Cliffing.
 

I've always done a 'layered' styled cliffing, which I've recently discovered looks horrid when you're doing a large cliff face. I'm trying to adapt Crono's style of 'extended' cliffing where you stretch the cliff tiles to your desired height. I've been using some of the work he has posted here as a reference, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make a fluid change between west facing cliffs to northwest/north facing cliffs, everything I come out with looks... bad. Any help to solve this dilemma would be nice.

I've attached an image to better show what I mean.

Heh, I dropped that style of cliff turning (from Wan back in 04/05) because technically speaking it's wrong; it makes the sides bigger. I do it this way nowadays as it's technically correct and in my opinion it looks nicer. The only slight "issue" with it is that you have to have an odd number of "layers", as an even number will make it look like a tile error (the little lined ones create small black lines).

Attachment 47705

As for your actual problem, I find big cliffs hard to turn in tight places. It has to be more gradual to look good.

That looks far better, I'll fix my mistakes. Now just help me with the turning north ward!

Yeah, Wan's had the advantage of being so compact though.

Try something and we'll see if we can fix it. I usually find myself trying to turn my cliffs too quickly rather than gradually change it's direction.

Okay this was the best looking one I made, the rest were just basic redesigns of what I've seen, and none of them look smooth.

Eek, I use you're using Classic's style. I disregard that as I find it overcomplicates things and just use the simple plain style. For example:

That was my first attempt, but those tiles do not make a smooth transition.

I enjoy using Classic's tileset. I like the color of the grass on the original one. As for cliffs I base mine off of the one on Classic.

Oh god, haha; unbelieveable! It's funny looking back at them, I'm so glad I converted to the other style. I did it the same way as Crono has shown.

Here's what I use. Sorry, for the poor, quality, was a quick snap. I can post a higher res if wanted.

Okay Crono, I followed your style, but I ran into a problem almost immediately. When I tried to combine the first fix with what you showed me here and it doesn't look like the tiles come out even on the west facing cliff.

meh, gonstuct :(
i tried to download that but apparently i can't open it in vista.

You're using two different styles on the cliff Max which won't make it connect together correctly.

Yeah, like I said try to use an odd number of layers. You have two, so it'll come up as a tile error when using the (what I call) "pyramid" style of cliff turning. Here's an example of how I'd roughly do it.

Attachment 47771

Using Wan's old method had one advantage, though, you could pull it off with any amount of layers. as they'd line up straight anyway. I think it's possible to mix this pyramid style with Wan's straight method but if I recall correctly it looks a bit funky.

I guess I could use odd layers, but do you have any work around for it? I'm assuming you don't make odd layers each and every time you make a level...

Haha, I actually do. :(

The only real workaround is just going back to the straight method, but I can't stand looking at that style anymore as it just looks so...wrong.

Edit:

I knew I'd done this before (found it lying around), here's what it would look like. It's the two on the left (they're the same, just 2 tiles different where it's bright when its turning), the right being there for reference. It's the same size as yours, I think, goes to show why I don't like the size (notice the sides are the same as the one on the right yet the fronts are ~2 tiles shorter).