiles in the game have top and core sections.  There are nineteen top tilesets in the game at present.  Five are grasses.  The tilesets are the result of many hundreds of hours of tweaks, variations, and texture experiments.  The easy part was choosing the 16-tile pattern. Once that was done, I started researching different grasses and experimenting with different styles.  I did not want just one grass type.  I wanted many different types so that each one would provide different resources in the game.  I researched the real-world and historical uses of the grass types I chose for inspiration.  Of course, the goal is not realism but merely a shadow of it that players can draw from and relate to in their minds.  Let me illustrate with saltgrass (DISTICHLIS SPICATA), a grass that is common in marshes and wetlands.  It grows quite tall.  Saltgrass is also said to have been used medicinally for respiratory allergies by Native Americans.  It also has some usefulness as hay for animals, albeit negligible.  With all those thoughts in mind, here was my original concept.

First Saltgrass Concept

It looks really interesting at first glance.  It seems to have some depth and layer to it.  It looks wild as you would expect it to be.  But when you simulate a portion of the map using the first slice, you begin to notice some obvious short-comings.

First Saltgrass Map Section

First, it is quite apparent the map section is 3 x 3 tiles.  That's not good.  They should blend with less obvious tile edges.  Second, the brightness is way too high.  Think how it would look at night!  Third, the orange colors are not exactly indicative of saltgrass, which is more green and yellow.  I cannot remember why I originally chose orange for this tileset.  Fourth, with so much going on within the tile itself, it doesn't leave much room for the eye to notice other things that might be on the tile, like game objects or wild plants growing on top.  Another negative with this concept is uniformity of the tile edges.  Does that really look like grass or does it look more like paint splatter?  The more I studied my beautiful tileset the more I realized how ugly and impractical it was.  When I started building maps with this tileset, I knew I needed to do something different. It needed to be toned down.  It needed to look more like grass!  During this process I began to realize that grass tilesets looked better when I stopped trying to create differentiating patterns and colors.  So I changed the style, colors, brightness, and the uniform paint splattering into what you see below.

Current Saltgrass Tilesheet

While not perfect by any means, I think the current saltgrass tilesheet is much more fitting the purpose.  The pattern is noisy but not distracting.  The edges are not uniform.  Instead of simulating vertical thickness with a dizzy pattern, I went with deeper-cut edges, and a black outline.  But best of all, it is almost seamless!

Current Saltgrass Map Section

When placed on top of a soil core, the result I was after comes into focus.

Current Saltgrass On Soil Core

I still have so much work to do with the tilesets before I publish the game, but I think my OCD has subsided for the time being, at least with this one.  In my next post I will talk about the trees.  They have gone through even more transformation over time than the tilesets have.  Well, that is all for now.  Thanks for following along in this journey as I work on my Survive And Thrive game.