Desert Art & Tent Logic


This week was all about exploring the visual identity of the world and laying some groundwork for player interaction —specifically, pitching a tent.

🌵 Background Style Experiments

I’ve been digging into different approaches for background art, trying to find a look that feels grounded but also works within the GBC’s harsh constraints. Using a reference desert scene as inspiration, I started with a more realistic mockup in Aseprite using the spray paint tool to create soft gradients and texture.

After importing the scene into GB Studio, it looked promising… but the memory usage wasn’t. The scene nearly maxed out VRAM just to display a little over one screen’s worth of background.

📉 Stylization Tradeoffs

Switching gears, I studied how Survival Kids approached things. I recreated a few desert tiles in that more tile-efficient style. While it scrolled better and used far less VRAM, it lost a lot of visual impact—and the added texture noise caused noticeable shimmering during movement.


I also looked at the classic cartoon style of Oracle of Ages, which is much cleaner and technically efficient—but not quite the look I’m after either. I’m now thinking the sweet spot might be somewhere between the two. Instead of raw texture, I might convey visual “noise” through scattered objects—cacti, rocks, branches—while keeping the underlying tiles clean and low-contrast.


🎪 Tent System Prototyping

I also made progress on gameplay features—specifically, letting the player pitch a tent to rest. Initially, I explored using background tile swaps to place the tent. But after testing, I realized that any tiles replaced this way get reset when scrolled off-screen and back. That made the approach unreliable, especially since I’ll eventually need something similar for NPCs.

The solution? I swapped the player’s sprite to a tent graphic instead. Since I already have reliable access to the tile ID under the player (thanks to last week’s work), it was easy to check whether the area was suitable for pitching a tent. If not, the game just pops up a dialogue.

Right now, the switch happens instantly, but I plan to add a small animation—maybe a smoke puff or a quick tent-pitching motion—to make the transition feel more polished and organic. It’s a small touch, but one that can add a lot of charm.

Thanks for reading!
— Derek

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.