For the initial prototype, Ripples on a Dark Sea was using a 16px tile size scaled up by 3x.

I was never satisfied with that, so I have spent the last 2 months redrawing all the art at 48px, giving a much nicer look on 1080p+ resolutions.

Counter-intuitively, in the art style that I have chosen, I find it easier to draw at 48px than at 16px as there is less mental load around abstracting/simplifying/exaggerating.

I thought it might be of interest to others to see the impact side by side.

Player’s Home

This is how it looked before:

And now:

As a part of this process, I redesigned how walls work to (1) reduce the number of tiles needed and (2) make it easier to put together maps.

Previously the walls were broken up like so:

By combining the wall ‘top’ pieces with the walls, I have reduced the number of parts required by a lot. Note the selected tile is 3 squares high, and includes the section of wall that may be covering floor, objects and/or the player.

Adding appearances and building rooms is now much faster.

The Town of Ciùineas

This is the town you start in, in its 16px glory:

In the 16px version, I had to hand craft transitional tiles between all the different terrain types. In the 48px version I have opted to do a layering approach.

Each tileset now only consists of 18 tiles.

And now in gloryous 48p:

CK’s Barn

CK is a family friend, show gives you access to your starting ship and your first quests.

And now:

The Thistle Wind

This is your starting ship.

In 16px:

And now in 48px:

Med-Station on a Barren Moon

This is a small facility on the moon of Ciùineas for medical manufacturing. It is manned full-time by an automaton, but there is an apartment for a visiting supervisor.

In 16px:

New:

This week I’ve also created a new Subreddit /r/RipplesOnADarkSea. I’m still feeling out the whole marketing thing, but it will probably feature links to blog posts but also smaller tidbits that aren’t worth a whole blog post.