GAME DENIED. MY MAPPING NEEDS "SOME PRETTY SERIOUS HELP." THAT'S LESS THAN HELPFUL...

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This was the exact response I got with my game submission denial:

"Your mapping needs some pretty serious help. Check out our screenshot topic, or play Carlsev Saga which uses the same tilesets.
01/28/2013 02:44 PM"
There was no name given for whoever gave this response.

If my game page can be privately accessed on this site, here's the link to see the exact screenshots that I posted along with my submission:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/4755/

If that page is inacessible (again, I'm not sure whether it is or not), I posted all the gameplay that I have on Youtube thus far (also you will see all the mapping that I have ready so far):




Now, being new here, I'm not quite sure what the benchmark for game submissions are. That said, perhaps my game isn't really up to snuff or maybe the specific screenshots that I posted with my submission just didn't do the game justice. However, the reply that I got was less than helpful for two reasons: (1) I actually used mapping tutorials from this site as I was working on this prologue, and more importantly, (2) the response gave no indication of what aspect(s) of my mapping needed "some pretty serious help."

Additionally, this beginning section of the game is supposed to be more vacant, so don't suggest adding little animals/critters for example to liven up the scenery. Plus, I already looked at Carlsev Saga and while its maps might have some more detail in places, it shouldn't mean that every map in every game should have the same exact level of detailing.

Any help or a second opinion would be appreciated!
Eh. Your mapping was very sparse and blocky. But it's not the worst I've ever seen. You should seek some advice in the screenshot thread but it seems harsh to deny you a game page over.

You can still have an area that feels vacant and desolate but still be visually interesting.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The outside of the castle, at the beginning of the video, is not bad at all.

The dungeon itself is full of large mostly-empty expanses. The overall layout is actually pretty coherent and creates a nice sense of exploration, but that doesn't come across in screnshots - any given screenshot is probably going to be 95% covered by a single type of empty ground tile. More doodads, more bigger landmarks, and simply condensing all the space down to half its current width and height would go a long way.

I'm not sure what the crap is up with those waterfalls. Waterfalls fall from rivers at the tops of cliffs into rivers at the bottoms of cliffs, not from the ceiling of a castle into a tiny puddle that somehow manages to hold an endless in-stream of water.

Having different types of floor helps, but the way you're connecting them is both illogical and tiled incorrectly - in the northern section for example, you have sections of white stone floor mixed in with the regular darker stone floor, but the white stone floor has grass around the edges, an indication that you don't quite understand how the shift key works. Furthermore, the people who created the building wouldn't just toss random splotches of different-colored floors - they would use them to seperate different rooms of the temple and different sections of rooms. You also have grass indoors, which doesn't make much sense to me. I get that the floor is broken, but if you're indoors, it should be dirt, not grass.

Speaking of seperating rooms of the temple, what are all the rooms in this temple? As far as I can tell, every single room is a hallway. Buildings are full of rooms that have purposes. Even in a ruined temple, there would be the ruined remains of each room's furnishings - bedrooms and armories and sacrificial altars and meeting rooms and offices and an auditorium and a library and whatever else the temple had before it was destroyed a thousand years ago.

Come up with a better ending scene than that writing in the grass, while you're at it :)

Maybe this is more helpful to you than the message by the admins. Sometimes they have time to give specifics and sometimes they don't, but there are always people around here willing to help. Good luck getting approved!
Thanks for the feedback! Did you see the whole video or just the screenshots that were on the game page? Which parts of my maps are better? Which ones worse? to give me a better idea of where to go.

Do you think I should just directly contact the head of submissions at this point or try to make it better first?
Oh, double post...My last one was to Daria.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Your page isn't viewable to anyone but you, since it wasn't accepted. You will need to embed the screenshots in this thread for anyone to see them. The site WILL let you copy and paste the image URLs from your un-accepted game's screenshots and embed them in the thread here.
I didn't see the screenshots, the link is dead. So I watched the video. Also Lockez has a good point. Because your maps are so expansive they are going to look less interesting in singular screenshots than in a moving video.
@LockeZ, Again, thanks for the help! To address a few things...

