MAPPING ADVICE/REQUEST (VXACE)

I've said this a few times to new mappers and I'll give you the same advice on how to get your mapping skills to level up a bit:

1 - Play games. Look at the maps that are used in those games and pick out the ones that are best and the ones that aren't that great. Think about why some are better than others.

2 - Remake. Take maps that use the same graphics you are and remake them from scratch. This not only gives you an idea of how to make things work in a mapping sense but helps refine your skills.

3 - When in doubt, shrink it. A lot of new mappers make the mistake of using very large maps. It's not necessary. Start off with a 4x4 square. Do you need more room? Make it 6x6. Can you walk in it and go from one side to the other easily enough?

4 - Scale. It's okay to have an outer house be 3 tiles high and 5 tile roof width, but if the inside has 1-tile high walls but is 20 tiles long, you have an issue with your scaling. Personally I try to stick with either 1/2 tile walls outside and 2x scale inside. (So if my roof is 6 wide, I have 12 width inside.)

5 - Consistency. When you choose a scale, make it consistent all through the game. Having one house with wall heights of 1 out and 2 in, then the next with 1 out and 5 in just doesn't look good and breaks immersion. Also keep in mind heights when doing cliffs. If one area of your cliff is 2 tiles high and another part is 3, you have an issue. Cliff heights, even when staggered, should be equal all the way along.

6 - Tile Vomit a.k.a The Three Tile rule. Now, sometimes people will allude to the three tile rule if your map is very bare. Basically it's a guideline that says every third tile should be different - if you have three tiles of plain grass, the fourth should be a flower or something, in other words. Now, while this can help a bit with natural areas, it can lead to creating too much clutter on a map. A 5-tile rule might be a bit better in this case. You don't want to make a map over-cluttered unless there's a reason for it.

7 - White space. This is the negative areas that are black canvas - that is, plain road tiles or grass, areas with no detail. These are as important as filled in areas and items because white space helps to draw your eye towards important details. If you have an altar that is important to the story, have the area around it bare so that the players' eyes are drawn there.

8 - Depth. You can add a lot to a map by creating depth. That is, depressions in the earth, cliffs and hills, stairs to other levels - high or low - and the like. It makes areas feel more real.

9 - Nature vs Man. Maps should be very different when in the wilds of nature than in towns. Town plants are more cultured and usually laid out in deliberate ways - say a line of trees along a road or bushes hedging a garden bed of the same flowers. The wilds are more natural in growth - trees grow anywhere, there aren't many paths (bar small animal tracks and areas that get a lot of traffic from human population - roads), plants grow in clumps and are spread out all over the place, grass is long and random, cliff-faces are jagged (this is where you should apply the three tile rule almost always. Cliffs are not straight lines. They are staggered and have varying lines.) Nature is hectic, man is designed.

10 - Life. Add live with events. In forests birds sing, animals live, insects abound and plants grow. In towns there are pets, birds (pigeons!) and people. Keep in mind what lives in the places you create and add sounds and events accordingly. For example, a farm without animals just doesn't make sense. Add cows and sheep, horses and dogs, mice, cats, birds...

11 - Story. When creating houses give the occupants a story. It doesn't have to be something huge - something like 'A shopkeeper who loves pasta and pies' is more than enough. Give their homes a touch of their character. If someone's parent died not long ago, maybe have their house messy with bottles and papers on the floor. Think about your NPCs, give them mini-lives within your game and create maps that reflect those lives. This way your characters are more alive and it helps not just your mapping, but your writing and attention to detail.

12 - Parallax/eventing. Parallax is the name for creating a picture and overlaying it in the dimensions of your map to either enhance a map details or create an actual map completely. You can use the parallax option in map creation as a base layer, then add pictures or tiles over the top to create a series of layers beyond the typical 2 layers in the engine. It can be a very powerful tool... if you know what you're doing.

If you are going to get into parallaxing I first recommend small steps. Start by making small clusters of details to add to a map and overlay the picture. Get used to that, then add more and more. It takes time to create great maps, you need to keep the grid in mind (unless you're using a pixel based movement script) and the more layers you use the more hectic it can be, but it can create great looking maps.

If you don't want to go the picture route, you can use events as a pseudo third layer instead. Create charactersets of the tiles you want and put them into events where you want them. Keep in mind that in VX and VXA there is an issue with lag when using too many events on one map. Balance what you need vs what you don't. (2k/3 should be fine as long as you don't have actual content in the events. I've never run into lag issues as long as you don't go crazy with hundreds of events.)

13 - Practice. The most important step is to practice your mapping. Create little snippet maps. Take the sample maps and try to make them more detailed. Sketch out maps in your mind and try to create them. Use different graphics to make the same map over and over.

14 - Critique. Ask for it and listen to what people say. If 20 people are saying something is wrong, shelve the pride and look at why they're saying so. Perhaps the graphics don't fit the rest of the map? Perhaps there's a height issue? Perhaps they're wrong? At least try to look at it objectively.

It does depend on what you're making. If you have just normal one-floor houses, keep them the same height. For more stories/floors, add the same amount of height. So if you have a one-floor house at two tiles, a two-floor would be 4, three-floors would be 6 and so-on and so-forth.

The exception would be in the case of buildings with deliberate high ceilings like churches, palaces and the like. Of course if your houses have a reason for being taller (say, taking architecture from a different civilisation - Indian vs European) then that's fine, but make sure that the reason is apparent - using the above example of Indian housing vs European, make them look vastly different on the outside and inside - layouts, materials used to make them, shape of the roof and the like.

If you post some of your maps, people will be glad to give you pointers on how to improve them.

If you have a game profile, you can upload them as screenshots and then mark the screenshots as "Seeking Feedback", which will make it so they appear in the Development section of the site where images needing feedback are posted. It'll also make them not actually appear on your game page, so people looking at the game won't see the crummy screenshots you're not proud of.

If you don't have a game profile yet, you can post your maps-in-progress in the screenshot topic.

Sorry!

Wanted to say I would love to map for you and posted that screenshot as credentials!