I would like to ask you a few questions and I could not contact you anywhere else (you do not seem to have a contact email address and your Patreon has 99.9% of its posts locked for non-paying members). I might be interested in buying all of your assets (the last plan in Patreon), but I first want to make sure I put my money in the right place. I would like to know the following:
1) In assets packs like the fish folk village, there seem to be water animations in the side of the shore, but since your asset packs only have export options in .PNG and .JSON I am curious how (and if) those animations can actually be imported into a game.
2) Your assets are often positioned in example scenes, some of which do not actually exist as purchasable assets. for instance, the most common one is the castle arena or whatever I may call it (the one from mage arena). You often portray your characters in that scene, but as far as I am aware, there is no castle OR arena tileset (very unfortunately). Are those coming at any point? Or are they already accessible through, say your patreon?
3) You seem to be going for a completionist pattern with your uploads. Although you do not release your assets in specific-themed sets, those seem to always get completed along the way, resulting in every asset eventually being fully integratabtle to a complete game. But there are some exceptions to that: your futuristic tiles for example, although there are character and prop sets to fill it in with, there are no lab exterior assets or anything of the sort, which would make the entire thing as a whole very hard to integrate into a full game. Are you actually planning to always complete every aspect of the asset world you have created, or are some of them just going to remain incomplete? (and I do understand that you mainly upload assets based on the polls you run, but I am asking wether you are going to complete the continuity with thematic sets you have already started uploading).
4) One of the most important ones here: in patreon, the archivist tier claims it gives access to "everything", but in the full asset list you have linked in the top of your itch.io page, prices are stated both for itch.io AND for the archivist patreon tier SEPARATELY. Does this mean that if I do purchase the archivist tier, I just gain the ABILITY to purchase the assets themselves through additional payments, or do I actually get to download all of them after that first big transaction? And with patreon tiers in general: are the assets they say they "unlock" actually unlocked for free, or through more additional purchases?
5) Lastly, are there any engine-specific ways to easily create tile pallettes with your assets or import them into an engine easier overall? I personally use Unity Engine, and I would appreciate knowing if there are any shortcuts/ difficulties I might exploit/ come across while trying to use all of your assets in my engine.
Sorry for the massive wall of text, but as a (completely broke) solo developer, I am trying to make 100% I can out of my money's worth. I do not even know if my upcoming project will make me any money at all, so I cannot afford to overbuy. I hope you understand and my big essay over here didn't tire you! Just know that your art looks insanely good and if some of the questions I asked here are answered the way I expect them to, you've gained yourself a new very loyal customer! Again, thanks for reading all the way through!
Viewing post in 2D Pixel Art Lizardfolk Temple Tileset comments
Hello, happy to answer your questions. There is a free member chat room on Patreon (it's quite new so I don't know if I set it up right), also my contact details are at the bottom of the Frequently Asked Questions section of the page.
1. That depends on the engine you are using. It is not possible for me to know how to import the assets for each and every different engine so you'll need to look it up :D Here's an example for unity.
2. That's the Royal Arena+ tileset. It is a Patreon exclusive asset. You get it with any of the pledge tiers.
3. As you've said, I draw what's chosen by the polls and that dictates what assets I publish month to month. I try my best to add futuristic options to the polls but the majority of the Patrons shy away from those options for some reason. I've drawn the Futuristic Labs Tileset as a bonus tileset by the way. It wasn't chosen by polls. I hoped it would maybe spark some interest in other futuristic assets but it didn't really work :) I might do more bonus stuff in the future but as of now, it seems the bulk of the assets are going to be fantasy based.
4. You get access to all assets through Patreon. No additional payments. You get links for every year, which is eight links. That gets you all the assets between 2018-2025. For 2026 you need to download the assets one by one, which is like three assets at the moment. The links will be in your welcome message and "membership" tab when you subscribe.
5. To be completely honest with you, I don't know :D Most of my time goes to doing the art and I am very lacking in gamedev matters. For mage arena I've imported the tilesets and rearranged them with the edit button within Unity "Tile Palette" and used them like that. I don't know if there is an easier way to import them in as they are seen in the tileset pngs themselves.
Thanks for you kind words! If you have any other questions feel free to reach out. You know how to contact me now :D