Lord Glenn's Mausoleum

[Nanami Touko]

I know what it's fo- *shot*

[Chocolate Kitty]

I know what it's fo- *shot*

As do i-- *shot twice*

[deleted35362]

What happened to those nice graphics? It looks like now all you do

is show us a few weapons icons, followed by an obligatory "screw you,

wait and see what the icons are for" like you're assuming that we're

incredibly amazed.

[Lord Glenn]

What happened to those nice graphics? It looks like now all you do

is show us a few weapons icons, followed by an obligatory "screw you,

wait and see what the icons are for" like you're assuming that we're

incredibly amazed.

If by "nice graphics" you're meaning the templates, it's because I don't have any to work on right now. shadowofchaos hasn't inserted Battle Template v3.0 yet, so I don't know if I'll need to fix anything on it yet. I could be working on menus, but I don't know how they're stored, and that would only further back Rey up. Plus, being a senior in college, I don't really have a lot of time to work on time consuming sprite works. As for the icons, if I didn't throw in an obligatory tag about the icons, I'd either get six people asking me if they can use the icons or six people asking me what they're for. I don't want to deal with either, hence the text.

[Lord Glenn]

Custom Icon Tutorial v2.0

Welcome to the Custom Icon Tutorial v2.0! In this tutorial, you will (hopefully) learn how to make custom weapon icons of your very own without having to rely on reusing pre-existing icons for things that they don't fit. As opposed to v1.0 which contained a single example of making an icon, v2.0 will contain multiple examples of types of icons to cover more cases.

What's new in Version 2.0?

• Downsizing to GBA-sized icons
  
• More difficult physical-style icon
  
• Custom magic tome icon
  

Table of Contents:

• Preface: Introduction & Useful Tools and References
  
• Chapter 1: A Whirlwind of Light - Downsizing FE9/FE10 to GBAFE Icons
  
• Chapter 2: Adventures in Customing II - Hammering out an Axe Icon
  
• Chapter 3: Working with the Spirits - Writing a Magic Tome
  

List of Links:

(In the event you miss a link in the tutorial, each link will be duplicated here.)

• Ice Dragon's FE8 Symbols Sheet (NA)
  
• FE6/FE7/FE8 reference palette
  
• Creiddylad
  
• Crystal Shell
  
• Blaze Axe
  

Disclaimer:

This tutorial showcases a way to create Game Boy Advance-style Fire Emblem weapon icons. Weapon icons for the other titles can be created in a similar manner, but require different palettes and shading styles. (For the case of icons for Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn, icon size also changes.) This tutorial will not cover those styles.

Please note that I will try to make this guide match as much to the existing style that Intelligent Systems has used; however, after years of spriting weapon icons, my own style and shading conventions may influence the final products slightly. I have tried to limit this as best as possible during the tutorial sections.

Also, I cannot guarantee that any icons you produce on your own will match standards of quality. As with other facets of spriting, creating weapon icons takes practice and more practice. The more you practice, the more you improve.

PREFACE: Introduction & Useful Tools and References

[spoiler=PREFACE]

Spriting weapon icons is arguably the easiest type of spriting in the Fire Emblem style. Just because making weapon icons is easy doesn't mean that there isn't value in doing it. Weapon icons are invaluable in giving your works a touch of their own uniqueness and flair. This prevents the overuse of Intelligent Systems's icons as placeholders for weapons that they just don't fit. For instance, when making a mock battle scene to showcase a battle sprite or a battle template, why use old weapon icons when you can have something that you made by hand there instead? And, weapon icons are almost obligatory in well-created hacks, especially if your project is trying to be its own unique Fire Emblem title, not tied to Intelligent Systems's works except in name. Needless to say, weapon icons are a fundamental part of Fire Emblem spriting.

Being the easiest type of sprite to create in this sub-discipline means that the requirements for making weapon icons are quite simple. In order to create a weapon icon, you'll need the following things:

• A paint program
  
• A copy of the existing icon sheet for FE6/FE7/FE8
  
• A palette for the icons (if you so desire)
  

The paint program is self-explanatory. All you'll need for making weapon icons is a default program like Microsoft Paint. Now, this doesn't mean that you can't use your preferred program of choice. You're free to use Paint.net, The GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, or even Usenti. I personally use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 for all of my spriting, but the steps in this tutorial will be tailored towards a Paint user.

