Finished it! Only it covers two pages of A4 paper and won’t fit in my scanner until I bring myself to un-tape it. Next week I’ll start designing level 2.

Other than that, this weekend has been slow. I watched the Japanese Ring 2 last night and still can’t help looking at building details, although this had more of an urban setting which doesn’t apply to my building style! A couple of observations were to do with the space in front of buildings, like porches and balconies. I’ve kinda designed some roofing for these sorts of things, but haven’t come up with a good way to represent them in 2D! I’m going to carry on watching Japanese films throughout this project, but hopefully the next Japanese film I watch won’t be so horrible…

Affordable Housing (and fast food)

I’ve redesigned a few of my existing building tiles to suit non-commercial private homes that don’t need to look quite as extravagant as a B&B or a cafe. I’ve been using this photo as a starting point as I like it humble approach to home-design:

It includes similar looking features to the tiles I already have, my main changes have been to wooden-plank tiles and windows. I drew up this compare and contrast 2D version to work out which tiles to reuse and which to recreate:

Another building I’ve thought up is a mobile noodle/sushi stand. It’s based around small noodle stands that are common to Japan. However in this case I’ve combined the concept of a small noodle bar with a temporary food stall, similar to ones you would find at festivals or special outdoor events. This is mainly so it takes up little space, as its placement in the game is more for decoration than anything else. It won’t be an building that can be entered like the Ryokan or any of the homes throughout the levels. Here’s the kind of thing that gave me the idea:

And a quick sketch up of a design idea. This also combines features from various photos of dumpling stands that I’ve scanned through on flickr:

Building & Environmental Tiles
So, I’ve made good progress with the new building tiles. I haven’t made that many, but it seems that a lot can be pulled over from the set I already have! I’ve combined these here with the old tiles, although I’m not sure how clear my intentions are for their use yet as I haven’t constructed anything from them yet. I’ll probably do this straight in the engine over the top of the old tiles.

I’ve also tried to work on some environmental tiles more, especially after finishing up the level sketch. The most important point about creating these tiles is to make sure they’re not boring, as these are going to be repeated A LOT throughout the level. I used color explorer again to get some good ground colours, based on a Japanese mountainous setting (obviously, Fuji was the first mountain to come to mind at this point…)

My rock colour has ended up being that greyish-purple on the bottom row. It doesn’t seem to clash with the current wood colours and pinky-reds, although I’m toying with the idea of having coloured grass which matches the colour scheme of the level. This may change when I combine all the elements together, I’m not sure if pink grass is a little too much… I’ll be working on this much more over the next week, so expect drastic changes all round!