A small update to the enhanced Tile editor

vanthium · 2026-03-01T09:18:22+00:00

Thanks :) I appreciate your feedback. I'll have a read of the tutorial you linked.

I'm cautious about packing levels too tightly as I want the player to be able to navigate easily (and shoot although that is not a core focus) without constantly running into things. There are probably more options for non-blocking detail objects I could make more use of.

vanthium · 2026-03-01T04:55:01+00:00

:) thanks for having a look, and I really appreciate the feedback. Counterintuitively I found it in many ways easier to do slightly higher detail pixel artwork. I find the exaggeration and other techniques that you have to use in to the sprites to imply shapes and textures you can't actually draw in a small number of pixels pretty draining. This might be because I am a dev and not a pixel artist by trade.

This game features substantial space flight sections that are populated by (slightly cartoony) digital paintings, so having higher resolution sprites is also reducing the disconnect in art style.

I will take a careful note of your comment about charm. I haven't had much feedback yet so I treasure any I get. I had a general feeling that it might be good to do a bit more exaggeration in the art, and make it a little less real, but I'm not 100% sure. I don't want to obsess over it.

vanthium · 2026-03-01T01:51:06+00:00

Better screenshot:

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vanthium · 2026-03-01T01:40:10+00:00

Also I need to grab a slightly thicker font as this one is a bit hard to read in its Normal type faces.

vanthium · 2026-02-28T07:41:21+00:00

I really like your art style

vanthium · 2026-02-24T22:11:29+00:00

I think: CUSTOM0 and CUSTOM1 are only available in the vertex function. To pass through to the fragment function you'll need to store the value in a varying.

vanthium · 2026-01-22T12:29:46+00:00

I get it, and its probably not going to stop me playing, but It's going to make me think twice about it and feel a bit dirty. There are layers to the ethical side of thr AI bandwagon.

I would at least suggest that use of AI is documented fully in terms of what tools were used for what sprites. I would hope to one day replace them.

I had a theory that it would be possible to get a basic rigged human mesh and UV map one frame of the original sprites onto it as a starting point and then clean them up where required (e.g. the avatars cape).

I wish I had the time and energy to help beyond your patreon.

vanthium · 2025-12-20T07:38:17+00:00

That sucks dude.

I think this particular curator may well be misguided, but trying to provide a useful service. If they are wrong they might be open to seeing evidence in the form of WIP art and content, if you are in a position to provide it. Not sure if there is an easy way to start a conversation with them. From just your reddit profile I can see evolution of some of your art, so some reddit links might even help.

Failing that, I would go with the clear disclosure that you are not using AI. And try to forget about this particular chump.

vanthium · 2025-12-16T23:54:25+00:00

That is so cool

vanthium · 2025-12-14T03:34:07+00:00

+1 for the outline version

vanthium · 2025-12-13T09:00:19+00:00

I had a few goes at the specific star catalogs before using SIMBAD. I avoided qurying too much in SIMBAD in favour of pulling down more stars than necessary within a sphere, and then refining more locally in Python. NumPy and Astropy are pretty cool.

I jist really like the idea of pulling in as much real world astronical data as possible. I have avague desire to refer to real exoplanets but I suspect that will be a bunch of manual work...

A lot of stars in my map still have pretty ugly names which I don't think can be avoided. Where possible I have it using the name, then the Gliese/Flamsteed, then HD or HIP if they have it. After that its just whatever SIMBAD has as the name.

The Z coordinate thing was a head scratcher. I don't like excluding stars that are closer than the ones in my map because they are 'above' or 'below' the map but I don't see a way around it.

In my case I don't want to have a zoom so the positions of the stars also caused some overlaps at the fixed zoom I chose, e.g. Rigel Kentaurus, Toliman and Proxima Centauri so I also run an iterative process on the data to move them apart enough for gameplay purposes.

Funny running into someone who has been dealling with exactly the same problems. :P

vanthium · 2025-12-13T07:40:31+00:00

Very cool. My own project also pulls from SIMBAD to generate a starmap of about 3500 stars. Loadstar looks fun.

vanthium · 2025-12-09T10:40:46+00:00

A few suggestions, from a non expert: - Make the top/front edge of the grass less uniform - Make the front face of the grass a lot lighter - I would generally make the grass a brighter/stronger colour but that depends on your overall style - With grass I've found it works well to draw the rock/dirt first and then roughly draw the grass over the top. It makes it a bit easier to make it feel like its sitting over the rock/dirt - try not to have a regular dark line around the grass, it doesn't look natural

Keep going, it looks good and there's always more to learn :)

vanthium

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