Room of the Week 2013 - Archives

[Hawntah]

it needs more variation, especially in the background

Not quite sure what you mean by that. I've tried to avoid tile repetition where possible, however I'm using the vanilla tileset/background which doesn't really give me all that many tiles to work with. For comparison, here's a screenshot of a vanilla room using the same tileset ripped straight from the game:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

So.. how do you suggest I add variation without adding custom tiles/backgrounds? And how would you position the mushrooms to make them look less out of place? I'm pretty sure if I just remove them altogether, the room will look more repetitive and boring than it does now..  :eyeroll:

Anyway, I'm voting for Vismund, even though that white stuff on some of the green blocks looks really weird and out of place.

[Vismund Cygnus]

it needs more variation, especially in the background

Not quite sure what you mean by that. I've tried to avoid tile repetition where possible, however I'm using the vanilla tileset/background which doesn't really give me all that many tiles to work with. For comparison, here's a screenshot of a vanilla room using the same tileset ripped straight from the game:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

So.. how do you suggest I add variation without adding custom tiles/backgrounds? And how would you position the mushrooms to make them look less out of place? I'm pretty sure if I just remove them altogether, the room will look more repetitive and boring than it does now..  :eyeroll:

Sorry, I probably didn't express myself very clearly in that post.
When I say repetition, I mean that I can clearly see where the sections of pillar in the background have simply been copied and pasted across, by looking at the bricks and stuff across them. Even by changing a few tiles across them slightly it'd make it much less obvious that they were repeating.

As for the mushrooms, I wouldn't say the placement is bad, so much as the colouration. In the room from the game you posted, the mushrooms fit in well because their palette blends better than the ones in your room. I'd suggest maybe changing the palette on them, in order to get something that fits in better, without looking out of place.  :^_^:
Anyway, hopefully that clears things up. Also, hopefully this doesn't sound snarky, I'm somewhat bad at giving out advice, and terribly tired too.  :razz:

[Hawntah]

Sorry, I probably didn't express myself very clearly in that post.
When I say repetition, I mean that I can clearly see where the sections of pillar in the background have simply been copied and pasted across, by looking at the bricks and stuff across them. Even by changing a few tiles across them slightly it'd make it much less obvious that they were repeating.

As for the mushrooms, I wouldn't say the placement is bad, so much as the colouration. In the room from the game you posted, the mushrooms fit in well because their palette blends better than the ones in your room. I'd suggest maybe changing the palette on them, in order to get something that fits in better, without looking out of place.  :^_^:
Anyway, hopefully that clears things up. Also, hopefully this doesn't sound snarky, I'm somewhat bad at giving out advice, and terribly tired too.  :razz:

Uh.. you do realise the background is (to my knowledge) just an image that is repeated indefinitely, it is not made up of tiles and therefore there is nothing I can do to make it less repetitive without replacing it completely. The only thing I've changed about the background in this particular room is the palette, so I'm guessing you don't really like Zero Mission's vanilla graphics, which is fine, but I think it's a bit unfair to criticise a hack because of faults which are present in the vanilla game as well.

I don't know, I quite like the mushrooms' current colour, I think it works well with the foreground tiles without being too similar and it contrasts nicely with the background.. but I guess I could try changing it. What colour did you have in mind?

Oh, and I actually prefer snarky advice, as long as it's constructive.

[Metaquarius]

Hawntah is pretty darn right.
A fairly simple room but well done I believe.

[Digital_Mantra]

Hawntah, I can see how well you differentiated tile repetition to make a decent, solid room.
Too bad its Fusion. Not my thing. I'd rather play Comic Zone if I wanted comic style gfx game.

I'm sure the holiday season didn't leave us all unavailable for days on end, cause according to my
calculations on family interactions, that could not feasibly last longer than an evening or two at most.

So yeah Vismund won this week.
Back to submitting our unintelligible rooms from whatever hack we're making or not.
(Cause when people look at a room, they've no idea what upgrades you have/don't have. Or FX1 settings.)

