Reminds me of those levels from Donkey Kong Country 3. Only problem is that a tileset like that would be a pain in the (-)(-)(-) to animate, unless you opted for putting the waterfalls on moving layers.

One theme that I've always thought was lacking is a dungeon tileset. I don't just mean another generic castle tileset - I mean some kind of dark underground dungeon, with prison cells (complete with iron bars), chains, hooks, various torture devices, and lots of spike traps (to prevent prisoners escaping!). It would absolutely need animated spikes that could come out of the floors or even walls. Also, some clever use of invisible tiles could be done to make it so the spikes are triggered when you go near them (I used something like this in my SP episodes for the spike traps). In fact, for a tileset like this, I imagine spikes being a major theme, aside from being a prison as well. Also, I'm not suggesting some sort of super grim and violent tileset, just something that fits the concept of a medieval dungeon.

The idea sounds generic at first, but if you think about it there's really nothing good available for this theme. The best is probably Medivo (any version) or Fortress of Forgotten Souls, but both of those are just "evil castles" more than anything. More likely is this tileset would be a dark reimagining of JJ2's Castle tileset.

I don't think this tileset would need outdoor sections, although you could have a background visible through windows (a thunder storm would look good, especially if the tiles around the windows lit up during flashes, for realism or something). Reason I suggest against outdoor sections (beyond some BG) is the following: (a) it would be a bit of a distraction from the main theme, and dungeons are supposed to be underground and inescapable anyway... plus if variety is needed, there could be cave tiles, or parts of the dungeon where the bricks give away to rough stone, or something like that; and (b) most "castle" type tilesets we have contain a lot of outdoor stuff, which limits their usefulness for the sort of "deep dungeon" theme I'm talking about.

It would be interesting of there were different styles of ground, so a level could be made that goes deeper and deeper, with each layer of depth becoming more rugged and cave like.



I also have a few opinions about the first post.

One thing I might suggest is that while having "process" that this tileset goes through is a good idea, you should be careful not to make it too rigid. A lot of the time in these threads, people just contribute what they can while people stitch it together into a coherent set. It kind of bounces back and forth between what you called phase 3 and phase 4. Like, one person posts a bit of random eyecandy, or some other fragment, and then the next person takes it, edits it and puts it into the actual tileset. Something like that is probably more effective for an open project like this one, because anyone can contribute anything at any time. It's also far better for people to volunteer to do things, rather than being assigned. Towards the end it will bounce back and forth between phase 5 and phase 4 type posts.

The last phase would basically be where the collaboration ends, and one or two people finish everything up. Someone just has to take the tileset once it looks reasonably complete, and get it uploaded.

You'll also have a hard time keeping phase 1 and phase 2 separated unless you use different threads.

Overall though it's a good idea to give this one a bit of structure. Just try to let it develop more naturally. It might be a good idea to just generalize it into 3 phases, eg. Concept, Development, and Finalization.