13×13 dudes, 13×13 pixels each – pixel – fireworks | download

I was inspired by the graphics of Dofus Arena and decided to try and create some similar tiles… Spending half a day fooling around with Fireworks I ended up with this image:

Another half a day later I turned the graphics into an animated terrain generator: http://labs.justgreat.nl/exp080302.htm

The terrain is generated according to three small bitmaps (see top left corner). The first one determines the type of the tile. The second one is like a bumpmap and determines the elevation of eacht tile. The third bitmap determines where objects (plants, rocks, gold, etc.) should be placed.
In the future I might create an editor which can write the bitmaps.

Once I designed more versions of each tile-type (4 or 5 different grass tiles for example) the generator will be able to pick a random version of that tile. This way repetition in the structure should be avoided (at the moment the tiles are just mirrored at random).

owl on branch – pixel – fireworks | download

fishtank – pixel – fireworks | download

(Click download for a better view)

Besides the designs I also needed a nice transition between the background and a map that will be shown somewhere during the game (as some sort of level selection). Because the style is kind of “old” I thought it would be a good idea to make some sort of dissolve transition.
Whaddayaknow; I managed to get a decent result in just a couple of hours.

Despite the fact that I used a perlinNoise and a copyChannel the  result runs pretty smooth. Check it out:
http://labs.justgreat.nl/exp080201.htm

To accomplish the dissolve effect I used an alpha mask on the top image (in this case the “map”-image). The mask itself is created by combining a perlinNoise and copyChannel. The perlinNoise creates the randomness and the copyChannel transforms the randomness into a transparent layer.
The size of the mask is half the size of the image and stretched to match the size of the image. This way only a small perlin noise has to be created which increases performance.

http://labs.justgreat.nl/exp061203.htm

At the time I made the engine I didn’t feel like creating nice graphics so the experiment still looks a bit boring.
Because the engine works fine I thought it would be a wast not to use it, so tonight I created some graphics for the tiles (check them here).
The symbols are taken from a photo of real Mahjong stones. so they should be quite accurate.
The tileset is not 100% complete yet and the current tiles still need a little work on the coloring as well, but I’m sure I’ll finish it somewhere next year

It is gonna be a game based on the classic (but not really well-known) game “Qix”:

As a kid I played this game for days on my old GameBoy (the original) so I know it’s going to be a very addictive game.

The eventual goal is to create a complete game which I’m going to distribute across the web (ofcourse not before placing some adds in it ).
For now I started off with the design and decided it’s going to have a futuristic, electric and hi-tech theme. Here is a little preview:

I named the game “spark” for the time being, but as I’m not fully satisfied by it I’ll probably rename it later on.

Since I have a little spare time this week I hope to have a little demo ready by the end of this week. (did I really say that … omg  … well we shall see about that)