Ugly tiles thread

[BlasterMaster]

Post any tiles or sprites here that you think look bad/don't match the game. Maybe other artists and I can take a look and see what we can do about redrawing or editing them.

[Tobbi]

Stickied!

[BlasterMaster]

Is that a sprite?

[Tobbi]

No, I meant I pinned the topic to the top so that people can see it more easily!

[BlasterMaster]

Oh, thanks.

[Alzter]

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:
  

  

  
  
• Default Forest BG 2:
  

  

  blue-middle.jpg (16.9 KiB) Viewed 40050 times

  
  
• Less common alternate Forest BG:
  

  

  rolling-middle.jpg (13.46 KiB) Viewed 40050 times

  
  
• Default Ghost Forest BG:
  

  

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.

[Alzter]

More ugly backgrounds:

• Semi-Arctic Forest BG 1:
  

  

  
  Suffers from all the issues I have with the other Forest BGs. Also the surfaces look flat and it's hard to even tell what they are. The sky also barely looks realistic.
  TL;DR: It's a mess that's barely recognizable.
  
• Semi-Arctic Forest BG 2:
  

  

  
  Looks like a flat plane with a texture just plastered on and literally uses the trees from the IcyIsland worldmap. The clouds and ocean(?) look like paper.
  
• Semi-Arctic Trees:
  

  

  
  Terribly cropped from background, blurry, inconsistent light source because half of it is horizontally flipped and it looks like it was drawn with a crayon.
  
• Arctic BG 1:
  

  

  
  Needs redo. It's literally a jpeg. Visible compression artifacts.
  The bottom of this background (arctis_bottom.jpg, arctis_para3.png, arctis_bottom_para3.png) is messy too because the tiles don't line up in a grid.

[Alzter]

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.

[Random Paradox]

Hello. I am NitPickBot. I have found a lot of tiling errors. Here are just a few:

You might need to zoom in to see them.

[BlasterMaster]

This may take awhile. I was thinking of making a new tile set for the forest world, but don't get your hopes up just yet. It would be a lot of work, especially the way I'm thinking of it.

[Alzter]

This may take awhile. I was thinking of making a new tile set for the forest world, but don't get your hopes up just yet. It would be a lot of work, especially the way I'm thinking of it.

That would be great! I'm thinking bigger looking rocks with more variety, so it looks less repetitive, and maybe some moss on them.

[BlasterMaster]

Great/mediocre (you pick) minds think alike. I was inspired by Grumbles concept art.

[Wuzzy]

https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/issues/1040

[WeLuvGoatz]

Out of those ugly badguys @Alzter listed, the problem with most of them is definetely their shading and animations. The forest tileset needs some variety, to say at the least. Maybe make some large and small rocks. For skullyhop: Maybe make it throw/launch itself in the air? The toad and totem has always unsettled me. But I think the WORST textures in the entire game are the SnowTrees Background, that was the laziest-created excuse for a background I have ever seen. No wonder NO ONE I've seen has used it in their levels and I wonder why (No offense to the creator but you have no business making this thing, you can do better than that).

[WeLuvGoatz]

BTW if I can I might try to help this but no promises for right now.

[Alzter]

Sorry for complaining a lot. There's a lot to be done and not much to do it. I try to help when I can.

[BlasterMaster]

I know. It's alright. I think there was someone on the internal chat who might not have appreciated this new thread.

[Serano]

I know. It's alright. I think there was someone on the internal chat who might not have appreciated this new thread.

No offense taken, that guy was me. But now I want to see some great additions from you guys, you already made some great stuff.

[E200]

What I found odd looking was the forest slopes of all three types.
As well as the surface snow very steep slope.

[WeLuvGoatz]

We should be able to have sloped edges, because right now you have to have a flat tile at the edge of slopes and it doesn't really look good.

[WeLuvGoatz]

Tux himself is currently stiff. His animation is not the best. The buttjump and his walking looks ok, but when Tux jumps, ducks, slides, turns around, or kicks an enemy, it goes to one image and calls it an action. I suggest adding smoother transitions, similar to the new buttjump that Alzter made.

[Serano]

Some sprites for Tux would indeed be nice. If you look at other sidescrollers like Earthworm Jim and Rayman, you can see the characters breathing and wiggling. Maybe some idle sprites like looking around, too.

[E200]

What would be nice to see is an updated waterfall,
that fits with the current water's look.

[WeLuvGoatz]

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.

[w_laenger]

The forest paths look broken: