Ugly tiles thread

[Random Paradox]

I'd be willing to create a sprite where after a while of not moving, Tux gets angry and stares at the screen, waving to the player angrily to get the player's attention and start moving again.

Inspiration:

Inspiration?

[theXman63]

you mean rocks n' daimonds?

[Nickerson Romero]

hey my dawn_hill_para_blur background is back in the mountains there comes the bottom of trees

[gwater]

Hey Yo. I'm the person that did a bunch of this ugly art. I need to add one piece of context, ST levels at the time were under heavy development, we just got 3 sections of background (bottom|middle|top). At the time, there was no transition between the three backgrounds, it was a stark line. I was just trying to blend the new backgrounds at the time : -)

ST Forest World #2020

[BlasterMaster]

Thanks for the context. This thread is in no way meant to slam anyone's art btw. Also, I would put some of my older art in this thread too.

[Alzter]

Hoo boy, you should see some of my old walrus art for the game, or my concepts to expand on a rejected feature

[gwater]

I love this thread - especially because a lot of this bad art is mine : -) At the time, I was personally was trying to figure out how the backgrounds worked, support for top|middle|bottom background was newly added and I was attempting to blend stuff together so all three backgrounds would at least line up. Yes, most of these backgrounds are total poop. I challenge anyone to try to match Grumble's style - his work is beautiful and world-class, which makes it so hard to work up against. I was having so much fun making bad art - sorry for the pain I've caused.

Regarding all the bad art backgrounds, I'm going to see if I can address some of the bad stuff that I dropped in. After many years, I just got dev access back to the current branch. I'll be doing some cleanup commits soon. We can remove or replace, it's up to the arcade mob that is currently running the shots. I'm going to post another thread to discuss this more in details, specifically forest related stuff. I'm working on some new updates that hopefully will help add some consistency + new fun to the game.

There's a lot of activity recently, some really good stuff being worked on by others - it's crazy how big and old this game is.
Side Scroll Fun at it's Best!

[gwater]

Ha ha - I basically said the same thing twice here, I didn't think my first post worked so I replied a second time days later with just about the same comment.

( I though Nolok ate my post the first time round. Nolok is bad like that.)

[Serano]

@gwater: I can only speak for myself, but I love your new forest tiles. If not for the forest, it could also be used for world 3, because of the totems, which would fit in a tropical forest as well. Or simply for variation.

[WeLuvGoatz]

I dislike most of the parallax BGs, such as the nightsky one, because of how badly cropped they are... I quite like the actual painting but the parallax editing is absolute garbage fire...

[Busybody43]

(side note, but altzer... I'm actually using snowtrees for a snowy forest level... with semi-arctic behind it...)
Honestly, I do not like the lack of a ghost forest version of the underground forest and background forest tiles... and the vines, not Goatz's version on the discord, really isn't that good compared to the rest of the game, and even the forest world...
luckily, that's all I have to say...

[tlbomb]

I think the "Stone Wall" tileset should be deleted for a part. The grey bricks are almost never used and make things just look unprofessional.

[Z-man]

I know these tiles and backgrounds look ugly but I think it'll look better in 4K, But that might never happen

Oh! and another thing! I found an icon of the Icy Island world. It looks fine for me. What do YOU think of it?

[Z-man]

Actually, There's 2 ugly things things to it. Like blurry snow trees and a poorly drawled boat.

[Oliver_Buo]

Boss fight Geisterbaum is really bad and I don't think it fits the game at all.....and
ICE iland Tux doesn't find a penny just a letter....ok
Forrex Iland Tux doesn't find a penny just a letter...really now?
tropical island ?
Sorry but you messed up the game.

Snow island top... forest island was also cool... but tropical island? Doesn't work at all....
Finally bring Nolok into the Game !
Or polar bears and seals or arctic cold as opponents but no tropical indel just NO

[Bear bear dolan 1]

this background like a jpeg image

[HallowedTux]

Boss fight Geisterbaum is really bad and I don't think it fits the game at all.....and
ICE iland Tux doesn't find a penny just a letter....ok
Forrex Iland Tux doesn't find a penny just a letter...really now?
tropical island ?
Sorry but you messed up the game.

Snow island top... forest island was also cool... but tropical island? Doesn't work at all....
Finally bring Nolok into the Game !
Or polar bears and seals or arctic cold as opponents but no tropical indel just NO

I agree, The nolok boss fight should be at the end of the Forest right after Tux defeats GHOST tree.

[Bear bear dolan 1]

Folks, the seasonal snowball sprite hasn't even been updated. The developers responsible for the graphics updated the entire snewball family (common, smart, kamikaze, captain, spike...) and left the seasonal one. WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST CHRISTMAS?!

