ADVENTURES INTO AZULAAN

Adventures into Azulaan is a 2D MMORPG that is slowly being developed by two people at the moment. I was hired as a freelance job to create the grass, cliffs and slope tiles that are used in the game. This mockup is my own interpretation of how the graphics could be instead of how the graphics are today, in no offense to the game that is being developed. In this mockup, I focused on making the UI as minimal as possible, as someone that dabbles in some MMORPGs, something that usually stress me is the clutter of elements on the interface, so if I were to make my own MMORPG with a simple approach to gameplay, this is how I would do it.

The initial task that was required was to create slopes that actually look like they had depth into it, that the player were reaching new heights, specially in a top-down perspective.

The tile also had to be loopable with some variation in the middle section, so you could have a very big cliff and smaller ones. You can see an example of that on left cliff from the mockup on the top of the page. A small idea is that the bottom tiles would be darker than the top ones, as to indicate that you were looking them from above. This is usually the approach to top-down tiles, or the opposite, with lighting come from the ground and the ceiling being darker.

Tiles from left to the right: Stardew Valley, Pokémon Mistery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokémon Emerald

After the initial concept, the first thing I did was to create different grass tiles for different terrains, that would go on top of the cliffs and where the player would be on most of the time, so I wanted to create a grass that fell delightful to step on, and never harsh or rough.

And then went on to the cliffs. I was undecided most of the time if I wanted to the grooves be more square shaped or to have a more organic meddled with rocks shape, but I went with the later on the end, and also the palette was bit more brown than the square shaped ones and seemeed to synergize more with the grass tile that was choosen.

And then I created the mockup, since most of the graphics needed were already done. The goblin was a suggestion of how they could look like in game, being more closer to a JRPG aesthetic. But I was very unhappy with the palette for the UI elements, as they semeed to lack contrast and the colors were too dull, which you can check that changed a lot from the final output.

Also, here's a small timelapse of the creation of the portrait that goes in the middle of the UI. I tried my best to create something akin to a fresh soldier being hardened by the struggles of his recent adventure. A valiant yet a face that's starting to be worn.

And in this link, you can join the discord server that Adventures of Azulaan is being developed at.