How to design good & continuous tiles

Posted by Mikalichov on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Mikalichov
Published on 2012-03-25T10:50:47Z Indexed on 2012/03/25 11:41 UTC
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I have trouble designing tiles so that when assembled, they don't look like tiles, but look like an homogeneous thing.

For example on the image below:

enter image description here

even though the main part of the grass is only one tile, you don't "see" the grid; you know where it is if you look a bit carefully, but it is not obvious. Whereas when I design tiles, you can only see "oh, jeez, 64 times the same tile". A bit like on that image:

enter image description here (taken from a gamedev.stackexchange question, sorry; no critic about the game, but it proves my point, and actually has better tile design that what I manage)

I think the main problem is that I design them so they are independent, there is no junction between two tiles if put closed to each other. I think having the tiles more "continuous" would have a smoother effect, but can't manage to do it, it seems overly complex to me.

I think it is probably simpler than I think once you know how to do it, but couldn't find a tutorial on that specific point. Is there a known method to design continuous / homogeneous tiles? (my terminology might be totally wrong, don't hesitate to correct me)

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