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Update: Sickhead TGB Tile Pack

Name:	Russell Fincher
Date Posted:	Jun 21, 2006
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
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Update... Sickhead Games' Torque Game Builder Tile Pack #1

The content pack and the video...
Work on our first content pack for Torque Game Builder has run a little longer than intended (though I'm glad to say we've got a lot going on around here these days), but we've got enough built to share what we've been up to. Obviously this is looking more like a full-on top-down starter kit than just a tile pack, since the code will be included to get this stuff working right outta the box. (box not included)

So this release will not only have the tiles and sprites listed in my previous plan, but also include all the sorting and 3D code that Tom's been working on, as well as a few royalty-free sounds.

Check out the video below for a run-through of a little demonstration map. Sorry for the poor quality. There's a reason we're not called Sickhead Video Encoding Company.

Sorting
We've enabled a sorting system that governs which sprites are in front, as well as a 3d-ish collision volume tweak that gives them depth. Direct any technical comments here to Tom, since I don't get the technical stuff. Good thing thing for me he's made adding the sorting information for the sprites dead simple. I'm also glad to say we'll be including a lot of animated vegetation, just subtle stuff like the trees and the elephant ear plant seen in the video. A small breeze goes a long way towards livening things up.

Finishing up
As far as the art goes, we're still pretty much on track for the content listed before. We mostly wanted to show off the current state of the "gameplay". We'll wrapping this stuff up in the next couple of weeks and it should hopefully be available soon after that. Take care, gang...

Russell Fincher
Lead Artist | Co-owner
Sickhead Games

Recent Blog Posts

List:	01/28/08 - CrazyBump = Better, Faster Art 10/03/07 - Sickhead Games is hiring! 03/15/07 - Blended Terrain in TGEA from Terragen 10/21/06 - Adventure Kit update 1.1 09/08/06 - Adventure Kit post mortem 06/21/06 - Update: Sickhead TGB Tile Pack 04/18/06 - Sickhead TGB Tile Pack #1 06/06/05 - Plan for Russell Fincher

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Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314) (Jun 21, 2006 at 03:10 GMT)

Wow! Looks awesome! Gonna have to check this out.

Todd Pickens (Jun 21, 2006 at 03:25 GMT)

Very Nice!

Ori Cohen (Jun 21, 2006 at 04:03 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

ah its about time. yay

Raxx (Jun 21, 2006 at 04:14 GMT)

Hm, the graphics don't look very consistent, but I guess it serves its purpose as a starter kit.

Good luck with the release results

Terry (Jun 21, 2006 at 04:29 GMT)

Excellent job, Russel. Great looking stuff, I'll be watching for it...

Brandon Maness (Jun 21, 2006 at 04:36 GMT)

The 3d sorting looks very impressive!

Russell Fincher (Jun 21, 2006 at 04:47 GMT)

@ Raxx... yeah, we're working on that part. It's likely the orc will lose his outline and some of the more "rendered" art will be touched up. Or down, as the case may be. ;)
Edited on Jun 21, 2006 04:48 GMT

Ian Poma (Jun 21, 2006 at 06:31 GMT)

great job. Its a little thing, but the animation on those trees really makes the scene come alive. When can we buy it?

Neo Binedell (Jun 21, 2006 at 09:03 GMT)

No images showing up, your server taking a beating russel?

~neo

Stefan Lundmark (Jun 21, 2006 at 12:15 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I can see them, Neo.

Nice stuff btw!

Michael Cozzolino (Jun 21, 2006 at 13:25 GMT)

This looks awesome. I can't wait until it comes out :)

Ben -Djaggernaut- Chavigner (Jun 21, 2006 at 13:39 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Awesome! Really living and the sorting system is excellent.

Maybe you could saturate a bit more some part. The trees are maybe too sad for example.

Dennis De Marco (Jun 21, 2006 at 14:04 GMT)

Wow. Looking incredible. Art has always been my biggest stumbling block. I see this is Pack #1 :) If there others in this series I'll be a faithful buyer :)

Dungeons tiles!

Russell Fincher (Jun 21, 2006 at 16:10 GMT)

@ Ben... thanks for the input, and I see your point about the saturation in the trees. They need variation as well, still lots of polish to get to. (as in "polished", not Poland. The Poland Pack(tm) is next)

Just out of curiosity, are you viewing on a Mac or PC? The gamma difference between the two has been a thorn in my side as long as I've been making images on computers. I gave up creating any game art work on the Mac (which is my platform of choice, btw) just because, given time constraints, I'm able to please the most people if the art is geared for PC gamma.

I'd love to hear how other artists handle the cross-platform graphics problem. When I was creating art on the Mac I would use GammaToggleX to approximate PC gamma, but still you'd have to do some conversion and have two sets of art in the end, which is pretty unreasonable. I doubt games will start using ICC color profiles any time soon. Not that I'd want to deal with that. ;)
Edited on Jun 21, 2006 16:11 GMT

Paul /*Wedge*/ DElia (Jun 21, 2006 at 16:34 GMT)

Would it be possible to fake heights you can actually climb on top of with this? Like all the classic top-iso series such as Secret of Mana and (2d) Zelda and tons of other titles. I'm not sure if that's just a matter of setting up stair/ramp tiles that overlay properly or what. But yeah, this looks awesome, and if you have top-iso in TGB that really expands the kind of games you can do with it.

Rubes (Jun 21, 2006 at 16:54 GMT)

This really makes me want to make a game in TGB. Nice work!

Tom Spilman (Jun 21, 2006 at 16:56 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

@Paul - I've just started experimenting with what we can do for heights, but basically it's just a matter of projecting the sort point down to where the object would be if on the ground.

