Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
[RMMV] WHOLE MAP VERSUS ROOM-BY-ROOM?
Posts
Pages:
1
nijineko
0
nijineko
View playlists
CloseMy current project is to recreate an homage version of a very old ASCII rogue-like as a mobile game. The maps from this game consists of walls, doors, secret doors, and openings. The maps also featured one-time fog of war (once explored, always revealed). In rooms, one could find things like stairs, traps (pits, shafts, energy, teleport, guaranteed monster encounters), and various magical effects (darkness, anti-magic, illusions). Based on the combination of these things, one could also find hallways and large rooms.
I have started creating a whole map for this game, only to find myself asking some questions. Here is a list:
Today's post focuses on questions 1, 2, & 3 only. Future posts will cover other questions.
What experiences and suggestions does everyone have in this area? I'm looking for opinions, ideas, and brainstorming; though if you have technical details of how-to, while that is most welcome, it is not expected at this point.
I have started creating a whole map for this game, only to find myself asking some questions. Here is a list:
- Should I design a whole map, or create a unit by unit map (where a unit = rooms and hallways).
- If I choose unit-by-unit, can I reuse these rooms yet still keep track of where they are in the big-picture map?
- If I choose unit-by-unit, can I add and remove unique features via some method (global events?) to prevent visual repetition?
- How can I best emulate the special features of traps and magical effects on the map level?
- How should I best pull off the fog-of-war (any good plugins out there that are play-tested and recommended?)
- How can I include a "create-your-own-character" mechanism in the game? (Both visually and mechanically)
- How can I include mini-games?
- How can I include crafting?
Today's post focuses on questions 1, 2, & 3 only. Future posts will cover other questions.
What experiences and suggestions does everyone have in this area? I'm looking for opinions, ideas, and brainstorming; though if you have technical details of how-to, while that is most welcome, it is not expected at this point.
Um I don't really have any ideas about 1, 2 & 3, I would it's possible somehow but I don't really get the explanation, sorry. Though having individual maps just for hallways might be a bit cumbersome.
The Create-Your-Own-Character and Crafting both have various plugins made for MV to do that, such as Sumrndmdde's Character Creator EX which works like the character gen from the maker, but in game.
For crafting there are a number of plugins such as Szyu's Crafting System which is fairly simple but still allows for things such as recipie books, or if you prefer Yanfly, they have Yanfly's Item Synthesis which while it can be more complex, it's much more customisable with notetags and such.
The Create-Your-Own-Character and Crafting both have various plugins made for MV to do that, such as Sumrndmdde's Character Creator EX which works like the character gen from the maker, but in game.
For crafting there are a number of plugins such as Szyu's Crafting System which is fairly simple but still allows for things such as recipie books, or if you prefer Yanfly, they have Yanfly's Item Synthesis which while it can be more complex, it's much more customisable with notetags and such.
You can only make maps so big, otherwise you will have frame rate issues. So even a very large dungeon space will need to be divided into multiple maps. It's easier to decorate and make smaller maps look good than have a very large map.
Zelda is pretty famous for the room by room mapping system.
FF RPGs usually have big / vast maps, but either way is fine.
What kind of mini games do you want?
Some you can make yourself, others will require script.
Crafting requires scripts, there's a ton of them likely.
Control switches and variables can control global events easily.
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
Nobody is going to have "frame rate issues" unless they're using a Windows XP computer with less than 2 GB of RAM. Kory is a time traveller from 2006. Not that it matters even slightly in an ASCII game...
Anyway, the fog-of-war effect that's iconic of old roguelike games would be best done by having each floor of the dungeon be a single large map. If you split it into smaller maps, then that splitting would generally take the place of the fog of war. Splitting a floor up into one map per room serves a similar purpose of preventing the player from seeing ahead, but gives the developer more control over where that happens, so you can split it at dramatically appropriate points.
The question of "How can I include mini-games?" is so nonsensically broad as to be impossible to even address. I mean first you design the minigames you want, and then you figure out an engine that can do them, and then you start coding them... This isn't actually a different question from "How do I make games?" Which is, like, a question that we've filled up over 5000 forum topics trying to answer.