As you're making icons, you'll often want to compare your outline or final icon to an icon that Intelligent Systems used in the GBA games to make sure that proportions make sense or as a shading reference. For that, I use Ice Dragon's FE8 Symbols Sheet (NA). Now, this particular sheet doesn't necessarily contain all of the icons that Intelligent Systems has made (Al's Sword isn't on there, for instance), but it contains a wide number of the available icons. If there is a specific icon not on the sheet, you can always go to the game's page on Serenes Forest and grab the icon from there.

The last bullet is somewhat optional, depending on your reason for spriting weapon icons. I figure that most of you are here to make icons for hacks/projects/etc., in which case you're going to need the palette used in the GBA games. I've uploaded this reference palette which contains the 15 colors used in-game for weapon icons. Now, you're completely free to come up with your own reference image later (I use a different one, personally), but this can be used to first start out. If you're simply working on a mock battle scene or a stat sheet or anything of that variety, you can omit the the palette and use whatever colors you want. Granted, an icon in the correct palette looks more authentic than one without, and if you ever get the urge to use the icon in a hack, you'll need the palette anyway.

The main strategy for spriting weapon icons can be represented as such:

1) Create the size box and begin outlining your icon,

2) Fill the outlined area in with solid shades, adjusting the outline when necessary, and

3) Shade the filled areas, repeating Step 2 if adjustments need to be made.

I'll touch on these steps as I proceed through the three examples in the remainder of the tutorial.

CHAPTER 1: A Whirlwind of Light - Downsizing FE9/FE10 to GBAFE Icons

Subtitle: Alternatively, converting 24x24 or 32x32 non-FE icons to GBA icons

[spoiler=CHAPTER 1]

As listed by the steps above, the first thing one must do to make a custom weapon icon is to start with a 16 x 16 square pixel box, with a background color. The more contrasting this color is to the colors in your weapon palette, the better. If you don't have a preference, the color used in Ice Dragon's Symbols sheet is a good place to start. For this tutorial, I've provided 1x and 4x images so that it is easier to see the details as well as what the icon looks like at its natural resolution.

When working on any kind of icon, I usually find it best to start by zooming in. In my case, using Paint Shop Pro, I zoom the whole way to 32x. For Paint users, the most you'll be able to zoom in is 8x (unless they've upped it in Vista or XP), but that should still suffice. This way, it's significantly easier to place individual pixels on the smaller canvas.

This chapter is dealing with downsizing, or in layman's terms, taking a weapon icon that's larger than the GBA size and making a custom icon that creates the weapon that's sized for the GBA games. This is not limited to icons from Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn however. It is entirely possible to use an icon from, say, Tales of Eternia, and downsize it into a GBA-sized icon. With this in mind, find a picture of the icon (preferably one with its colors in-tact and such) to use as a reference for the design, coloring and shading of the final icon. For the tutorial, I asked people to name a Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn weapon, where I'd use the first response for this section. The weapon that was selected was Creiddylad from Radiant Dawn.

Now, in general, icons can us the entire 16 x 16 square pixel canvas, though a fair number stick within the inner 14 x 14 square pixel range. Some of the more unwieldy weapons (axes, larger lances or swords, etc.) will often touch the edges of the canvas in places, due to their design and the overall goal of keeping the icon relatively centered in the canvas. Since this is a tome though, I have less to worry about on those fronts, as tomes use a standard design for their boundaries.

So, with that in mind, add the boundary of the tome to the canvas, either by manually drawing it on or by grabbing a tome from the symbols sheet and clearing out the inside design.

Now, if this had been an icon like, say, the Bolt Axe, we would have had to manually draw the axe's outline first before adding any details to it. An example of a non-tome can be found below Creiddylad's tutorial.

Since we're downsizing an existing tome, the next step is to begin placing the main details of the tome's design inside the space for the tome. The main feature on Creiddylad is the four "feathers" and the area of light in the center. Now, there is still a large amount of trial and error involved in getting the patterns to look right and such. And, with still images, the trial and error that I actually went through in these examples isn't emphasized very well.

Once you get a pattern that relatively matches the source image, add the next sets of details to the image. In the case of Creiddylad, I added shading to the "feathers" and circle of light in the center. And, I also added the lighter pixels extending out from the center circle up until they reach the edges of the "border" between the center and "feathers".

From here, it's just constantly adding details. In the next step, I add the blue lines continuing from the center and the darker blue-gray pixels around the blue areas.