[Bear bear dolan 1]

With the laptop, even worse. Graphics developers remastered bsod and bag, but for some reason, they didn't remaster the laptop. They left it the same, as if it were a "piece of air".
#laptopdeservestobemastered

[Bear bear dolan 1]

Look at this... LOOK AT THIS! Oblivion or pure laziness? Did not update iced sprites of these enemies. On the left, their old sprites, on the right, their updated sprites, and in the middle... Ah, in the middle... They DID NOT REDO THE ICED SPRITES.
NOTE 1: There are more iced sprites, but they don't need to be remade because the respective enemies were not remade...
NOTE 2: The golden bomb sprite is missing because I couldn't find the sprites, but I don't need it, it's already possible to deduce the bomb and the haywire.

[HallowedTux]

Look at this... LOOK AT THIS! Oblivion or pure laziness? Did not update iced sprites of these enemies. On the left, their old sprites, on the right, their updated sprites, and in the middle... Ah, in the middle... They DID NOT REDO THE ICED SPRITES.
NOTE 1: There are more iced sprites, but they don't need to be remade because the respective enemies were not remade...
NOTE 2: The golden bomb sprite is missing because I couldn't find the sprites, but I don't need it, it's already possible to deduce the bomb and the haywire.

Exactly!
The ICED Sprites of the newly drawn enemies looks either ugly, or really poorly drawn... Please help with this issue.

[HallowedTux]

YES, this is a great thread, and since I'm such a nitpick I'm going to point out some of the rather ugly art assets of SuperTux.

Ugly backgrounds:

• Default Forest BG 1:
  
  forest1.jpg
  
  
• Default Forest BG 2:
  
  blue-middle.jpg
  
  
• Less common alternate Forest BG:
  
  rolling-middle.jpg
  
  
• Default Ghost Forest BG:
  
  ghostforest.jpg

These are all really blurry, repetitive, and the colours are ugly. The parallax versions are badly edited, and they just generally look bad.
For an example of a better looking forest background, see the initial forest mockup.

tree.PNG

No, they look good, just they need more EDITING to them, Look at picture one...
NOTE 1: It looks good, but it should be remade.
NOTE 2: The background doesnt even look right when it connects.

[HallowedTux]

But the other pictures are also should be remade, but Yeah youre right.

[HallowedTux]

Ugly creatures:

• Angrystone: Face is too pixelated and it needs more animation
• Dart: Hard to notice, a bit small
• Dispenser (Cannon): Floor of cannon doesn't reach the floor, not exactly 2 tiles high. Also looks too sharp and is inanimate. Would be cool if it had an explosion come out of it upon firing.
• Dispenser (Rocket Launcher): Has a white outline, wood part lacks shading, doesn't have many animation frames. Also needs an outline. And the explosion idea above would work here too.
• Dispenser (Dropper): Needs outline and some more shading.
• Flying Snowball: Make the helmet and propeller not melt but instead fall off like Spiky's armor.
• Ghost Tree: Needs entire re-do. The sprite literally came from a crude mock-up. It's inanimate and it's attacks are barely telegraphed and hard to predict.
• Igel: Needs re-do, it's small and inanimate, and lacks shading.
• Jumpy (Wooden): Needs outline and shading.
• Live Fire: Needs a bit more animation and should glow a bit more. TL;DR: Needs to look more like fire.
• Mole: Needs to be bigger and have some more animation.
• Mr. Candle: Too small, ugly. Needs redo.
• Plant: Looks fine except for the eyes which don't look like they are actually part of the plant and are jarringly pixelated. Also needs more animation.
• Skullyhop: The feet face the side while the head is facing diagonally. Also the jump looks lazy and the creature is stiff in general.
• Toad: Jarringly over-realistic. Needs to look more cartoon-y and needs an outline and some more shading.
• Totem: A great idea implemented poorly. The totem is stiff and mostly inanimate, and it needs different looking totem variants to stack on top of it, and a entity setting to choose how many stacked totems it starts at.

The ugly creatures that all share the same problem:
Leafshot, Mr. Cherry, Mr. Tree, Nolok, Owl, Poison Ivy, Snail, Spidermite, Tumbleweed, Walking Leaf, Yeti, Zeekling.

All of these badguys seem to have been made by the same artist, and they all share basically the same problems. Firstly, they are too blurry. Secondly, they lack shading or have incorrect shading that contradicts the style and generally look flat. Third, they are stiff, mostly inanimate and generally move in a robotic way. They don't change perspective often and usually are animated lazily by having areas of their sprite rotated or scaled rather than new frames being drawn and coloured mostly from scratch.

What's annoying is so much art has been made hastily (including basically all of the forest world's art assets) resulting in a mass of art that now needs to be altered or entirely re-done. I've been trying to help revamp some of the art, but my revamps are still a work in progress. Hopefully when I'm done with them they could be included in the game.

All those enemies look ugly, but some do not. I do agree, but I am just saying that the Enemies have different problems like some are just pixels moving when they arent supposed to. and some even skip out and dont move. I dont get why these enemies look ugly, but they really do need editing. :

[HallowedTux]

This is what I found that looks ugly