The Retro RPG Challenge 1

[Peppermint Pig]

Hey everyone. We're bringing back the challenges! Its about time, too!

This is the Retro RPG challenge. Back in the day, for those old enough to remember, there were such classics as Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior. For those of you who are not fossils of the Pleistocene, you're probably at least familiar with the franchises which lived on to grace Nintendo's Gameboy, GameboyColor, and GBA, not to mention the major consoles, along with the appearance of other hits such as Fire Emblem and Pokemon. This particular challenge will be asking you to develop some tiles and a mockup, done within specifications comparable to the Gameboy Color (GBC), but simplified for our purposes. GBC specifications are somewhere between the NES and SNES actually, with quite a bit more base power than the NES. The hope here is that you can do better than those ancient NES titles in terms of quality, which is quite likely if you give it your best effort!

You may team up with one other person, so this might be a great opportunity to work with a friend, or someone new to the forum! Feel free to ask them in the OT or use the PM system. This particular challenge is going to be fairly accessible to any skill range, so do not avoid this!

Your goal shall be to create a top-down tileset for a traditional RPG. Your subject matter may be a castle, village, overworld, or even a murky cavern, inn, or shop. Anything within the general stereotype of a traditional fantasy RPG is acceptable!

Tiles: There is no tile # requirement or limit for this challenge. Go mad crazy with tile work! While many GBC games have used 16x16 looking tiles for their unit grid, you're are allowed to work in 8x8's or 16x16's.

Mockup: The resolution of the GBC screen is 160x144. If you want to create a larger mockup than that, go for it (practically every GBC game had some method for panning to view a larger area), however you should create at least two mockups of said size.

Color: Tiles may only use 4 colors each. Your entire palette shall consist of no more than 56 colors of your choice. Consider one of those colors as a transparency. Each mockup you create may only use 32 different colors out of your 56 color limit (or 32 colors per 160x144 screen area). You may want to create a second mockup using different colors. The GBC itself has a little over 32,000 colors to choose from, but you can pick any 56.

Sprites: There is no requirement to create sprites, however if you choose to, sprites should be 3 colors, with 1 additional color always to be used as transparency. You may wish to create some static sprites... rocks, barrels, treasure chests. These should be no larger than 16x16. Provided this challenge is successful, we'll move on to a second or third challenge to help you flesh out your classic rpg design skills.

Because we can all learn from the good and bad that has come before us, I'm providing some samples of GBC game screenshots to help you:

Lufia: The Legend Returns



Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara's Adventure



Dragon Warrior III


Good luck everyone!

[Darion]

Oh me jeez! Hawt!

[Xion]

Yay!
Freaking sweet, man!

Can we animate?

[ptoing]

OK, i dug up some more information about gbc stuff.

in the 56 colour mode you actually have 64 colours, but 8 are always transparency colours

You basically have 2 sets of 8 4-colour palettes. One for the background and one for the sprites.



If you look at the pic above you can see that the 2 tiles have actually the same yellow in them, but they are using 2 different palettes. That's how stuff works on gbc.
You can't just assign 32 bg colours and use any 4 on any tile. Same goes for sprites (I was lazy and did not do 8 palettes as you can see )

But basically you can have more than 32 colours on screen if using sprites as well and having clever palettes. But in most cases it would be hard having palettes with completely different colours.

Also the bitdepth is 15bit, with 5 bit per channel. I don't know any other pixelprogramm than promotion that can do that in fact. So most people prolly can neglect this for this challenge.

[Crazy Asian Gamer]

Lufia and Dragon Warrior 3 looks so pretty. 
I'm gonna try this, and I'm gonna fail. But I'm gonna try anyways.
[edit] =( Nuts, homework. [/edit]

[Helm]

I PRESENT: ASS CLIMBER! HE WAS BORN TO CLIMB... ASS



ASS CLIMBER TAKE 2, 8x8

Too much ass for one day. Maybe I'll make proper tiles for this soon. I hate tiling, and it's too much work.

[Schu]

Haha that's great, Helm xD But is he an asshat climber? I like the greener one. 'Tis soothing. 

Starting my week off of work, so I'm gonna try this challenge. I had a little walking guy done today but the email didn't send home grrr...
---Schu

[Xion]

BG:

BG+sprites:

BG+sprites+dialogue:


Fleh.

