Level, Tell me what you think
 

Ok! Well it has been a while since I tied my hair up and did a level. I would say since I was fired from UN LAT last year.. Over five months!
tell me what you think, and how it is!
thanks
-Joker :cool:

P.S. It's for an event, which is why there isn't that many cliffs :)!

It's not bad. It lacks definition and such, but it's not a terrible level for someone of an amateurish skill level. The pathing is decent, can't complain too much there. Your cliffs are too small to judge, but for what you did, you did it right. Forests are fine, however the placement is questionable, but it takes a lot of experience to know how to place trees well.

You went a little crazy with the grass cliffs. I would calm it down with that, because you way way over did it. I like how you use the tufts of grass like I do, however you cluttered it together too much, and you could have more variety/better placement in your detail. The fences are amateurish, but I've met few people who can fence really well. They look alright, so don't worry about it. Good job only showing shadows upwards, I like that. You have some tile errors (specifically at the dirt path), but I guess the rust will shake off after a while.

It's not bad, man. It's kind of a boring level, there could probably be more for it, though as you said, it's for an event, so I understand that you can't put a lot of cluttering detail around because it'll make it difficult for people to play. Clean up the grass cliffs, get rid of the blue stepping stones near the middle of the level, maybe put a few bush fields in there. And work on those fences, you'll get them eventually.

Keep up the good work. :)


EDIT: Oh yeah, and in this situation, since it's hard to put detail to fill up the level, might want to use a little more tall grass, and make the patches bigger and actually group it. Also, in the middle 3 trees, remove the bottom tree, because it creates too narrow a path. (if it's a PK event)

Well, I don't think your overall technique is bad besides some few problem areas, but it seems your level needs a little better planning. For something like this you probably want a lot more open space with no real obstructions in the way, especially small blocking areas in the middle of the open area. You didn't do too bad with that minus a few things but it could go with some more open space.

I believe you're approaching level detail all wrong. Grass-on-grass tiles are very overused these days. They should only be used to signify a slightly elevated area or slightly denser grass, and done logically. Layering them and having them go into each other like that doesn't make much logical sense and looks ugly. Not to mention it forces many tile errors (making them go into paths does the same thing as well).

All the blocking detail should be kept off to the side, out of the main area where players will be walking. Patches of bushes would also look nice as well.

And lastly, your use of the N-Pulse tilesets tallgrass tiles is a little off. In the very top left you have the center tiles without any corners, which looks bad. And you're using little circles of the corner tiles together, when you should be using both of those together to make shapes and such, to form patches of tall grass.

Well, it's more of a filler level. I mean it doesn't seem to have any points of interest. The detailing is bland, the npulse tileset just kinda covers it up. Using grass on grass for filler isn't such a great thing to do (I assume your influence is from Xelts paths on UN). The little cliff is cute but sadly it's not looking good nor does it show any technicalities.

Try to do more with the stuff you've got. For example that small plain pond could be a mini pond that gets partially covered by a tree or something.

Overall just a plain filler level, nothing of interest. I understand that it's only for an event but that's really not an excuse unless your tiles are interfering with gameplay. imo.

I think it's great!

Not your fault, but... the contrast/darkness of the grass makes everything else pull away from the level. Trees, platforms, signs... they all look like they're floating/pasted onto the level instead of being part of it. It's all very disjointed.

Just thought this was worth mentioning.

Yeah, the EOA tileset is terrible. Rebirths tileset is by no means great, but much better than the current tileset.

Alright, well I have a lot of suggestions here from each and every one of you! I am going to take a look at my level and try to full fill what I have done wrong or what wasn't done. I will work on that and have another level up with updating leveling up as soon as I finish! Thanks to everyone and what you said.

Feel free to keep talking things about it, like, don't like.. etc. :)

Hi Joker,

Attached are two images and an edited version of your level. Thanks for sending it to me.

First, refer to the file screenshot-market-graal2.png. You will notice that I circled several things in different colors.

The red circles indicate tile errors. The two I circled were the only tile errors I picked up on my brief review of your level. They are small, but they can bother some picky people. My suggestion to prevent further errors of this particular kind is to go slow and be thorough when you are creating your layering. Again, these errors are small, so it's no big problem that you missed them.

