Gruntz could have been great, but it was rushed into sales

[GooRoo]

The graphics team should have been given more time (and more people, likely) to put together the tile sets. Too many duplicates (or so nearly duplicates as to make no difference to these tired old eyes) in areas 5 through 8 especially. Particularly deficient is area 6 (Honey, I Shrunk the Gruntz) which has no detectable variance in the 'light' ground tiles (1 through 8). To me, there is nothing so boring as a map with nothing but tile #1 or tile #9 as ground tiles. In area 6 there is no recourse for the designer but to give the appearance of using nothing but tile #1 for the light areas. I guess I am just an optimist, because I usually try to lay out the basic map using all 8 of the 'light' areas and all 8 of the 'dark' areas (even in area 6) in hopes that there are still talented graphics people out there (who just happen to have an interest in Gruntz) who manage to team up with the computer techie types to upgrade the tile sets we are still using. I would be delighted to see some of my Quest maps displaying unique images for those (currently) duplicated tiles.

Sorry. I am just unhappy with the appearance of my latest Quest. Nothing I have tried gives me any satisfaction in the appearance of 32 of the 64 squares of the chess board that do not contain the image of a chess piece, or a significant mini-puzzle.

Rant complete.

[GooRoo]

Well I am obviously NOT a graphics artist, so my effort at introducing a bit of variety in the "Honey, I Shrunk The Gruntz!" Ground Tilez #1 through #8 by rotating (3 times 90 degrees) and flipping horizontally and also rotating to create tiles #2 through #8 that were different from tile #1 made no noticeable improvement in a large ground area. Different, definitely; noticeable, not so much. The Monolith graphics team used tile #1 as a basis for tiles 22, 23 and 31, and tile 1 (or 2 - 8) flipped horizontally as the basis for tile #30. So those transition tiles were no help to a no talent guy like me in providing better replacements for tiles 2 through 8.

The sameness malady also extends to some of the other graphics areas, just not as blatant as in area 6. The "Bad water (quicksand, lava, etc.) tiles seem to have received the lion's share of attention, as they usually blend very nicely with tiles to the north, east, south and west. Almost as if a photograph was taken of lava (for instance) and put into a grid with multiples of 32X32 pixels and used to create the tile images. I just looked at the back cover of a hardcover book that is just about the color scheme of the H,ISTG tiles 1 through 8 and may try the 'photograph' technique myself to see how that looks.