Animated water tile

I've spent all day on this and can't see the forest for the trees. It looks at best "acceptable" but isn't what I really want. Feedback/tweaks/examples/whatevers would be appreciated.


This is for a side-scroller.

It looks good, like a rolling current, but kinda weird that such slightly calm oceans would create all that white foam. When I saw that white, I pictured crashing waves... then I remembered how the seas looked in Agony on the Amiga.

You can use the animated GIFs on this page as a reference, perhaps: http://francksauer.com/index.php/games/ ... s/10-agony

That looked more like lighting to me, not white foam. Probably not much that can be done if the palette has to be shared with something else.


You make it animated putting tiles side by side and you still can't see it? o.o

I don't even know the name of this game, all I know is that it's for the Amiga and has amazing water:

You apparently didn't even look at the URL of the image you linked?

It's called Agony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYxIJxqrv6U

And was mentioned in the very first reply...

Very sorry to dogpile, Espozo, but those guys posted while I was making this.


viewtopic.php?p=168874#p168874

I just looked on Google images for "Amiga owl shmup" because I remember seeing a video of the game, and I found that nice image.

So as usual, I brought nothing to the table...

I just canned it and started over from scratch.

I like the new version much better! The fact that some elements move in opposite directions makes the effect more fluid somehow.

Slight tweak to try to make it look less dramatic, and a different tile for more subdued water.





I spend more time making bad art and starting over again than I do making actual good art.

Vaguely reminds me of the Lemmings 2 liquids (oil, water, &c)...

You may have better results if you make the white pixels move in circles rather than from left to right.

That is the key! When the pixels are linearly moving in one direction and consequently replaced, the water appears to be moving in unison in that direction (which is fine in a stream or fall, but may come across as unnatural otherwise).

Note that all the dots in the example does sinus rolls in the same direction, but in different phases, ie. low wave dot is always -180 degrees apart from an high wave dot throughout their respective circles, and so on.

EDIT: Another rule of thumb that may be applied - the longer the movement in pixels-per-frame, the finer the granularity of the increments need to be in order to be smooth. Ie. frame rate and number of frames is adjusted accordingly. In this case, i'd test same or slower frame rate with more frames.

This rule can be bent with delayed colour decay or motion blur/frame interpolation. The closest we can come to that on the nes is neighboring brightnesses and hues and/or dithering. Some programs allow you to dump interpolations which you then can work on; for example 60 degree increments á 6 frames.

OMG pubby, that may be the best reference I have ever seen!

I think this may be the last I am going to work on these water tiles for a while.
I mean, last after I take into account any final comments.

I want to have at least two different tiles, one for more-turbulent water like rivers, and one for less-turbulent-but-still-not-still water. This of course of for the less-turbulent water, and the first design I posted was for the more-turbulent water.


I accidentally saved the gif playing backwards, but honestly it doesn't matter which direction it plays.

It's cool to see this technique in pixel action! It looks pretty nice.

Since the water is moving, i think it makes sense if the surface waves dictate the turbulence underneath (which it does in most cases, but not all). I put my thumbs on the screen and compared column for column until i found the one piece that felt a bit off. It does a -180 degree opposite at one place. It might look more natural if this is more or less phase reverted. Not saying definitely, but could be worth a try. It could also turn out too mechanical, which in case could be remedied if a higher frame budget is allowed, by allowing a light part lag one frame behind in, say, a 6 or 8 frame cycle.


For river purposes, any of your previous blue and white ones look convincing to me.

Yeah, water-surface waves are more L-waves than pressure or shear.