Gustavo Boni (Jun 21, 2006 at 17:04 GMT)

The orc is a .dts shape? Or just a sprite?

Tom Spilman (Jun 21, 2006 at 17:08 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

It's an animated sprite.

Simon Love (Jun 21, 2006 at 18:20 GMT)

One minor thing that I just can't get out of my head : Maybe you should add a shadow (2d sprite) on the ground when the Orc jumps...it would add a lot to what seems to be a pretty cool package.

Otherwise it rocks, the sorting seems to be really smooth :)

Dennis Harrington (Jun 21, 2006 at 18:30 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

This is looking great. It'll be a great bonus to have the depth sorting!

@Russell: Regarding the color difference between Macs and PCs, maybe you've already tried this but what we do at my company is use a hardware/software color calibration tool. It creates a "Windows" color profile for your Mac. This allows our designers to see how all of the colors are going to look on PCs throughout the entire design process.

Timothy Aste (Jun 21, 2006 at 19:03 GMT)

Very awesome work guys, this is one sweet pack!

Russell Fincher (Jun 21, 2006 at 19:37 GMT)

@ Dennis: Thanks alot. Yeah, I've been calibarating my monitors for years, a good habit left over from my previous life in commercial photography. I've got the old Spyder calibrators. But being able to create a Windows profile for your Mac still won't help those end users on Macs that don't have this option. I see you're a web developer, so I'm very interested in your opinion on this. I've forgotten so much since doing any pre-press. Really there are so few options for a color management pipeline in game development that, besides calibrating my monitors, I do little else these days.

I guess since I can't rely on the end user to have his system calibrated, or have a graphics engine with the ability to correct the gamma for Macs, the only thing I can do is create art that will looks as good as possible in both gamma situations, without either really seeing exactly what I want them to see. Right?
Edited on Jun 21, 2006 19:43 GMT

Dennis Harrington (Jun 22, 2006 at 03:06 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

@Russell: That's true, if you create a Windows profile then Mac users will have a less than optimal experience. For my company (a major fashion retailer) we made the decision that we were going to color correct all images to look their best on Windows machines. Of course, it's an easier decision for us to make since we have less than 5% Mac users.

Short of creating two different versions, I think your solution of hitting the middle ground is probably the best compromise since, as I'm sure you know, colors just look too different between the platforms.

Kim Ball (Jun 25, 2006 at 04:01 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I like it. I want it. I want more!

Matt Van Gorkom (Jun 27, 2006 at 02:26 GMT)

Very spiffy. My only comment is that most of the sprites are all pretty much the same value so everything looks a bit flat and grey, but that could be left up to the developer I suppose.

- Matt VG

Russell Fincher (Jun 27, 2006 at 18:27 GMT)

@ Fafnir: I've been looking at these images in different browsers and platforms, and I think what you're seeing may be due to jpeg exporting quirks. But I'll keep the contrast issue in mind when finalizing these.

Neo Binedell (Jul 11, 2006 at 13:42 GMT)

Looking good Russel and Tom.

~neo

Adam Lindsay (Jul 11, 2006 at 16:55 GMT)

Looks impressive.... Any word on release timeframe / cost?

Tom Spilman (Jul 18, 2006 at 00:29 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

@Adam - We're almost there and then we'll just be waiting on the TGB point release. I cannot comment on price as it's not decided, but it will be very reasonable.

jydog (Jul 18, 2006 at 21:19 GMT)

@Tom - Do you need the point release for proper function of your pack?

Randy

Tom Spilman (Jul 18, 2006 at 22:07 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

@jydog - Well the art itself doesn't require it, but the sort point stuff i put together is a code change and the TGB team has added it for the upcoming point release.

Edward F. Maurina III (Jul 21, 2006 at 22:42 GMT)

Very cool. This is shaping up to be an impressive kit. I'm in that can't wait category. Of course, we will have to wait... I just hope we won't have too wait long.

Hall Of Worlds - For Gamers
EdM|GPGT
Edited on Jul 21, 2006 22:43 GMT

Matthews_30 (Aug 02, 2006 at 15:56 GMT)

impressive!

where may i buy it????

Tom Spilman (Aug 06, 2006 at 01:01 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

You'll be able to buy it here at GarageGames very very soon.

James Rozee (Aug 08, 2006 at 13:59 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Awesome looking work. I think I'll learn more from using this pack than the TGB tutorials. :) Please make others. Thanks!

Justin DuJardin (Aug 10, 2006 at 02:46 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Man I can't wait to see this thing done, you guys are doing hands down some of the coolest stuff i've seen with TGB to date when it comes to adventure games. Hurry up and get it into my grubby little hands! :)

Tom Spilman (Aug 12, 2006 at 02:33 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

A little hype never hurts right?

Dan MacDonald (Aug 13, 2006 at 06:13 GMT)

Wow, do you guys ever have .. uh... game visions? You know when you visualize / imagine a sequence, a few seconds out of a game and you think to yourself "now that's a cool game, I would play that!" and then you put it on your stack of ideas for "games that I should make in my life". I figure in this audience there has to be a few people who relate to this experience. ;)

Well, these trees, they remind me of a game I saw in my imagination once, one I always wanted to make..... hmmmm :)

James Rozee (Aug 14, 2006 at 13:13 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I hope it is out this week. I see the updates for it at TDN and I'm eager to be an owner so that I can read them. :) Awesome work!

Russell Fincher (Aug 19, 2006 at 00:32 GMT)

For anyone still watching this thread, TGB Adventure Kit has been released.

David Taylor (Dec 11, 2006 at 07:02 GMT)

Pardon my confusion, Russell, but is this all in the Adventure Kit? Or is the Tile Kit still separate? I'm after tiles, but not necessarily the complete Adventure Pack.

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