  • There is actually supposed to be a river unseen above ground as will be explained/shown later. Perhaps, it wasn't clear enough with the top-down view, but the main room of the temple is supposed to be somewhat underground. This explains the waterfalls.

  • I actually know how to use the shift key and deliberately didn't use it in certain spots when making this, but you raise a good point about the lighter stone in the area with the ring on the pedestal. (are we both referring to the same spot?) I guess that could be explained by parts of the wall and roof having collapsed from age, so there's different colored stone on the floor. That's what I was going for on that map.

  • If this was a larger dungeon, I would have made more rooms. But it's just a shorter introduction/prologue dungeon.

  • The grass in the temple is there to show how it is so old that it's been overrun with vegetation and also to show the creators' respect for the environment.

  • Also, there will be more to follow than just the writing in the grass! :)


Hopefully, that clears up a few things :)
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Well, you asked for ways to make it look better. You can explain the reasons why it looks bad, but that doesn't make them not make it look bad.
Alright, here are the screenshots I used, which may not have done the game enough justice.

Screenshot1
Screenshot2
Screenshot3
Screenshot4
Screenshot5
Sorry if I sounded like I was rejecting criticism, but I wanted to explain my thought process behind my work.
I will definitely take the stone floor inconsistency to heart. I made this months ago, and in hindsight that could definitely be done better. I think I was using the lighter stone because it was an autotile with grass around the edges while the darker stone was only the one tile itself.
While your mapping isn’t anything special at the moment, I wouldn't have a problem playing a game that looks like yours. I don't know, but I think a lot more crap gets submitted to the site than we even imagine so it‘s easy to see why they could have denied this. I wouldn't say this is a game that needs “pretty serious help” though. I've seen Deckiller be very lenient and helpful multiple times with games that look far worse that this, so not sure who denied this.

Try and improve before you rush and submit it again, when a new game gets submitted it gets shown on the front page and first impressions are important to get an initial audience, so you want to show off the best stuff you can! It takes a little while to find your feet with mapping, but once you’ve got it; you got it. Good luck.
Do you think I should try adding more screenshots and then resubmitting? Or just PM the admin at this point?
Good point about it going straight to the front page. I wanted to get some feedback before continuing with this further, so I posted the video above on a separate forum topic, but then someone recommended I submit a game page. Not too longer after, that topic was archived.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I'd try to fix at least a few of the problems, take new screenshots, then resubmit. Resubmitting it with no improvements is silly.
Are shots of whole maps allowed or do they have to be from in-game?
author=Shoobinator
This was the exact response I got with my game submission denial:

"Your mapping needs some pretty serious help. Check out our screenshot topic, or play Carlsev Saga which uses the same tilesets.
01/28/2013 02:44 PM"
There was no name given for whoever gave this response.

You can PM Deckiller, the creator of Carlslev Saga, if you want, for help.

And to answer your latest question, any screenshots will do, but they have to at least be something that are attractive. You can start with a title page screenshot, maybe some game artwork if you have, screenshots of cutscenes etc.

To be honest, those screenshots you uploaded here are not too bad, only that they are a bit too generic. Maybe if you have some other screenshots that can woo people, you can show us.

Let me just take screenshot 2, for example. You only showed a dialogue of someone saying that the temple is incredible and all. But we don't get to see the temple at all!

Remember that pictures speak louder than words. Your screenshots, unfortunately, don't really say much about the game.
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
For the record, I haven't been on submissions much in the last couple weeks due to internet issues. I stand by the decision to deny based on mapping, mainly due to chipset use. Based on the screenshots, it seems the main reason the game was denied was because there are a lot of clashing tiles and large spaces of bare detail. Some of the ground tiles totally clash, for instance, and the waterfalls are baffling. The ceiling tiles are used inconsistently. LockeZ and the others gave some solid advice, though!
Alright, I'll make some edits and send you a PM with revised screenshots of whole maps just to be sure and so that if more fixes are needed, you can give me more critique all at once. I'll focus on the clashing tiles and the waterfalls. And I might as well just give a look at an (unfinished in eventing) area past this one while I'm at it.
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