And then, lastly, I add in some of the light blue-gray pixels to finish the icon off.

One of the main issues you might run across when downsizing is lack of colors that match the source image. In cases like that, you need to just use the closest color or a color that works in its place. For instance, on the actual Creiddylad tome, the light extending from the circle in the center is a pale yellow color. There is only one yellow color in the standard GBAFE palette, so I used the light gray color in its place.

Now, this works for tomes nicely, but actual weapons are a different story. So, to accommodate that, I'll also do a walkthrough of downsizing the Crystal Shell from Tales of Eternia to GBAFE size.

The first step, as above, is to start with the 16 x 16 square pixel box, filled with a background color.

Now, since I've done two icons similar to this (Gloves and Gauntlets for FE4R), I'm going to pull those up as references for myself as I do this. On top of those, the above GIF file is also pulled up so I can see what it is I'm downsizing.

Start by adding in the outline of the icon. If you make some lengths of pixels too large, then shift what you have around to change the size. I start working by providing 95% of the outline of the Crystal Shell, leaving out part of the area near the thumb, since I'm not quite sure how I want to fill it in yet.

Next, start on the easy to add features, as well as important "landmarks" in the icon. For this specific example, this involves adding the border of main part of the glove to the icon, as well as adding in the shading for the fingers and the "underneath plating" that is below the main part of the glove. I also added initial placements for the three spikes extending from the front of the glove.

Then, it's a matter of adapting the inner areas of the main part of the glove through trial and error (in which I spent a good 30 minutes playing around with the placement of shades and light source shading). In this final step, you also must add in some of the purple outline color in place of the black outline color, for blending purposes. I also change the shape of the front spikes to make them look more like spikes. And, with that, the Crystal Shell is done:

CHAPTER 2: Adventures in Customing II - Hammering out an Axe Icon

[spoiler=CHAPTER 2]

Unlike the Custom Icon Tutorial v1.0 where I free drew a physical weapon, in this chapter, I'm going to mesh that tactic as well as the downsizing tactic from the previous chapter to make this example icon. Since it was requested, you'll be getting an axe icon, though a less than traditional one. The image reference (pulling in the downsizing tactic) for today is the Blaze Axe from Radiata Stories.

As an added bonus in this chapter, there will also be linked videos with my progress working on the icon for this chapter recorded. That way, as opposed to me saying "trial and error" without showing the intermediate steps where I refined parts, with a video you can see my exact steps to get a better feel for the process.

Custom Axe Icon Pt. 1:

Custom Axe Icon Pt. 2:

"Finished Icon":

As I said at the end of the second part of the video, I wasn't really sure where to go with the flame shading. I got some feeback and improved the shading a bit. Here's the finished version of the icon:

CHAPTER 3: Working with the Spirits - Writing a Magic Tome

[spoiler=CHAPTER 3]

In this final chapter, I'm going to free draw a magic tome, since it's quite hard to find reference images to base the designs on (perhaps barring things like FE4's Holy Weapons). So, one last time, start with the regular 16 x 16 square pixel box, filled with a background color of your choosing. I again use my blue background color.

Next, either pull up the reference sheet and manually sprite the boundary of the tome over the background or copy it and remove the the outer color and tome design.

I polled a friend, and he suggested that I sprite an Ice-based tome for this example. Looking at Fimbulvetr's icon, the majority of the background is blue, so I grabbed that color and filled in the interior of the tome with it. For Fire-based tomes, the interior color is generally red or brown. Wind tomes generally feature the dark green color as the interior color. Thunder tomes ofter use brown or the black outline color as the background color. The GBA Light tomes use brown as the interior color, while FE9/FE10 would use the dark blue-gray color as their interior color. Dark tomes generally use a mix of the black and purple outline colors as well as the brown color in places. (You'll note that it's slightly hard to see the blue color that's in the interior of the icon due to the blue background. While I happen to like this background color, it does conflict heavily with the blue color.)

The next stage of designing a tome is determining the base pattern that you want the tome to have. This stage will likely be one of the longer steps in tome designing. Since this is an Ice-based tome, I needed to make the design follow suit. Using the light green color on the palette (as it is often paired with the blue color), I added the following design to the tome:

Once the base design is relatively set (enough that there's nothing else to do with it, without just changing it around), the next step is to add shading and other colors to the design. At this point, this step is primarily trial and error, playing around with related color sets until you get something that is discernible at 1x zoom, yet is still shaded when zoomed in. After playing around for about 15 minutes to a half an hour, I finally settled on the final design (tweaking the design here and there, as well as adding in the "inner outline" (the area immediately inside the regular outline).