Also keep in mind that despite the sales pitch, RPG Maker MV cannot actually make mobile games. I mean, it technically sorta can, but you can only play them yourself on your rooted jailbroken phone by copying the project folders and stuff over a USB cable. You can't distribute them over the app store or anything like that. The people who put RPG Maker games on the app store or the google play store do a lot of extra work to convert them into that format, it's not something RPG Maker MV can just do for you.
Based on your last two questions it sounds like this might be your first project. If so, I recommend putting off your idea for now, and starting out by making just the first room of Zork instead. If not, keep in mind that RPG Maker is very much NOT designed for making roguelikes or any sort of randomized maps, so only use it for this project if every single other aspect of RPG Maker besides the maps is absolutely perfect for the game you want to make.
Anyway, the fog-of-war effect that's iconic of old roguelike games would be best done by having each floor of the dungeon be a single large map. If you split it into smaller maps, then that splitting would generally take the place of the fog of war. Splitting a floor up into one map per room serves a similar purpose of preventing the player from seeing ahead, but gives the developer more control over where that happens, so you can split it at dramatically appropriate points.
The question of "How can I include mini-games?" is so nonsensically broad as to be impossible to even address. I mean first you design the minigames you want, and then you figure out an engine that can do them, and then you start coding them... This isn't actually a different question from "How do I make games?" Which is, like, a question that we've filled up over 5000 forum topics trying to answer.
Also keep in mind that despite the sales pitch, RPG Maker MV cannot actually make mobile games. I mean, it technically sorta can, but you can only play them yourself on your rooted jailbroken phone by copying the project folders and stuff over a USB cable. You can't distribute them over the app store or anything like that. The people who put RPG Maker games on the app store or the google play store do a lot of extra work to convert them into that format, it's not something RPG Maker MV can just do for you.
Based on your last two questions it sounds like this might be your first project. If so, I recommend putting off your idea for now, and starting out by making just the first room of Zork instead. If not, keep in mind that RPG Maker is very much NOT designed for making roguelikes or any sort of randomized maps, so only use it for this project if every single other aspect of RPG Maker besides the maps is absolutely perfect for the game you want to make.
Locke Z now needs to prove this by making a map 1000x1000 and filling it with stuff.
A time traveler from 2006! I know things! I have seen things that you already know! Behold my ultimate power! Mha ha ha!
Darken
3952
author=LockeZ
Nobody is going to have "frame rate issues" unless they're using a Windows XP computer with less than 2 GB of RAM. Kory is a time traveller from 2006. Not that it matters even slightly in an ASCII game...
It's a difference between 8kb (ASCII charset from an old game I made) and 23kb (standard VX RTP chara) really doesn't matter. But I don't think RPGMaker is going to be as efficient as a C++ engine using actual ascii text. To me it feels like putting chiptune music into an mp3 file and thinking it'll be taking advantage of something.
author=kory
Locke Z now needs to prove this by making a map 1000x1000 and filling it with stuff.
I don't know where the burden of proof lies when it comes to proving RPGMaker performance but I don't care enough to do it really. Btw MV can only do map sizes up to 256x256 by default.
nijineko
0
Thanks for the replies so far.
I'm only addressing the first three questions at this point in time, but I appreciate the pointers on the other questions, so I will be certain to hone those before I actually ask them. They are simply there as placeholders at this point, anyhow.
In response to not getting the intent of 1-3, I am looking for some brainstorming about breaking a large map into pieces: basically into rooms and hallways. Then, taking those pieces and reusing them at different places in a given "level" and also on other "levels", maybe adding or changing a tile on the fly to give the illusion of variety. Doing something like this would also need a method of tracking where the characters are on the "level".
@LockeZ Thanks for the detailed responses. That gives me some insight. I've already poked through some tutorials on what is required to actually port an rpgmaker game onto android, and it does sound like a lot of extras. I appreciate the heads-up. Excellent comments on the fog-of-war effects and methods. And, yes, this is my first project. The original game didn't have randomized levels, oddly enough, but did support up to 1000 levels via the add-on level editor for it. Not many rogue-likes back in the day came with a level editor. Be nice to replicate that, but I imagine that is somewhat out of scope for rpgmaker having an in-game level editor! lol.
