Hey, me again. Is there anyone here that use Paint Shop Pro 6 for tiles in a 2d game. I was thinking of having a game 2d because I think it''s a lot better than 3d. 3D gets confusing and eye straining so I want to ask if anyone knows how to in PSP 6 to get a good looking tile or are there and plug-ins for it that can make it. Thanks

I am using PSP 6, and me and my friend are doing tiles in it right now (although he''s doing the art, I still had to make a little of it). As far as I know, unless there''s some big feature I don''t know about, basically what it comes down to is you have to take the time to work at it. There are two very important things about tiles.

1) You must make sure that the edges of all your tiles blend reasonably well with the edges of all other tiles that you are going to run alongside them. This doesn''t mean it has to be perfect, but depending on the kind of game you are making, well, it has to look good.

2) Unless you are using multiple bitmaps for every tile type (as in, a random picture out of a list is selected for each tile of a certain type, like having 3 different tiles for grass) then don''t put anything really distinguishing on a tile, like a mark in the center or something. This will stand out a LOT when the image is tiled.

To answer your original question, as far as I know, you just have to pay attention to detail, and work at it.

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Jonathan Little
invader@hushmail.com
http://www.crosswinds.net/~uselessknowledge

The latest version of PSP (which is 6) is very SLOW compared to v4.14. My main use of this software is to just view images, and to create small tiles. Whatever features were added to #6 are unnoticed by me. what i did notice though, was that viewing images was quite slower, you could actually see it refreshing when you zoomed in and out! 4.14 does not do this..

about drawing tiles, i've found that for drawing "basic" tiles like grass, desert, dirt, a good way is to start off with the tile the darkest possible color. then select the brush, make it size 3 or 4, round, and choose a texture like construction paper. as far as which color, choose a *slightly* lighter color, and drag the brush over the tile. what will happen is it will "average" the colors together, making for nice looking gradients. experiment with it, it has given me quite nice results.

oh, i think this method only works for 24bit images. i tried it in paletted image, and it doesnt produce gradients, but instead it plops down the color you chose without affecting the other pixels. looks ugly.

Edited by - foofightr on 2/26/00 11:40:13 AM