Hopefully, the Custom Icon Tutorial v2.0 has covered more types of icons and allowed you to further grasp the art of the weapon icon in general. In fact, if you want a test of your abilities as you progress though this (or after reading), try performing the same icons that I've done and see how they come out. Maybe you'll end up making an icon that's more representative of the source or is a great-looking creation of your own. Remember, while weapon icons might not be the most challenging type of sprite in Fire Emblem's style, they do have their importance. And, always remember that the reference sheet is there for shading and design examples, if you need them. Lastly, don't forget that practice is the key to this art. Tweak your older icons, sprite new ones when you have time, and just keep at it. As you do, you'll steadily improve your works, making them more detailed, better proportioned, and of sterling quality.

Edited February 12, 2011 by Lord Glenn

[deleted35362]

Axes have always been hardest to sprite, imo. I think you should get more

fundamental on them.

[Lord Glenn]

Axes have always been hardest to sprite, imo. I think you should get more

fundamental on them.

So, are you suggesting that I do an easier example of an axe than the one I did in the tutorial videos...?

[Lord Glenn]

(Size: 25x30)

Map for Mapping Comp Round 4. Based on a map idea I had for my ancient, never really started map RP back on FESS many years ago. Originally was planned to be the penultimate chapter for said RP and involved the allies arriving by boat at a temple pyramid under the control of the zealotic enemy faction at sunset. Since tileset was an issue, I had to tweak the map design around a ton. But, nonetheless, I'd really like to see how a chapter using this map would play out in-game...

EDIT - Considering I spent maybe 5-6 hours over two days working on this, I'm amazed that I got it done as fast as I did. I was half-expecting to run to the deadline for the round... XD

Edited February 15, 2011 by Lord Glenn

[BlackShadow]

I love the map and the mini-village XD **I know who I'm voting for**

[deleted35362]

I like the big pyramid look. I didn't think that was possible.

[Lord Glenn]

I love the map and the mini-village XD **I know who I'm voting for**

Thanks. Though, while appreciate the early vote, don't throw all of your eggs in one basket. There's still a day and a half left for submissions and neither Feaw nor HoT have posted their maps yet. It's entirely possible that one of theirs will blow mine out of the water.

I like the big pyramid look. I didn't think that was possible.

Well, the pyramid is a little fudged. Because of the tileset, there are only a handful of tiles used to make the slanted building faces, and all of them have the green grass shading on the bottoms. It throws off the cleanliness of the pyramid having the random injections of green color in there. Plus, I had originally wanted far less of the columns on the walls, but as with the side wall tiles, there were only like two tiles (one with left-side shading and one without) for the front facing sloped tiles. It looked far too awkward having a repeated blackish-brown up and down line by continually using the same tile, so I had to add in the columns.

My original vision for the temple was based on the temple/shrine/thing seen in Kurast Docks in Diablo II:

Pic 1

Pic 2

However, if I would have had the stairs go completely to the summit without the breaks for the "floors," I felt the map would have been far too easy (you could basically skip all of the enemies on the sides, since they'd be basically trapped in those areas with how I would have had to design it). So, I opted to slightly eschew my original plan and make it more challenging of a map.

[CrushCrushCrush]

The stairs looks weird on the pyramid. I love the feel of the map, but the steps. shouldnt they go to the next level and be on line with the tip of the pillar signifying the next level of floor? Unless they have walls hiding the levels? I don't know. It's just awkward.

[Lord Glenn]

It may look odd, but that's the way that Intelligent Systems has done all of the maps that I referenced that use that configuration (Ch. 21 in FE6, Ch. 27 in FE7, Lagdou 10 in FE8). (Granted, IS is hardly perfect, so it could very well be a flaw with how they've done it. However, that's how they did it, so I decided to stick with it. I don't have the requisite experience in mapping to eschew their design schema in favor of what might make more sense as I do with weapon icons, for example.)