I'm only addressing the first three questions at this point in time, but I appreciate the pointers on the other questions, so I will be certain to hone those before I actually ask them. They are simply there as placeholders at this point, anyhow.
In response to not getting the intent of 1-3, I am looking for some brainstorming about breaking a large map into pieces: basically into rooms and hallways. Then, taking those pieces and reusing them at different places in a given "level" and also on other "levels", maybe adding or changing a tile on the fly to give the illusion of variety. Doing something like this would also need a method of tracking where the characters are on the "level".
@LockeZ Thanks for the detailed responses. That gives me some insight. I've already poked through some tutorials on what is required to actually port an rpgmaker game onto android, and it does sound like a lot of extras. I appreciate the heads-up. Excellent comments on the fog-of-war effects and methods. And, yes, this is my first project. The original game didn't have randomized levels, oddly enough, but did support up to 1000 levels via the add-on level editor for it. Not many rogue-likes back in the day came with a level editor. Be nice to replicate that, but I imagine that is somewhat out of scope for rpgmaker having an in-game level editor! lol.
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
One of the randomized taglines on this site is "You need to level up more before you can finish an impressive game. Grind experience points by making tiny shitty games." And it's the truth. Make some simple games. Make a linear RPG with no randomized content that can be beaten in an hour. A roguelike is not a good starting project - you need to be able to make just one game before you can try to simultaneously make hundreds of thousands of slightly different games.
As for your idea of reusing maps, as long as you're just changing bits of the furniture and not major features of the map, RPG Maker is certainly capable of that, but it's gonna be quite a process. Furniture can be added as map events, and you can have different furniture on different pages of the events, with the correct pages triggered by a variable that contains a random number.
Children of Mana's randomized dungeons would be an even simpler model: the game really only has about 20 forest maps, with no randomized details or furniture, all of which go from left to right. Every time you enter the forest, it builds a dungeon by picking 5 of those 20 maps at random for you to go through. Then it does the same thing for tower dungeons and volcano dungeons. That might be an easier project. It would be, like, your first taste of making something vaguely roguelike. (But first spend a couple weeks making a game where a hero starts in a town, buys equipment, goes through a cave, and then fights the dragon lord at the end of the cave. Seriously.)
I'm not sure I can adequately explain how to do it, especially without knowing how you're generating and storing the randomized dungeon layouts, which would be its own entire thing to figure out. The engine can do all this, but, like, I think would take me a month of solid work to get a prototype that can make 10 different dungeons, and I've been doing this crap since RPG Maker 95 was the hot business. So explaining it in a few paragraphs over a forum is not really possible.
There might be other engines better suited to this than RPG Maker, depending on what you want your battle system to look like. RPG Maker can definitely do the map stuff as long as you're keeping it simple and not changing the walls/floors.
As for your idea of reusing maps, as long as you're just changing bits of the furniture and not major features of the map, RPG Maker is certainly capable of that, but it's gonna be quite a process. Furniture can be added as map events, and you can have different furniture on different pages of the events, with the correct pages triggered by a variable that contains a random number.
Children of Mana's randomized dungeons would be an even simpler model: the game really only has about 20 forest maps, with no randomized details or furniture, all of which go from left to right. Every time you enter the forest, it builds a dungeon by picking 5 of those 20 maps at random for you to go through. Then it does the same thing for tower dungeons and volcano dungeons. That might be an easier project. It would be, like, your first taste of making something vaguely roguelike. (But first spend a couple weeks making a game where a hero starts in a town, buys equipment, goes through a cave, and then fights the dragon lord at the end of the cave. Seriously.)
I'm not sure I can adequately explain how to do it, especially without knowing how you're generating and storing the randomized dungeon layouts, which would be its own entire thing to figure out. The engine can do all this, but, like, I think would take me a month of solid work to get a prototype that can make 10 different dungeons, and I've been doing this crap since RPG Maker 95 was the hot business. So explaining it in a few paragraphs over a forum is not really possible.
