Tile Texture Design
The decision to create a tile for a floor texture was determined by the results of a fielding survey. The results of this survey can be seen in the User Testing section below.
The design process for the tiles had several steps before reaching the end-of-sprint-3 state. These steps can be roughly divided into:
- Initial shape
- Vector work
- Initial texturing
- User testing and feedback
The first step in the design process was to map out the isometric texture area that the later tile textures would be drawn over. To help with guides of tile size, a mock was made with staggered, half-length lines separating the texture.
As the dividing lines for the guide texture did not align properly, vector imaging was used next to get exact shapes.
The vector images were created to utilise the precision of vector graphics, with the intention of converting the product (product here still being a guide) to raster for further use. As the raster conversion resulted in very aliased textures, the resultant guide needed cleaning before use.
Initial rasterisation of vector guide.
"Cleaned" guide. The difference can be noted in the hard edges of this image.
With this guide in place, proper texture work began.
The initial texturing for the tiles focused on a white "marble"-esque texture for tiles, with each texture being divided into four tiles. This was referred to as the "half" size texture. For ease of development, the texture was separated into two parts:
- An underlying colour block, for the tile.
- The overlapping tile separators - akin to grout.
Each of these parts also has a Perlin noise layer to give a nice texture variation, and the colour and pattern for each part can be easily changed, independently. Also, the textures were exported to a 1000x500 resolution to match existing textures.
The textures had grout lines running along both the right-most edges of the texture as the idea was to allow for seamless texture tiling. However, upon loading into the game, this method did not work as intended as it had incorrect overlap. Thus, the grout lines were extended around upper-left edge as well.
Making use of the layers, addition "quarter" and "eighth" textures were made as well.
These more finalised textures were provided to users for feedback (discussed below in Iteration Two of User Testing). This feedback helped finalised the best texture sizes for use in the game, as well as give a direction for additional colours and patters. The first additional colour to be created was a terracotta orange.
The purpose of this test was to determine the best flooring and walling materials to use as reference for textures. The test was a survey that asked users to select one or multiple material types per given room. Additionally, the last two questions of the survey related to affluence, which could be used to determine variation textures.
Results can be found on this Google form.
The biggest takeaways from the survey were:
- For a bedroom, the best materials were:
- Floor: Carpet, followed by wood.
- Wall: Wallpaper.
- For a Kitchen, the best materials were:
- Floor: Linoleum, followed by tile.
- Wall: No distinct best material.
- For a Bathroom, the best materials were:
- Floor: Tile, followed by linoleum.
- Wall: Tile, followed by wallpaper.
- For a Common areas, the best materials were:
- Floor: No distinct best material.
- Wall: Wallpaper.
As tiling was common through many of the rooms' floor materials, it was chosen as a good texture starting point.
The purpose of this survey was to gauge the appropriateness of created tile textures, based on the '80s motif. The survey focused on the size of the tiles, and look of the texture, ignoring colours.
Each texture sample was shown with the texture on its own, with an additional in-game screen-shot for context. The in-game screenshot was used to gauge texture scale and visibility, and should not have been considered in terms of appropriateness to other textures.
Based on the provided images, testers were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 the recognisability of the texture and the appropriateness of the texture, in the context of the game's theme.
After the three texture sizes were tested, the testers were asked to select the rooms that would suit each tile size.
Finally, there were two free-form answer boxes gauging opinions on the general aesthetics of the textures.
Results can be found on this Google form.
There were three key take-aways for this test:
- The larger of the two textures were more appropriate and more easily recognisable than the "eighth" size. There was not much distinction between the two.
- Most responses to the free-form colour question specified some form of darker or earthier tones, or brighter, colourful alternatives. These suggestions led to the creation of the "terracotta" tile texture (shown above).
- The testing for appropriateness was not very conclusive, as there was no way to determine why a tester selected their responses, making it harder to implement effective iterations.
For future testing for these textures, implementing appropriateness tests with additional "Why?" response boxes (mentioned above) would improve test actionability.
Additionally, as there are a large range of additional colours specified in the test results, creating colour variations and then using them in tests would textures closer to user expectation. The introduction of these colour variations may be an apt task for "polish" in sprint 4.
Finally, the first test that was created could be given to more users to determine additional texture types to make. This is further supported by the small sample size of initial testers.