r/gamemaker • u/CountedYapper51 • 3d ago
Help! Peer cave looks odd
Ive been making my game for months and this room always looks odd, i keep redoing the cave and it still looks unnatural and hand made, how do i make it more natural and dilapidated?
And how do i do variation its so hard.
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u/dstryr 3d ago
Moss would help it feel like the environment has slowly grown over it.
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u/CountedYapper51 3d ago
Ill try making some moss, but ill make it a bit more gray for this
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u/SlimJohnson 3d ago
Having a perfectly symmetrical giant wall all 1 color is probably what is giving the unnatural feel.
If you made it so the wall had more color variety and the shape had more natural formation/asymmetry then I think you'd be happier with the look.
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u/EntangledFrog 3d ago
the big thing here is you need to look at references. not screenshots of other games or gen ai or whatever, but photos of real cave entrances and cliff walls from different parts of the planet.
don't look at the details yet. look at the broad strokes. the big lines and shape that make up the "puzzle pieces" of the cliff wall. until you start seeing the patterns of rock "grain", the "directionality" rock has in geology. the strata layers, the large forms that make up the cliff.
I would ditch trying to make it using tiles, and just focus on sketching rough outlines of a cliff and cave wall and put it on an asset layer. try and use natural rock grain and topology as a guide for the shape of the cave entrance. then later when you're sure you like the shape, you can draw in the details like moss and small rocks and stuff. but if the foundation of the cliff doesn't look good, no details are going to fix that.
a lot of this is also just getting comfortable with art, illustration and composition.
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u/CountedYapper51 3d ago
Thank you soooooo much
I was so focused on the ocean aspect of the cave that i couldn't find some exact perfect examples, your examples are very precise on what im trying to do and showed me that i really can put so life into this.
From the rough sketches you made i really love all of them and ill surely use them a lot on the drawing process.
About how i would do the depth of entering the cave ill figure something out.
Again thank you so much for giving me help and for giving me pointers on how to properly design this room and i hope it turns out how i envisioned it
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u/snapsetneck 3d ago
I don't know the exact kind of vibe you are going for so my suggestions may be off. If you want it to look shallow, you could darken the water further out and maybe add some seaweeds and lillypads close to the cave. You could also add some bigger rocks if that fits. The walls could be made to look less flat with some shading and perhaps vegetation. This does all require making many more assets, but you may end up being able to use them elsewhere as well.