There might be other engines better suited to this than RPG Maker, depending on what you want your battle system to look like. RPG Maker can definitely do the map stuff as long as you're keeping it simple and not changing the walls/floors.
Infinite
2103
I don't want to be a downer here, but I feel like you should reconsider your project's scope. If you have to ask "how can I do this", and don't know how/where to start, you're probably not ready to make the game you wanna make. But I guess it could be good to try, and fail, because you're going to learn some stuff along the way.
Should I design a whole map, or create a unit by unit map (where a unit = rooms and hallways).
I never used MV, but in ACE I made 1 big map as a guide, then copy and pasted its chunks into separate maps. That allowed the maps to connect and be cohesive. It can be extra steps to manage, because when you make edits, you have to keep the adjacent maps in mind.
If I choose unit-by-unit, can I reuse these rooms yet still keep track of where they are in the big-picture map?
I'm not sure I totally understand this question. My way of splitting my main map into smaller maps was to keep a coordinate system which followed a chess board. Again, if I made edits in the units, I had to make them in my 'big picture'.
If I choose unit-by-unit, can I add and remove unique features via some method (global events?) to prevent visual repetition?
Again, not totally sure what you're asking. Do you want to randomize some things? Like the placement of treasure or rocks? Or just have permanence after an event, like all the red blocks are destroyed when the world's red switch is pressed? If you're trying to go full-PGC (or even partial), I don't think Rpg-maker will make it easy. You may want to consider learning a different engine. You could probably do it in rpgmaker if you invest the time. But you could also invest that time into another engine, and have a more versatile skill set when you're done. And there are probably more tutorials for rouges using an engine like unity or game maker, than you'll find for rpgmaker.
Should I design a whole map, or create a unit by unit map (where a unit = rooms and hallways).
I never used MV, but in ACE I made 1 big map as a guide, then copy and pasted its chunks into separate maps. That allowed the maps to connect and be cohesive. It can be extra steps to manage, because when you make edits, you have to keep the adjacent maps in mind.
If I choose unit-by-unit, can I reuse these rooms yet still keep track of where they are in the big-picture map?
I'm not sure I totally understand this question. My way of splitting my main map into smaller maps was to keep a coordinate system which followed a chess board. Again, if I made edits in the units, I had to make them in my 'big picture'.
If I choose unit-by-unit, can I add and remove unique features via some method (global events?) to prevent visual repetition?
Again, not totally sure what you're asking. Do you want to randomize some things? Like the placement of treasure or rocks? Or just have permanence after an event, like all the red blocks are destroyed when the world's red switch is pressed? If you're trying to go full-PGC (or even partial), I don't think Rpg-maker will make it easy. You may want to consider learning a different engine. You could probably do it in rpgmaker if you invest the time. But you could also invest that time into another engine, and have a more versatile skill set when you're done. And there are probably more tutorials for rouges using an engine like unity or game maker, than you'll find for rpgmaker.
nijineko
0
I appreciate the great advice!
I'm not trying to make a big project here, actually. I guess I'm just asking a complicated-sounding question. =D
This particular rogue-like, unlike many, did not have randomized levels. It only shipped with 10 levels + the castle, and possibly the level editor. Pretty small scale. That's partly why I chose it.
I'm just looking to be more efficient in my level design. I was just wondering if it was possible to reuse chunks of maps on the same level or on multiple levels, as this game's maps have a lot of repetition. If it's not easy to do, which seems apparent from your answers, I have no problem with that. I can easily make all 10 levels by hand. ^^
I'm not trying to make a big project here, actually. I guess I'm just asking a complicated-sounding question. =D
This particular rogue-like, unlike many, did not have randomized levels. It only shipped with 10 levels + the castle, and possibly the level editor. Pretty small scale. That's partly why I chose it.
I'm just looking to be more efficient in my level design. I was just wondering if it was possible to reuse chunks of maps on the same level or on multiple levels, as this game's maps have a lot of repetition. If it's not easy to do, which seems apparent from your answers, I have no problem with that. I can easily make all 10 levels by hand. ^^
Pages:
1