In fact, the only change that I could see making sense might be to remove the lower step level for the top and middle level sets, since they're already on the structure, while leaving the second set outside, since you'd be entering from the grass. I'm working on expanding the map to improve on features (fixing the half-village and cramped side path, for instance), so I'll play around as I'm tweaking and see if something else makes sense.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Lord Glenn

[Astelaine]

I'm glad you're fixing up that side path. In addition to being cramped, it has those inner cliffs near the edge of the pyramid, some of which look like they go under the structure. It makes it seem like the pyramid doesn't have a solid, flat foundation, which bothers me. Everything else about the map is really nice, though. I look forward to seeing the updated version!

[Lord Glenn]

You get a choice between two versions of the full map, both with their faults:

Palette 1 (6C A3 6E):

Palette 2 (6C 6D 6E):

As you can see, the mountain tiles are highly atrocious in Palette 1 and its got the "corrupted" grass/water/etc. scheme going on. However, the temple/pyramid/shrine/whatever actually looks pretty nice.

In Palette 2, however, the grass, water, mountains, etc. all look nice. The gold temple/pyramid thing? Not so much. Sometimes, I honestly hate IS.

Regardless of the palette issues, I love this map significantly more than the cramped version that I made as my entry into the competition. While the paths are less cramped, I still don't think the starting area would fit more than 8 player units effectively. Could make the map into two chapters though, I guess... (Part 1: Get to the Forts outside the pyramid to rescue allies; Part 2: Bosses and more enemies show up, start down by the stairs going to the water.)

[Feaw]

Oh you made it 10 times more awesome man, gj~

I'd say go with the Lagdou tileset. Mountains, yeah big deal. And I like the grass/water tiles, actually.

If going with Lagdou, you should at least remove those 2 hill tiles in the northwest, those look terrible. The actual nmountains are... meh, but not terrible.

[Astelaine]

I agree with Feaw, it looks a lot better! I too prefer that first tileset - the eerie atmosphere is more appropriate for that giant pyramid.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Astelaine

[Lord Glenn]

Top map was fixed. I replaced the two Mountain tiles with Thickets. Since it's a minor tweak, I won't post an update.

Now to salvage my topic from the depths of the second page...

For starters, two icons for the Icon Contest:

Thunder Lance - C Rank Lance

Soulblade - A Rank Sword

Next, a map made for seph1212 (Interior of the top left and bottom mountain ranges were finished by Hero of Time):

Lastly, as you've likely seen in my sig, a statsheet of Linoan (face sprite and map sprite made by Mage Knight 404), using an edited version of the FE4R template:

All of the weapon icons were referenced from their TCG artworks. I got lazy with the weapon level icons, so I used FE5's. Don't see that changing any time soon, plus I think it fits the tone of the sheet. EDIT(4/5/11) - Replaced with newest version.

Possibly more to come in the near future...?

Edited April 6, 2011 by Lord Glenn

[Nanami Touko]

Dat maaaaaaaaap, oh my goooooooooooood.

It's too sexy @__@

[VincentASM]

The new statsheet looks pretty neat.

I like how you've got substantial graphics behind the stat bars and numbers. Placing the combat stats in a separate window is also an interesting idea. Actually, it makes me wonder if it would fit better inside the personal data screen, although obviously you'd have to cut a bunch of stats.

Did I ever bother you about the "II"s that appear in the middle of the outer frames? I always thought they looked a bit odd and now they look even more odd when you have multiple frames to show.

The weapon attribute icons do look a bit out of place to me. Is that the original SNES palette or a different one that you used? Oh yeah, your item icons also seem to be using a non-GBA palette. Not that there's any wrong, it's just not something I see often ^^

Edited April 4, 2011 by VincentASM

[Lord Glenn]

The new statsheet looks pretty neat.

I like how you've got substantial graphics behind the stat bars and numbers. Placing the combat stats in a separate window is also an interesting idea. Actually, it makes me wonder if it would fit better inside the personal data screen, although obviously you'd have to cut a bunch of stats.

Did I ever bother you about the "II"s that appear in the middle of the outer frames? I always thought they looked a bit odd and now they look even more odd when you have multiple frames to show.

The weapon attribute icons do look a bit out of place to me. Is that the original SNES palette or a different one that you used? Oh yeah, your item icons also seem to be using a non-GBA palette. Not that there's any wrong, it's just not something I see often ^^

I agree that placing the combat stats with the Personal Data would make the sheet even more closely resemble FE5's statsheet; however, I wanted to keep the statsheet somewhat close to the positioning guides for FE8's statsheet templates. (Mainly so I didn't have to spend even more time lining things up while doing it, though I suppose that I could collapse the Personal Data area information now that everything is in place...)

