[WIP] 2D Modular Medieval Asset Package

[benlchristianson]

Long story short, my goal is to make a finished 2D art asset package for sale on the Unity Store (and possibly other package selling websites). Just keep that in mind while you follow this, if you’re not interested in reading all of whatever I’m about to write.

So I’m pretty new to unity, and I’ve been interested in understanding it and the 2D engine. After watching all of Unity’s 2D tutorial videos (except for the character controller one, but I’ll get to that when it’s time to get to that), I feel like I’ve got a basic handle on how Unity 2D platformer games are assembled. To challenge myself to learn more about it, and to actually learn more about it, I’ve decided to make a modular 2D art asset package.

When I first started this, I thought about doing it purely tile based, with everything fitting into a perfect square, but now I think that would be too simple. I’d rather make all of the game’s objects by their own parameters, free of a perfect grid.

After reviewing the kinds of 2D packages available for sale on the asset store, I think it would be best to design the package to best serve two different purposes:

• The package should look fine in unaltered png format, with no special unity effects being cast on it.
• The package should look good WITH special effects. Raycasting, normal mapping, you know. professional stuff. Stuff I’m currently trying to learn.

The idea is a 2D platformer, of a medieval village floating in the air on flying islands and whatnot. Without getting too heavily into high fantasy, that is. I certainly love the idea of getting really far out there with what magical properties might keep the islands afloat, and how life might be different up there than just what you would find in a typical medieval style village and castle. That is, however, too much to ask for from something for the unity store. It should be open ended enough that it can serve different client’s purposes. And anybody who needs specific pieces of it altered can always contact me for a job.

Below is a mock up of what the inside of an inn could look like:

Anyways, before I get to work making finished files, I took a look at what different effects Unity is capable of producing that I need to learn how to do in Unity, or at least, understand how they’re done.

• Raycasting and Shadows, as a result of nearby light sources

• Lights that flicker (gently, strobe lights are annoying)

• Is “normal mapping” possible with the 2D engine? I want objects to be affected in specific ways by their 2D engine. Lighting to hit one part of a sprite differently than another part, and all that.

• What changes to the assets in unity would I have to make to alter between day and night versions of scenes?

I’m not sure the best ways to ask these questions. I know that the tutorial video for unity2D specified that the engine was made with the idea in mind that people using it generally wouldn’t want to worry about using lighting effects on their 2D assets; Usually the lighting was “baked in,” which I take to mean “they just paint the sprites the way they want and use unity for making them fit together for the game.” That’s fine and all, but absolutely anyone can just make png files. If I want to make good work I’m going to have to learn to be able to do something more.

Anyways, that’s currently where I stand with teaching myself the Unity 2D engine and applying what I know. I made this thread because I wanted to show my progress and find answers to my questions.

Critique is absolutely welcome, I’m here to learn. Thanks for reading!

[benlchristianson]

I think it would be best if I highlighted the fact that I’m interested in one day doing things with the Unity Engine that Moon Studios does with Ori and the Blind Forest. Ori’s been in development for so many years now, and apparently unity2d hasn’t been out that long? So I’m assuming it must be a 2D game made in the 3D engine. I’ve taken some screenshots of the game [from this trailer,](http://I think it would be best if I highlighted the fact that I’m interested in one day doing things with the Unity Engine that Moon Studios does with Ori and the Blind Forest. Ori’s been in development for so many years now, and apparently unity2d hasn’t been out that long? So I’m assuming it must be a 2D game made in the 3D engine.) in hopes of cross referencing what I know with whats going on in them.

I would absolutely love to be able to achieve this lighting affect in my asset package. that’s my goal to learn for right now. How are they doing it? Where does the photoshop stop and unity start? I don’t suppose anybody who works at the studio browses this forum, do they? Haha.

I want to say to achieve the gradual change of lighting between day and night they have on something like the dock, they must have found some way to normal map the sprite they used. And somehow that makes whatever light is shining on it go from light to near black. I’m trying to figure out how that’s done at the moment. I’ve seen a guide or two for how to “normal map” a 2D sprite for Unity, but those were for the 3D engine. I can’t help but wonder if that kind of thing is even possible in unity2D or not.

Anyways, I’m beginning to get the impression that a lot of these anwers come from third party assets and scripts being applied to Unity in one way or another, so I guess I’m going to have to learn how to apply scripts to objects for this package. Whatever scripts I pick up, if they’re free, I’ll naturally include as part of whatever package I’ll end up making.

I should mention that I’ve never sold anything on the Unity store before and it’s not like I have any teachers or guides explaining to me how to do it properly, so part of why I made this thread was so that if anybody saw me doing anything unprofessional or stupid, they could call me out on it, so I could cut that out. So if there’s anything I need to know about making 2D assets that I don’t yet, feel free to shout that at me.

[benlchristianson]

Ha! I bet you guys thought I forgot about this project!

