Ryokan Construction

I’ve spent today remaking the Ryokan which I designed before as a mock-up in Photoshop. I already had the main wooden structure, made from this small set of tiles:

A lot of the objects which I previously mocked up have stayed pretty much the same, but in some cases I’ve re-sized, simplified and re-coloured objects to match the colour scheme and for better proportions.

In this screenshot you can see that I’ve remodelled the bunk-beds again so that the tiles work without having to have an outer frame, and recoloured décor like the curtains and light shade. You can probably also tell that I’ve simplified the wall pattern hugely, as I felt it looked messy and didn’t give the right impression of a smooth surface. The floor upstairs has been carpeted, and the decorative beams at the top of the wall on the floor below have been pushed further apart to draw less attention.
Although its small and fairly illegible, the symbol on the lantern-style light shade is a low-res version of the Japanese kanji for “Sakura”, consisting of a combination of the symbols for tree, decoration and woman.

I filled in the rest of the building without the use of too many more tiles. This example shows the bare building, before any of the objects or furniture has been placed:

There are some quite odd looking dark bits which are supposed to show shadows and depth, however I think I made these a little too dark! After making this I brightened these squares a little. This image came together from this expanding set of tiles:

After finishing the main building, I started to think about the sort of objects you would find in a Japanese Ryokan, especially one consisting of Western and traditional Japanese floors. I already have a lot of the furniture, now made and remodelled, but the rooms needed filling up more. I wrote a list which I split into decorative and Japanese items and guest convenience items.

Japanese:
• Bowl Decoration
• Orb Decoration
• Vase Decoration
• Fan Decoration
• Tea Pots
• Tea Cups

Guest:
• Phone
• Computer
• Microwave
• Kettle
• TV & DVD Player

NOT

Kitchen white good or anything bathroom related. It is a well known fact that game-characters never need to eat, sleep or use a toilet in order to survive. In many games these things are beneficial, but not essential.

Bearing in mind the colour scheme, I added some of these things to my tileset, although it wasn’t until I applied them to the building that I realised how strange some of the items had been scaled! Hopefully from the image you can see what I was getting at with some of a stranger items on the list…

From this I was also able to create the outside of the building, using similar tiles. I tried to keep the shape exactly the same, so that when the character enters the building, the transition gives the illusion of the building being chopped in half for the player to see inside! I got some of the corners in the wrong place, as you can probably see if you look close enough!

With this nearly complete tileset, I was able to reconstruct the building in Game Maker. I saved the set as it was as a PNG to retain transparencies. This was then imported to Game Maker as a background. GM gives you the option for any background image to become a set of tiles, you simply set the size of the tiles and the program breaks the whole image for you:

And here are the tiles reconstructed into a building in the room editor:

Whole tiles can be snapped into a 16×16 grid, which made applying the lowest layer very easy! It was easier to turn snapping off for smaller objects that had to reason to align. It was important to un-check the “delete underlying” box so that some tiles could be placed on top of each other!

Tilesets From Roof Tiles

I’ve been doing a little research into Japanese roof design! It’s amazing what you can find on the internet, for example articles like this one explaining the history of the Japanese roof. Originally, the Japanese got the idea for roof tiles from the Koreans. However, these tiles consisted not only of flat tiles, but tubular tiles too and were fairly expensive. They were placed mainly on top of important buildings and shrines etc. This later devolved into the wave shaped tiles which are a common site in Japan, being much cheaper but almost as nice to look at. I’m not sure what the practicalities are of having waved tiles rather than flat ones, but if I was given the opportunity to have a roof that nearly resembled that of a Japanese temple I guess I wouldn’t pass it up. The image below is of a more ornate example, although there are obviously those that are more simple and others that are much more complex.

For my Ryokan roof, I originally fancied the original roof (as demonstrated at the top of this post!) But not only is it unlikely that a B&B would have such an ornate roof, it doesn’t seem to come out well in 2D form. Despite my gradient-effect efforts, the tile simply appeared to be flat.

The most left red tile is my attempt at the tube tile, abandoned fairly on for the wave tile which just works brilliantly. You can imagine the tile sloping at a 45 degree angle, even from a straight on perspective like this one. Being tiles, they repeat effortlessly. All I had to ensure was that they aligned evenly.
The colour of the roof has changed from blue to pinky-red, this is due to the out-doors colours scheme I’m currently conjuring. For the first level of the game at least, I want to use a lot of pinks and reds- similar colours to the Sakura blossom object. This is my way of saying “you’re in Sakura country now, Player1!” Plus, I want the outdoor world of Hanami to accurately represent a Japanese spring time.

After applying the new red tiles to the roof, I re-worked the wooden frame of the building using a new set of flexible tiles. Wood is a traditional building material which can still be seen today, especially in Kyoto which used to be the capital of Japan. They tend not to exist these days in many urban and even in rural areas, however I’ve chosen to create a tileset for wooden houses because it is a symbol of something that is traditionally Japanese.

I haven’t tried to accurately represent the layout of wood in a wooden Japanese house with my tiles, but give an impression of a wooden structure which has been cross-sectioned for the inside view of the Ryokan. To give you an idea of the scale of the building, I’ve placed Hana in the middle of this newly constructed space:

Kyoto Machiya.com is a great resource for images of traditional Machiya (Japanese wooden house), specifically Kyomachia which are Machiya located in Kyoto! The site’s galleries include photos of inside and outside various famous Machiya, which will be useful for the next step of the Ryokan construction, which will be to build its walls and inside!