I probably broke some rules, but whatever. (We can overlay tiles with transparency, right?)

btw; Helm, that is awesome.

[ptoing]

technically the sprites have too many colours, and if you go by strict gbc specs you can not overlay tiles. only one bglayer.

[Xion]

I'll give it another shot.

[edit]
Is this better:

[/edit]

[ptoing]

I PRESENT: ASS CLIMBER! HE WAS BORN TO CLIMB... ASS



ASS CLIMBER TAKE 2, 8x8

Too much ass for one day. Maybe I'll make proper tiles for this soon. I hate tiling, and it's too much work.

btw. is that a gay reference? caves.. assclimber... ahahaha. sure does sound like it

[whomp]

Yeah! Bring back the challenges! <so happy to have somewhere to post pixelations again!>
Will post entry a bit later.

[BeL]

ahoey!!

count me in too...

one question though... that's not top down is it? 

[Helm]

An ass must be negotiated in many angles

[Rox]

one question though... that's not top down is it? 

Look at the examples. That's called top-down. If you wanna be REALLY picky about perspective and want something strictly straight-above, go play GTA instead.

http://www.gouranga.com/images/other/gb-gta.gif

[Darion]

That is Grand Theft Auto? That is repulsive.

[Helm]

http://forevergeek.com/games/grand_theftendo_port_of_gta_iii_to_8bit_nes.php

like how the nes port is more beautiful.

[Darion]

Wow .. what irony!

[Rydin]

OMG, this challenge speaks directly to me. I am so in.


BTW: Yeah, that 8 bit gta 3 for nes is kick ass. I've been waiting soo long for it...

[ptoing]

LESS CHITCHAT, MORE ART!!



rough draft, will prolly change some stuff tomorrow. off to bed now!

[Darion]

I know its simple, but thats how i like it!

I'm pretty sure I didn't exceed the limit.

[Blick]

I hate you Darion. I spend all afternoon working on my entry off and on, and only come up with 4 tiles that I haven't scrapped. Yet. One of which is just a flipped version of another tile. Then you go and make something so simplistic that stills looks more interesting than mine.

Mine so far =\

Tiled... not much to see.

[ptoing]

New -- Old
--

I kinda like this one better, less cluttered. Will do more this evening.

[Negative Gravity]

This is my first real tile-based mock-up and I have run into a problem.


I made the area (not including the black outline) 160x144 just like Pep said and my tiles are all 16x16. I'm pretty sure I didn't mess up but it comes up as though I did since there's that one spot that seems to be wrong. Any help appreciated.

[Darien]

NG: Your tiles are all 15x15.

[Mercury Rising]

Oh opps, Gba retro.... I started working on 4 color nes tiles... (I think it was nes...might be snes) Dunno, took the colors from a screen shot from some black and white game i think was from nes.  I only read the title and saw retro... then again I still play supernintendo with yoshi safari and N64s lego racers and star fox so retro is an opinion i guese.  Anyway ill post my retro stuff tonight...

(JIC FYI NES = Nintendo; Snes = Super nintendo) EDIT: Sigh... JIC = Just in case...

[Panda]

This is what I've done so far, will add more eventually.
4 colors right now, though I will be adding more for the sprites etc
Will update as I add anything new

[Negative Gravity]

NG: Your tiles are all 15x15.

That's impossible... :| I just checked. They are all 16x16...

[Panda]

They are all 15x15 though
Maybe you just added those black lines when counting

[Negative Gravity]

No actually, I firstly made the canvas the right size then increased it by 1 on right and bottom and made the black outlines. I think I messed up when copy/pasting the tiles. I'll just start over.  Thanks for noticing that.
EDIT:
Okay, I redid the tiles and now everything fits perfectly, thus my first mock-up! 

[Mercury Rising]

Ok heres a quick shot of mine, its not a standard RPG, its a Robot thingi... yeah...  It takes place in the 1950's.  Kinda like mech assault lone wolf, except its in iso, black and white, and only has 4 colors.... Yeah... Its not finished I still gotta add some kind of enimies and a text box at the bottom, and a life bar at the top. 
4 tiles...

[Darion]

I did another one, and updated the old one. Little tid bits and what not.