I'll look into removing the bars at the mid points of the outer edges of the rectangular area. They were there to break up the "boringness" of just having something straight across there, but they were one of the first things I did for the sheet. Perhaps it would look better with just straight "chains" across there since everything else is filled in now. Might have to play around with that though, since the width/height of the space might not work for "chains" going all the same direction. I'll fiddle with it though.

The weapon level icons were taken straight from FE5. I didn't even change the palettes on them since it would have taken far more work than I felt like putting in for something that, IMHO, looked better with the native palette than it would have using the GBA palette. As for the weapon icons, I'm not quite sure where you're seeing that they're not matching the GBA palettes. The file that I keep the palette in and use when making icons has identical RGB values for each color in the palette when compared to Ice Dragon's rip of the icon graphics in FE8 (see ID_NASYMBOLS.png)... Now, shading style, on the other hand, I can see differences...

[VincentASM]

The weapon level icons were taken straight from FE5. I didn't even change the palettes on them since it would have taken far more work than I felt like putting in for something that, IMHO, looked better with the native palette than it would have using the GBA palette. As for the weapon icons, I'm not quite sure where you're seeing that they're not matching the GBA palettes. The file that I keep the palette in and use when making icons has identical RGB values for each color in the palette when compared to Ice Dragon's rip of the icon graphics in FE8 (see ID_NASYMBOLS.png)... Now, shading style, on the other hand, I can see differences...

Okay, I knew something was different about the item sprites, but I was in a hurry and couldn't figure out what it was.

The tomes do seem unusually coloured compared to most that I've seen, as are the Dain scroll and old-school Vulnerary (again, not that it's a bad thing). Or maybe the colours of the statsheet are blending with the sprites and messing with my eyes o__o

I'll look into removing the bars at the mid points of the outer edges of the rectangular area. They were there to break up the "boringness" of just having something straight across there, but they were one of the first things I did for the sheet. Perhaps it would look better with just straight "chains" across there since everything else is filled in now. Might have to play around with that though, since the width/height of the space might not work for "chains" going all the same direction. I'll fiddle with it though.

Now that the sheet is more busy and filled in, I think plain old chains should be fine as well. You also still have the golden wavy patterns to spice things up.

Edited April 4, 2011 by VincentASM

[Lord Glenn]

Okay, I knew something was different about the item sprites, but I was in a hurry and couldn't figure out what it was.

The tomes do seem unusually coloured compared to most that I've seen, as are the Dain scroll and old-school Vulnerary (again, not that it's a bad thing). Or maybe the colours of the statsheet are blending with the sprites and messing with my eyes o__o

Now that the sheet is more busy and filled in, I think plain old chains should be fine as well. You also still have the golden wavy patterns to spice things up.

For the most part, I try to stick to the general shading scheme of GBAFE icons; however, as I mentioned, all of these icons were based on/referenced from their TCG card art. As such, I had to take some liberties here and there to make the icons work in the overall style. That and I disapprove of some of IS's techniques here and there.

Again, I'll take a look at fiddling with the outline stuff on the sheet a bit later.

EDIT - How's this look?

Edited April 5, 2011 by Lord Glenn

[VincentASM]

I like it; it looks much cleaner and less busy. I was slightly worried about the chains going in the same direction as well, but I don't see any problems.

[Claude C Kenny]

You get a choice between two versions of the full map, both with their faults:

Palette 1 (6C A3 6E):

Palette 2 (6C 6D 6E):

As you can see, the mountain tiles are highly atrocious in Palette 1 and its got the "corrupted" grass/water/etc. scheme going on. However, the temple/pyramid/shrine/whatever actually looks pretty nice.

In Palette 2, however, the grass, water, mountains, etc. all look nice. The gold temple/pyramid thing? Not so much. Sometimes, I honestly hate IS.

Regardless of the palette issues, I love this map significantly more than the cramped version that I made as my entry into the competition. While the paths are less cramped, I still don't think the starting area would fit more than 8 player units effectively. Could make the map into two chapters though, I guess... (Part 1: Get to the Forts outside the pyramid to rescue allies; Part 2: Bosses and more enemies show up, start down by the stairs going to the water.)

wow, nostalgia. reminds me of the pyramid from ALttP.