Alas, the artist that I had been working with is unable to complete the project, and has left the work unfinished.

Some History

For the first long while of the project, I used freely available tiles. The base set was from the Ultima IV Upgrade Project, and layered on top of that were tiles from Angband, other roguelikes like Dungeon Crawl, a few commissions, some purchases from Gamedevmarket, and a tiny handful I made myself. This wound up having no unified style (or even resolution- the U4 Upgrade tiles were 16x16 and I doubled them, while the roguelike tiles were 32x32), and worse, since most of the tiles were from other projects and were freely usable, one would look at a screenshot of my game and not know what game it was.

The old style of art.

The big question that I wrestled with was whether to stick with the old Ultima art style where background tiles have a black base, and just enough on them to show what they are- grass is black with green dots or tufts, cobblestone is black with outlines of red bricks, etc. Or, go with a slightly later game look, with full color backgrounds. The other question was tile size- the first artist I spoke with felt that it was too much to do all of what I needed in 32x32, and so we had discussed trying 16x16 doubled and then with small edits to smooth diagonals and add details on some of them.

What was proposed to me was the following: 32x32 tiles, but restrict the color palette to 64 colors. (Or 66 including black and white.) This gave it a pixelated feel due to the jumps in coloration, while giving it a style that was different from the old Ultimas and several of the other Ultima-inspired games that have come out over the past year or so, or are coming soon, such as Nox Archaist, Realms of Antiquity, and Skald: Against the Black Priory. He showed me a few example tiles, and I liked them and said what the heck.

In the end, we didn’t wind up keeping strictly to the 64 color palette, but the colors in it are by far the dominant colors. The artist or artists that pick up from where we’ve left off don’t have to feel like the 64 color palette is a straightjacket, but I wanted to explain what the overall style you’ll be asked to imitate was meant to be. (Imitate might not be the right word- but I want the full tileset to feel like a unified whole.)

Below is a rundown of what I still need, and what I would like.

Human Animations

I have art for humans (townsfolk, other adventurers, bandits, the PC, etc), but I don’t have animations for most of them.

I decided that I wanted to create humans out of layers, so I have bodies, heads, hands, weapons, etc. They need to be able to be mixed and matched, and animate in sync. I have some animations finished, but I’m open to tossing them if someone wants to make their own unified style of them. There are also some things about the humans that need to be cleaned up a bit.

In addition, I need seated graphics and animations for humans. Not for every possible body and head- I’m ok with someone in plate mail sitting down and being shown with a tunic. But I need a couple versions in each of the four directions in normal chairs, and also south-facing seated in thrones. (There are two throne graphics, but one is a palette swap of the other, so the seated figure will work in both.)

New art and frame.

Needed Monsters

I don’t have art for all of the monsters I need. There are a handful of creatures for which I have a single frame but never got the animations, and a bunch that never got done at all. Existing monsters have 5 frames of animation. (Someone who wants to tackle this I may see if they want to make some of my existing animations more dynamic, as well?)

Some sample humans

Other Needed Tiles

There are a couple dozen tiles that I need that aren’t creatures. Some are things that I forgot to put on the list for my previous artist in the first place, others are things that I added to the game after he started working. A handful of them animate, but most are just single frames.

Resized Tiles

One issue that came up in the process was the realization that foreground tiles needed outlines, because background tiles were full color and with the limited color palette there was no way to make the early idea of “muted background colors, foreground colors that pop” really work. In my playtests I kept getting snuck up on my brown monsters standing on roads, things like that. Adding the outlines is easy enough for me to do, but there’s one problem- tiles that are (or have frames that are) the full 32 pixels in width or height. I have about a dozen creatures/body parts that need to be tweaked to make them able to fit an outline.

Minor Edits

There are some tiles that I want some minor edits to be made to. One tile that doesn’t tile as well as I’d like, some that I want to change the size of an element of. If these don’t happen it isn’t the end of the world, but I think they would be relatively simple.

Replacement Tiles

Finally, there are some tiles that I have, but want to try new versions of. Again, if these don’t happen, I’ll live. Main examples are hills, mountains, water, gold, and a special ruby.

Borders

One disadvantage to going with solid terrain tiles rather than black backed ones is that they don’t seamlessly transition from one to the next. This is another thing that I very much could go forward without, but it might be nice to have transitional borders between grass and dirt, grass and swamp, stuff like that.

Sample of monster frames

Non-Tile Bonus Round

The other thing that I was going to get was a better UI frame for the game. I hacked this one together myself, and it isn’t pretty. (You can see it above in the picture captioned “new art and frame”. By UI frame I refer to the entire silver border dividing up the play area.)

A sample of tiles from the tileset

The Emergency Backup Plan

In the event that I cannot find artists to finish the stuff I need from the above, or can only find artists who work in the more 8-bit style of the “old art” style from my first image, the emergency backup plan is to find someone who can draw new terrain tiles for me so that I am no longer using the U4 Upgrade Project tiles, just so I am distinctive at a glance, and maybe built out from there a bit.

In the end…

If that hasn’t scared you off, you can find a more detailed list of my needs here.