How do you make top down tileable mountain ranges like fire emblem?

Question

TL;DR: my goal is to gain the knowledge necessary to make these kinds of mountains from scratch.

I've been searching hard all over for tutorials and dissecting tilemaps but I just can't figure out how to actually go about making an original tileable mountain range.

Some examples of what I'm trying to figure out;

First, a fire emblem map, this is ideal for the kind of maps I want to make for a project, but it just doesn't make sense to me how it looks so damn great and is tileable.

Second is the same map tiles, dissected to 16x16 tiles;

Doing this helped me find that the maps are not the normal 16x16 I thought they where, only increasing my confusion as to how the original arts started making them...

And third; the same 16x16 tileset, now dissected to 8x8 tiles... Now its basically too small for me to make heads or tails of it, spent a few hours trying to put them together like a puzzle, but I can only make small mountains when the tiles are... So indistinguishable to me. I'm just still having a hard time understanding how they tile to extend into large mountain ranges.

If anyone has experience or input or even tutorials, just anything, I'd really appreciate it

Answer 1

It has nothing to do with pixel count. It is about methodology.

A. Define a general shape.

B. Define the angle of the shadow.

C. Define the type of tiles you need. In this case, I have 7 models.

Now you can just paint 7 different tile models regardless of the px dimensions.

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But another thing you need to get right is the logic of the "Auto Tiling" algorithm.

In a road, it is obvious that you would not use a "random" road generator (E). But have some logic on it. Tile Horizontal can only be positioned left or right of another, and the vertical road can only be positioned on top or bottom (F).

The same, on your mountain generator you need to define the tiling rules. (G) for the sunny-border side, (H) for the internal shadows. There are more rules to establish. Do your homework.

Answer 2

I think they really are 16x16 px.

I made a grid on Photoshop and started copy/pasting elements from your image to make a huge mountain.

Here are some screenshots, hope this helps to understand.