The yellow circles and outlines identify the cliffs. Your cliffs are fine, but there are some small changes you can (and I would suggest you) make to smooth them out as completely as possible. These areas of interest are circle in a darker shade of yellow in the top left portion of the image. (See the attached files reference-pics1.png and edit1.nw to see what tiles I used in my editing of it and where a couple of them are located on the EOA tileset.

The light blue circles indicate tiles that I would recommend removing or replacing with non-blocking tiles. Given the fact that this is supposed to be an event level and that players will likely be running around in such a level, it might be a good idea to take into consideration these blocking tiles hindering players' movement. A few, large, concentrated blocking areas are okay, but small tiles can easily be overlooked, and players can easily get worked up over them if they get trapped or stopped at a critical moment in the event. I would suggest keeping most single, blocking tiles, to the edges of the screen or around larger concentrations of blocking tiles (eg, trees).

The violet circles are meant to suggest that you take out some of the trees and replace them with various other detail. I did this in my edit of your level (edit1.nw). It's just a small suggestion to improve the appearance of the level so that the level does not have a big clump of condensed trees, but rather a flowing string of trees with bits of detail placed among them.

The dark blue circle covers the layering in the middle-left portion of the level. I circled this area to suggest toning down the layering there. Each individual instance of layering throughout the level is decent, but I think overdid the grass-grass layering a little. I would suggest removing some of the grass-grass layering around the level, especially in the area I circled in dark blue, and possibly replacing it with some grass-dirt layering, grass-water layering, or other detail.

A small suggestion is to edit the collection of light-green tiles to the bottom-right of the middle trees (I've seen some people call these flowers, while others call them walking stones). Either way, as they are now in your level, they seem out of place being the only tiles of their kind clumped together. Based on my interpretation of them as walking stones (stones that players would walk on to avoid trampling grass and flowers), I prefer to keep them chained (the diagonal way you positioned the weeds next to each other throughout the level) near things people would walk to (such as the sign in the middle of the level). At the very least, if you keep them as they are, introduce a couple more groups of them, balanced throughout the level so they don't appear so out of place.

Overall, your detail is alright. I prefer more detail in my levels, but as a functional level, I would say the amount of detail is okay. You could, however, try to introduce different detail tiles. There are a lot more tiles you could use instead of the weird looking swamp grass (blame the tileset) and weeds (though weeds are a nice way of filling in space). Ideas include the cut grass tiles, rooshes (rather, EOA's equivalent of them), cut bushes, and a few other single tiles.

You also might want to make more room between the bottom cliff and the line of trees.

The last suggestion I have to make is in regards to the boundaries of your level. Under the presumption that this is the only level in the event (as opposed to one in a collection of levels that form a larger map), I would definitely introduce barriers on the left, top, and right sides of the level (the bottom is covered by the trees). These barriers present logical obstructions of player movement (as opposed to players being prevented from walking further when there is nothing in their way (the natural boundaries of the level)). I do this in all edge levels in a map and single levels. Ideas for these barriers are trees, stumps, rocks, mushrooms, and especially fences, preferably all intertwined.

That sums up my initial suggestions and comments about your level. If you have any questions about my response, feel free to PM me either on the forums or online, or just post a response.

Good luck!

Alright, Vega, I see what you're saying! I think I am going to go through the level and weed out these errors and fix them. I am going to get rid of the grass-on-grass, well not all of it, and change it to water-on-grass, or dirt-on-grass, to make it stand out more. Secondly I am going to tone down the "weeding" and add different leveling aspects like, more bushes and things like that.

I will hopefully be able to get work done on it soon and have an updated level on Forums for you guys to look at at tell me what I should change after I updated it.
Thanks for what everyone said, all in the best of making me a better LAT :)!

Thanks
~Joker

Don't use the grass so repetitively, Looks alright other than that and what Vega pointed out.

5 / 10

It's ok, but could need some ruins or something just too fresh it up.

You have very successfully chosen the elements of your level. However, you have spaced them all too far away from each other.