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My first tileset has been published



 I'm proud to announce last week I published my second asset to GameDevMarket. It's an editable 47-tile auto tiler tileset, which I started thinking about late 2025, but actually started work on in the first quarter of 2025. I've been wanting to (again) pick up some game asset design for a long time, but never got around starting with it, due to a busy work and family life. When I started I had to get reaquainted with Inkscape and GameMaker Studio 2, two of my favourite programs. I watched tutorials and bought a Udemy course by Michael Davies, called Inkscape: From Beginner to Pro In Inkscape & Graphic Design.


During the first weeks I put in time here and there, often early in the morning before work or in weekends when my wife was working. I had a lot of ideas in my head and scribbled a couple of pages with those ideas in a notebook. Getting those ideas into Inkscape from my head and notebook, was a whole other matter. It took a lot of trial and error and I started over from scratch multiple times. But eventually I was able to make some templates for myself, which will help me with future projects. After this release I continued with several other ideas and I feel like I'm getting better and faster with it. I even had/have the idea to make a Udemy course myself to teach other people to easily create tilesets, but that will be a future project.


The first game asset I published was a Cleopatra & Mummy character pack. This was my first foray into game art and I'm pretty happy about it, although I would now use a different style if I were to create characters again (which I hope to do again in the future). This was back in August 2023, so almost 3 years ago. After that life got so busy I didn't have time to pick up designing and I forgot most of the little skills I had.



Yesterday I finished my second tileset. Only I want to present it better, so I'm working on a 'showcase'. For this I'm building a platform level with a moving sprite to show off the seamless integration of the tiles. And because I'm not a developer (I'm more of a hobby-level 'artist'), I'm now following a course of Peter Morgan on Udemy on How to Make Tile Based Platform Games in Gamemaker.

Years ago I followed a YouTube tutorial series GameMaker Studio 2: Complete Platformer Tutorial, which taught about the same, by Sara Spaulding (back then Shawn Spaulding ... don't know if I'm being insensitive by mentioning her old/dead-name, but that's how I knew her back then). 

The courses of both Sara and Peter are very clear and fun to do. Within the first lessons you already have the beginnings of a game (currently just a sprite which can move left or right). I squeeze in some learning time early in the morning or before going to bed, even if it's just 15 minutes.




Oh, btw, tomorrow I have a Vibe coding or Vibe prototyping with Figma (UX design tool) workshop at work. Interesting to see how I can use AI in my job. Currently I am just using it to scare my developers and designer that I will automate their work and will become a one-man team. 😀
(I'm joking around, I love my team and we're looking into possibilities for AI-use together.)


Update May 17th, 2026:
On Friday I made my first sale of this tileset. Jeeeej!



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