Dr. Bolt's Franken-pixels

[Bolt]

Well, I've been making edits to RPG Maker resources for quite some time now, mostly because the RTP never quite fits what I need and I can never find tilesets that fit the rest of the RTP. So far, in RM2k3 this resulted in entire tilesets being changed for seasons and various objects being added for convenience, and in RMXP this mostly involved recoloring. However, I have recently began full editing for my projects to work out better.

So, I think I'll be posting those here as I create them for my convenience. If anyone thinks they need touching up anywhere, let me know.

Characters

Eric "Bolt" Fox

No, my name is not Eric, it's the name of the character, and since I like to use him as me online, and my online name is Bolt, that's his nickname in my files. This is one of the characters that I originally made on RM2k3 and decided to remake him with the better graphics of RMXP. Here's the original:



Quite a jump. I don't remember all of the characters I used to make him, but one was '023-Gunner01' and another was a Surfer I found online (for the pants). I don't use him actively in my projects, but I do use him to represent me in the games whenever I want to talk to the player in a demo or tutorial. I used to use moogles, but more than one gets hard to tell apart. :unsure:

Zack (Contains a YouTube video)

Here's a character from my current project. Not Dragon Chess, which is on hold until I find a programmer, an RPG. Zack is one of two main characters that you can choose from. I haven't made the other yet because Zack isn't finished. The reason why his frames are so big is because he is being designed for the XAS Battle System. If you don't know what it is:



I need to make variations on Zack's sprite to match all of these animations, including an extra one for standing still. So, yeah, that'll be a while.

The sprites I used were '020-Hunter01' for the head, '023-Gunner01' for the body and Legs, and '019-Thief04' for the arms. Of course, I made quite a few edits and color changes to get him this way, but it was well worth the effort.

Door+Frame

This is one of those conveniences that I needed. I was fed up with not being able to actually walk through the doors. So, instead of making a door frame for all tilesets I decided to make a door with a built in frame. This way, you can leave the spot blank and place the door on it and it will do the rest. The shading inside is semitransparent to allow the player to walk through it but still see the lighting difference. The windows are also semitransparent so you can see the room through them. I made it using the standard door sprite and the window frame from a tileset, both edited.

Tiles

Overlapping Boxes

Yes, more convenience. I was building a basement for a project and wanted it to be filled with boxes, like the guy just moved in. Obviously I could never get such a look with just the one box provided. So, I went to all of the trouble copying the box several times into various positions just to get it to look right in this room.



Yeah, this wasn't too hard, but it did consume a little bit of time, and I have never seen anyone else do this, so I had to.

Overlapping Trees

Again, this one wasn't very hard and just created for the sake of convenience. My main problem was I needed trees that could stand next to eachother close enough to block a path without cutting off any tiles.



The block of four tiles of green is for the trees in the middle that don't need any kind of base, the extra trunk is for those times when you need all three layers to get the tree in without using events, and the extra tree tile above it is for the same thing, but also to act as a "trunk" for blocking players from moving through that spot. Just about all of the tiles are needed, but it's obvious which ones are not. Except for where the trees merge.



The 6 tiles to the left of the blue line need to repeat if you make a line of trees while the three tiles to the right of the blue line is always on the right most tree. This is because, while merging the trees, I let the right tree dominate for easier merging.

This one was a little difficult and took a lot of time to do, but definitely helps when making a forest.

If you happen to steal any of this, you don't need to give me any kind of credit, unless you use the following:

Eric "Bolt" Fox
Zack

These are my characters for my games and I'd rather not have them used. However, if you wish to use them anyway, I would at least like some credit for making them.

[DonCreek]

great overlapping box...i'll use it, best in for cargo ships n_n, i like the door animation very realistic

[DerVVulfman]

Creating a forest maze is gonna be a whole lot easier with these! Love to see how far this goes.

[Bolt]

Well, it's going to go as far as it has too to help me make my games. :)

Thanks for the comments.

[PK8]

I won't be able to critique everything since I'm not skilled at pixel art. So I'll just talk about the trees. :P The trees lack translucent shadows! But, that's a neat idea and I second Derv's statement about it being easier to make forest mazes. Just work on the shadows of the trees and it'll be perfect. :D

[Bolt]

Well, the main reason I avoided the shadows was because you needed so many layers to get it to look right without needing to have separate tiles for the shadow.

However, I suppose I could set up a tileset for the shadows, but there would have to be at least two of those so that they could sit on the bottom layer, out of the way of the trees. Even then it might be hard to maneuver around the trunk being on the bottom layer. I suppose I could do an autotile on the second layer, but that might push some of the trees onto the event layer, which I was trying to avoid.

Then again... Let me try a few things and get back to you.

[Bolt]

Having a bit of trouble with the trees. It looks a little too blocky when turning the trees to other way. It works, but looks too much like a square. When I tried gradually going from up/down to left/right I needed extra tiles. So, I'm either going to give up on gradually going from one to the other or I'll need to add two more tiles onto it. While I'm at it, I'm thinking of reworking a few of the other tiles for the trees and maybe checking on adding back in the shadow.

Just letting you know I'm still working on these. :)