I’ve been spending my evenings trying to get The Basic Tileset up and running.

The aim of making these tiles myself is so I can have enough artwork to start creating basic maps in my not-yet-made map editor. With the idea that at a later stage I’ll hire an artist or two to go over the tiles and pretty them up.

I’ve been using a freeware program called mappy which is pretty decent but there will be some custom features that I require so I’ll have to roll my own.

The basic tile set includes:

1. Grass
2. Dirt
3. Water
4. Sand
5. Cliffs
6. Trees
7. Some Houses

I’ve been looking at alot of old school RPGs and I’m firmly convinced that what really makes a game look good is the subtle changes and variations within a tileset – Something I think only a much more talented pixel artist than myself can bring to the project…

After I get these basic tiles layed out I can return to programing the engine, which will actually allow you to play the game, rather than just stare at my static mockup screens. Exciting!

Next week I might just be linking to a beta version of another project I’ve been helping out with.

I’ll probably also talk some programming geek talk.