NEW DEVELOPER MAPPING HELP THREAD

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I need help with making castles in the default RPG Maker 2000 Outer chipset.

The problem: I can't do it. At all.

It's like working with the world's most complicated set of construction toys. I think I can get it works a little bit, but it feels too complex for me to wrap my head around. I think I might need some detailed, step-by-step instructions on this.
It might help to look at what other people have done with the tiles and copy their maps to get a feel for how it works (then make your own). I recommend checking out Tales from Zilmurik as a base point: https://rpgmaker.net/games/5839/
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Sated is really good at RTP too if I recall correctly :P

Unless I'm thinking of someone other than corf, didn't you used to show 2k3 ROT mapping in the screenshot thread, Sated?
well, its fairly edited, but the main parts are the same.
it might help! if it doesnt, ill try to find some time and make something with raw rtp :)

unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Wow, very nice ^_^


So, this is supposed to be a winter forest, over grown, but not so much so. . . I'm worried it's too cluttery and maybe error filled. . . ?
@roseangel> It may seem weird, but it's not cluttered enough for me. Some tall grass under the trees (if you have them), and more variety to the flowers and bushes, is what I'd recommend.

You also have an empty space with nothing in it in the lower, centre-right of the map.

A dirt or cobblestone road connecting to the one in the upper-left would be nice; as it is, that road just sort of appeared so abruptly.

The upper cliff edges seem to have a different colour than the rest of the snow; it's much whiter. You can see them in the lower-left corner.

You *could* try using a different tree to break down the monotony of your forest, but I don't really mind it that much as it is.

Edit: Formatting...
In addition to what Karins said, you should include a bunch of overlapping trees by using events to render the overlapping tiles.
author=dethmetal
In addition to what Karins said, you should include a bunch of overlapping trees by using events to render the overlapping tiles.


I'm already doing that, lots of overlap, just have to be careful of navigation.

Good advice, thanks!

Can someone please help me find anything wrong? The mods told me in pm that it was too big, i took care of it(it was pretty huge and laughed why i didnt see how bizarre it looked myself) now before i go ahead and piss the mods again, id like you awesome peoples help :) Could you tell me anything just anything that is wrong in the map and suggestion will go noticed! Thankeee!
author=tawman
Tawman said some stuff.

That still looks pretty big which makes it look completely empty.
Trihan
"It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...timey wimey...stuff."
3359
Basically it's a bunch of empty space. Newer mappers tend to think they need to make everything huge but in reality the more compact you can make a map the better. At the moment, due to the fact that there's no decoration in the prison map the only thing the size of it accomplishes is requiring the player to travel further in it. You could probably cut that size down by half, to be honest.

Prison cells in RPGs tend to be pretty small; they're generally set in an earlier time period than ours when prisoner comfort and care was a fleeting consideration at best. Even if you're doing something modern, a cell that size would likely have multiple prisoners in it, which also offers you an opportunity to jazz the map up by filling it with the signs that people are in there: beds, NPC prisoners, rubbish on the floors, guards...people have been here, so evidence that.

Taken from http://pixanna.nl/

What they said : ) Also figured I could put an example of what the spacing means.
It's a little tricky to really get the sizing down in your head since it is all very cartoonish and it's easy to draw up a big space.

But consider that one tile has space for a person to walk n sit in. In this screen above the hallway is two-three tiles wide - which is fairly reasonable, if not generous.

Looking at yours, (and I come from a pure non-maker perspective, so maybe it helps to get a first impression!)
Just making a rough guess, the space before the actual prisoner and bar thing, so half of the map is already about 4 times the size of the room I live in.
You could who-knows how many desks there, 20? and you'd have room for chairs and misc stuff.

Gameplay-wise, you want maps to be small so the player can get an overview at a glance and then go to where they need to go.
Bigger maps make it a lot harder to know where to go, and they also take a while to traverse.
What is special to the style when done compact is that you can get an overview immediately and it's great to capitalize on : )
Trihan
"It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...timey wimey...stuff."
3359
Great example Kylaila. I love how you've basically demonstrated that you can fit almost an entire prison into one of tawman's cells.
Thanks for going through the trouble to help this newbie. Ok I'll try to minimize the cell even more and send you guys and update image to see if things are alright.
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
What the heck is going on with the randomly lightened/darkened tiles in the middle there? It looks completely wrong. I would give advice on how to fix it, except I can't tell even what you were trying to do.

The lights by the windows I kinda understand, but they're the wrong shape. And the bars in the windows apparently must be holograms, because the lighted areas on the ground have no bars in them. And they're not lined up the same way - the left one is one tile left of the window but the right one is two tiles left of the window.

Also why does the left cell have a... is that a doggy-door? What is even supposed to be going on there? Just a tile missing out of the bottom half of the bars.

Why does neither cell actually have a gate that can open and close? Nobody could ever be locked in. There's no door. Give em doors! Surely there's one in the RTP!

The corner walls in the bottom-left and bottom-right corners of the map look like they're probably missing, although the screenshot is cutting them off.

Why are there vines growing inside? That's kinda dumb. Vines grow outside. They also seem to be coming down from the ceiling. It only makes sense if there's no ceiling and they're creeping in over the top of the wall from outside. I'm pretty sure if that were the case, prisoners would just climb out of the jail. In the unlikely event that that's actually what you were going for, it still doesn't work because of the perspective.


How about now guys? Im sure i've decreased the size sufficiently, as im afraid i can't decrease it anymore as the player move route is quite high aside from that, some other events will be hindered if i do so.
Also lockez, the vines will be removed thanks for that and the doors are like the one at the second image , cell#2 will have one of them too. And i've also removed the window light and centre light as well, it did look weird, my bad xD
If there is anything else that bothers you guys or anything that you can have me add to make it look more 'prisoney' please tell me so!