Whoever said spikes are artificial challenge can argue with the 1980s.
Here's a room from Temple Runner:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Black Falcon]

That's a nice room!

I don't see much of a problem with spikes in your case.
People just tend to let you fall blindly into a random spike pit, so you aren't even able to react without taking heavy damage or dying (I'm watching you, Mst! :P).
Your room looks like a difficult, but fairly beatable challenge. :^_^:

[Vismund Cygnus]

If I enter this piece of crap, maybe other people will do stuff too.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Smiley]

Why the hell not.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[FPzero]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

An interior.

[Digital_Mantra]

Wow FirePhoenix..  :whoa:

[Quietus]

Not that I'm griping about the rest, FP, but you always have an excellent grasp of colours. :^_^:

[FullOfFail]

Normally this probably would've extended into two weeks, but since it happened to get submissions within a day and 2014 is about to start, I just went ahead and set it up anyway. Next week will start the 2014 period.

[FPzero]

[spoiler=DMan]I remember you had a version of this with actual tiles and a background when first posted.  Why is it gone now?  It looked really nice from what I remembered but now it's gone and I can't picture it well enough...  As it is now, well, it's certainly a room layout.  That's about all I can say.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Vismund]Fairly basic room design but I do enjoy how the terrain gradually changes tilesets as you go left to right. Palettes look pretty good.  Is that the stock blue palette for the ground from the room before the statue room?  There's nothing really wrong with it but you could probably touch it up and make it look more like your own.  If it isn't the stock palette, then I'm just confused and you should continue doing what you're doing![/spoiler]
[spoiler=SmileUser]I think the room looks way too busy overall.  There's a lot of detailing but I think you might have done a bit too much in places.  I'm assuming the thorns hurt you.  In that case, why bother having the darker thorns that I'm assuming you can pass in front of?  They don't really add much to the room for me.  Additionally, I can't even tell what those weird "clouds" of tiles are supposed to be.  They don't look very good nor are they paletted very well.  They kind of look like they're using glitched graphics to be honest...[/spoiler]
[spoiler=FirePhoenix (myself)]I challenged myself to make a room that looked like people other than Samus could feasibly live and work in, hence the background staircases and elevator.  The tougher part was that the background is on a scrolling Layer 2, meaning the stairs and elevator are all on Layer 1.  Other than that I wanted to also challenge myself to make patterned filler terrain, instead of using a single repeated tile like I usually do.  So I made a pattern using the tiles available and then iterated on it as I pasted it, randomizing features as I went.[/spoiler]

Ultimately I voted for Vismund's room.  It's very simple and nice with that little bit of shifting tilesets I mentioned above giving it an edge over the rest.  That and voting for myself is a horrible awful thing to do and I would be ashamed.

[Vismund Cygnus]

[spoiler=DMan]lol

really though, why delete the actual room? other than spoilers for Temple runner and jazz.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Me]Like I said when I submitted, pretty plain room. FirePhoenix, that blue part is indeed the vanilla palette for the statue hall. I tried tweaking it for a bit, but honestly nothing went better than what was already there, and why fix what ain't broke?  :lol:[/spoiler]
[spoiler=SmileUser]This room is pretty average, to be honest. The tiling is very repetitive, and like FP said, the weird cloudy things look like they're glitched out, they don't do anything at all except look odd. I will say I like your Pink Brinstar palette though.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=FirePhoenix]Voted for you this week. As always, excellent use of colour and some amazing tiling going on. The Wrecked Ship is one of the tilesets I have trouble making look good, so I respect you for that. Overall it's a good, clean room and it really makes me want to see more. I also like the background in the room. While repetitive, there's also enough variation with it that it makes it less obvious than it could be.
[/spoiler]
So yeah, voted for FirePhoenix, nice work.

[Quietus]

FP for me too.  A nice, clean room with great use of colour.