Blick: Thank you! Keep going with yours, I like it. Reminds me of some of the Genesis(?) rpgs.
Panda: This would benefit so much if the colors were less saturated and more vibrant.

[Rox]

Panda: This would benefit so much if the colors were less saturated and more vibrant.

Woah, contradiction...
But I disagree. Panda's tiles have that.. typical Game Boy feel to them. I love that. Then again, so do yours, Darion.. Which I also love. It's just, Panda's looks like it's viewed on-screen and yours looks like on an emulator, or something.

I should see if I can find the productivity to do something for this, it seems fun...

[Darion]

What I was really trying to say is that the color is 'dull' to me. If you look at Dragon Warrior Monsters, it is pretty bright, but it still has that gameboy feel to it. I wasn't trying to look COMPLETELY contradictory, I'm just saying it could be 'spiced' up a little.

[lief]

[Silver]

Darion helm panda
nice work
ptoing : the older version better

I would Join If i know how to title in the right way (any one have link?)

[Mercury Rising]

The deed is done, 4 bit.

_{Edit:just read the rule and didnt just quick post then log, err it has tiles...meh, ill start something later that fallows the rules...} EDITED: Now in not moving flavor!  Mmm... their chewy.

[Rox]

What I was really trying to say is that the color is 'dull' to me. If you look at Dragon Warrior Monsters, it is pretty bright, but it still has that gameboy feel to it. I wasn't trying to look COMPLETELY contradictory, I'm just saying it could be 'spiced' up a little.

Yeah, of course, things have to be bright on an unlit mini-sized screen. I said "contradiction" because saturation is exactly what Panda's picture lacks. "Less saturated and more vibrant" is a contradiction that way;. It's a very desaturated picture. Still, that's what I like, gives it that playing-old-game-in-badly-lit-room feeling.

[ehwhy]

I do not like tiles.

[Ai]

To be completely clear: Saturation is the strength of a color. The less saturated, the closer it gets to grey. The more saturated, the closer it gets to burning your eyes.

Panda: It reminds me very much of an old CPC game called Fairlight. Your pic and Fairlight share a certain atmosphere.. and maybe even drawing style.

[clr]

The deed is done, 4 bit.

_{Edit:just read the rule and didnt just quick post then log, err it has tiles...meh, ill start something later that fallows the rules...}

how about NOT making your image move. id like to see it.

[Darion]

To be completely clear: Saturation is the strength of a color. The less saturated, the closer it gets to grey. The more saturated, the closer it gets to burning your eyes.

Panda: It reminds me very much of an old CPC game called Fairlight. Your pic and Fairlight share a certain atmosphere.. and maybe even drawing style.

Ok, see, I had it backwards. Thanks for explaining that.

And no one told me we could do isometric!

[Panda]

Well, when I started my tiles, I was using that brown palette I used for LOADS of pics
(which is by far, much more bright and vibrant I think)
But then I dont know, just changed into something that looked more old school.
And since the opinions are split, I'll just post both versions on the next update.
So er... yeah.

And I'll check out that Fairlight game, my curiousity is tingling  :O

[Dogmeat]

Heres mine, so far, duno if i'm going to do anything else with it, just was bored and wanted something to do ha.

[NyanNyanKoneko]

This is my first ever attempt at pixel art.  =P

[Dogmeat]

Ok so i've redone some of my tiles and started actually making the mockup with the right specs and stuff, heres what I have so far, need to add props, sprites..



- Dog

[Schu]

Waaah so many pretty entries~! I love yours, Darion. Especially the boss xD

Here's what I got so far... I kind of got lazy on the floor and didn't really tile it, so I'll probably trash it all later... Beware of slimes.



Battle, FIGHT! I was playing some Star Ocean Blue Sphere...

---Schu

[Mercury Rising]

Ok, see, I had it backwards. Thanks for explaining that.

And no one told me we could do isometric!

No one told me either, I never read the topic until after I was halfway done and i wasnt going to restart... so...
VOTE FOR THE DOG!

[Peppermint Pig]

Great work Schu! Really love the floor tiles. The slimes are great too! I'd maybe suggest using cooler colors for the walls..





I will participate in this too.. just been so busy

[Alex Hanson-White]

Here is my work in progress..