The map design for a special “flashback” area of Unearthed is now complete! I don’t want to give away too much of the story at this point, but you’ll probably deduce from the screenshots that it takes place in some sort of laboratory.
I was looking for a way to have the tileset evoke an “old timey” feel for the flashback, and went through quite a few ideas beforing settling on this visual style. Originally I thought to create the entire tileset in black and white, but eventually sold myself on an original Nintendo vibe instead.
I guess in my mind “bad graphics = ancient history”, and I hope it translates well in the final game.
The next map I’ll be working on is the Chicada Caverns, which recycles a tileset from EarthBound with little to no alterations. Not very exciting, I know, but I can’t remake every tileset in the game. My brain would more than likely explode!
Bad graphics? What bad graphics? 🙂
Also, I assume that’s supposed to be the bording school lab in Winters from Earthbound?
I used the boarding school as a base, and basically just simplified the heck out of it using Mother as a guide.
Also, I took your suggestion from the sm.net board and changed the chairs a bit. I’ll post it up on the site in a couple of days.
Been keeping an eye on this project ever since I found out about Hyperbound and played that. I love Earthbound and was crushed when they didn’t come out with EB64, so this is very exciting what you are doing right now! Good luck as you work towards completion!
I love the Mother 1 look of this flashback sequence! I had long accepted the fact that unearthed would have a very different spirit from the earthbound games in order to develop its own “world”, so I enjoy the little nod to the original Mother.
I have a feeling that when you finish this game, the earthbound fan forums across the internet are going to explode with excitement. It all looks wonderful, and is a personal dream come true to finally see a professionally done earthbound hack. Keep at it, dude!
Despite my divergent aspirations for the game, Unearthed very much has its roots in Mother 1, 2 and 3. I like to give nods towards all three of those titles in my work, as well as a plethora of other retro games that I draw inspiration from such as Soulblazer and Zork.
[…] some of you may remember, there is a short portion in Unearthed that occurs in the magical realm of 8 BIT FLASHBACKS. Although there aren’t a lot of sprites to make for this part of the game they took a good […]