Nah, I’ve just been hard at work studying how to make objects do more than just be flat objects. I’ve been speaking with Alain of Alkemi-games who runs a blog on making video games, and has been kind enough to answer whatever questions I ask him about this project. Right now it looks like I’m that much closer to being able to make functioning normal maps for 2D sprites. For testing, I painted a generic 2D Wood Plank/Crate thing:

Something like this would show up in the game, though I don’t know if it would have as much detail for something that might show up in a .5x.5 mm space on an iphone screen. All about that high res!

Anyways, I didn’t add any particular highlights or light sources because I figured local lighting was the best way to paint these things, but I haven’t actually added any normal maps to this yet so I cant say for certain how good of an idea that was. There’s only one way to find out, of course.

I’ve had a few different people recommend to me “Sprite Lamp,” the tool which allows 2D pixel art to take normal maps. Apparently, drawing the way light hits the object from each cardinal direction is a thinking process very close to drawing a normal map in RGB, so it’s certainly an exercise I’ll be looking into.

Now, apparently an alternative to this could be to just create and apply heightmaps to these objects instead, but with normal maps I’m supposed to have more control over everything, so I think I might like to learn normal maps instead. We’ll see what happens.

[benlchristianson]

Just stumbled across a great tool while I was researching custom normal Map production methods - nDo2. Apparently it’s something used to custom make Normal Maps right in photoshop, and can be bought with a freelancing license for just $50! Definitely an attractive tool to experiment with, but it looks like it’s pc only, and I’ve been doing my work on a mac.

I’ve been saving up to buy a fancy new tower pc in the coming months, but right now I think I’ve spent enough time researching ways to make a better asset package. For now I think my best move is to just worry about flat png files for a package, with little to no editing. I’m much farther behind on my schedule than I’d hoped to be by now, so I think once I finish working on my current commission, I’ll set aside a day or two to just paint some assets for the package. I can worry about fancying up the assets with normal maps and things next time around.

[zenGarden]

It seems you are mainly talking to your ego telling your life story ?
Why not come back later with some real work to show instead ?

[benlchristianson]

I guess you’re right. Frankly, I didn’t know how to treat this thread, but I guess I’ll just use it as a content dump.

Here’s a rough of what I’m currently looking at:

It’s rough, trying to think about how something should look with flat lighting. I tried putting in a lamp that would emit light in front of a darker background to give the impression of at least some kind of light play, and then painted everything else with the same colors and light anyways, to see what would happen. It of course just made everything disorienting and confusing, so I’m going to have to go with assets that are made purely with ambient light. And maybe directional light too, but in the end I have little choice other than to make this pack take place at daytime. Unless of course anybody knows of any workarounds for this problem working solely within the 2D engine.

Playing with a lot of different ways to do things like roof shillings and stones and all that, and I haven’t found anything I really like yet or a solid color palette. I kind of like the roofs reminding me of dragon scales though, so maybe I’ll go somewhere with that.

[zenGarden]

For lights you can simply use alpha image light beams or sphere shapes , it’s juts one technique.

[benlchristianson]

Well I know I could just use round lights, but that was something I was trying to avoid from the get go. That’s why I was looking into normal maps and things to begin with, because I thought those lights would be too difficult to pull off in a way that I liked. I think I can still treat the designs like they could have round lights cast on them, though. I’m thinking of treating this pack more or less like what this package does, at this point.

Anyways, I did more work on designing the assets without bothering to edit the color scheme or figure out how the roof tiles might actually look, so here’s what I’ve got so far:

So there’s a dump of what I’m looking at.

The tiles don’t all fit together perfectly, but for now that’s okay because these aren’t final tiles, just sketches for concepts. They’re starting to come together well enough, I think. There’s still plenty of room for more custom pieces to the buildings, though. I’d like to do a cylindrical tower set, and a quality stone first floor foundation. I’m also interested in doing sets for shoddy buildings too, not just nice ones, which you can see in the last image. It definitely still needs work though.

[benlchristianson]

Brief, small update on what I’ve been looking at:

I’ve been much more concerned with getting interesting shapes and designs from what I’ve done so far than I am with getting things to tile perfectly or having a nice color palette. Right now I’m focusing on making roofs work together nicely, and also having better features for the sides of houses in order to have more interesting silhouettes. So I’m not entirely proud of what I have to show up there, but it’s also very easy to see how these problems can be solved.

I’ve also been working on making everything much simpler for now, so when I want to make them all finished tiles, I can blow them up five times their current size for HD quality and they’ll transition very easily. Which is why everything looks so blocky and boring(I promise I can draw better than this!):

[benlchristianson]

Here’s another update: I took a more critical look at the shape of the houses and refined it.

Older look (lumpy and flat):

Upgrade:

With what the interior might look like:

And with (more) objects, not sure why I have them on different layers:

It’s starting to come together, I think. I need to really look into how light affects objects in Unity’s 2D engine before I go farther, because I need to figure out how to do that kind of lighting for the indoors. But I’m really starting to like how it’s starting to look. I also need to figure out how to show depth for the wall panels better. So I guess, more technical stuff before I get into making finished assets again, of course.