Creating art.

[foleyjo]

I usually borrow(steal) are from around the internet for my games but thought I'd better do it properly this time. As I'm no artist and have no artist friends who want to help me (yet. I'm hoping that once I get the first level sorted someone will assist with the art), I'm going to have to do the work myself.

I have 3 questions though.
1- I understand the top left pixel indicates transparency. What if you don't wan't transparency? Do you still need to add a colour in the top left that doesn't appear in the rest of the image?

2- I haven't decided if I will use tiles or clones for my floors and walls etc, however whatever I decide I think the best way to sort the images is to use a tilesheet. How do I create a tile sheet?

3 - Tiles or clones for walls and floors? Best option and why?

Thanks in advance

(Oh if there is an artist looking for a game to work on I'd be happy for you to join me on this one. More details and an alpha demo will follow once I get a few more functions working)

[Jagmaster]

1- I understand the top left pixel indicates transparency. What if you don't want transparency? Do you still need to add a colour in the top left that doesn't appear in the rest of the image?

In this case, the easiest solution would be to save your image(s) in .png format with an alpha channel. That way GE reads the alpha channel of your image - and not he topmost pixel.

2- I haven't decided if I will use tiles or clones for my floors and walls etc, however whatever I decide I think the best way to sort the images is to use a tilesheet. How do I create a tile sheet?

Creating a tile sheet is as basic as making a grid based on the size of the tile you want. You can then, manually align the frames like you would an animation. I believe there are ways to automate this via a gimp plugins, or some kind of spriting program like graphicsgale, aseprite or tilestudio.

Actually, I like to save my tilesets as an image sequence (individual files) so I can have different sized tiles.

3 - Tiles or clones for walls and floors? Best option and why?

Tiles take up less memory than clones, but clones have more flexibility. If you plan on having your own map editor, or some kind of procedurally generated stuff, you have no choice but to use clones. Also, if you plan to have any tiles overlap (like trees or other props) they need to be a separate actor because the zIndex will be inconsistent.

In the past, I've used a combination of tiles and clones, sort of making a "layer" system. I'd have one actor for floors, one for walls, and one for each layer of props.

[foleyjo]

Thanks Jagmaster.

I decided your method of using sequnced images rather than a tile sheet would be better and then forgot to name my tiles correctly.

Also going to use the tile and clone combination.

I just wish i could draw