2K3 YOUR WAY MAPS, NEED SOME ANSWERS.

*edit*
On second thought, naaaaaaaaah

Try checking out rpgmakervx.com. Every second screenshot in their screen shot thread is parralaxed. And no, I've not heard anything from either you or YDS on the subject. I didn't even realise you guys used panorama maps that much.

Key tip - not everything I say is about this site and the people therein. There are other sites out there that I am a part of. RMN just happens to be my favourite.

I believe all of The Way used panoramas? There were lots of RM2k3 games that did this I think.

I check that site's screenshot thread quite often and though parallax mapping became relatively well-known since SamGreen's tutorial last September, is still not that much used among RMVX users.
Actually, the only site I've seen people discussing about parallax maps is rmvx.net.

I think if I understand what you want to do for your first question, you can just make each layer of your house as a seperate map, using whichever tileset you like. Then you can connect each one by having a teleport event for the door or stair case that leads to the next floor and back again. So it will work just like an other map but it will seem like layers of a house since you go to each one after heading up a flight of stairs...

I hope this is me actually helping and not just completely misunderstanding what you wanted.

Personally I start making a map with an existing chipset. This chipset is almost never RTP, usually it's a rip. Each time I want to add something that's not in the chipset, I find or create that tile and add it to the chipset. If I can find it in another chipset I'll copy it, and if not I'll just zoom in and try to draw it (or shrink a photo down).

This method is very sensible in RMXP obviously, since adding new tiles to chipsets is very straightforward - there's no size limit so you can just keep adding more and more tiles to the bottom of your chipset as you need them. But it was how I worked in RM2K3 also. Doing it in RM2K3 just requires deleting unused tiles each time you add a new one, and/or putting some of your tiles in events.

Shrinking down photos can work better than you'd think! Often they'll blend right in with things that were drawn or ripped. Here's an example I did the other day. This is an enemy, but it appears on the map because of my CT battle system, so it has to look like a map object.

I did a google image search for "laser cannon" and got this photo:

Shrunk it down to this and deleted some of the background:

Then shrunk it a little more, rotated it, and attached it to the head of Suikoden 2's Land Shark enemy sprite, to create a laser shark:


That's basically how I convert photos to RPG Maker graphics. I've done it with walls, signs, furniture, salsa, etc. Sometimes it stands out too much after I'm done, and I have to start over with a different photo, or go in and edit it pixel by pixel. But usually I can tell just by looking at the photo whether it'll work. (Hint: Pay attention to light reflections on curved surfaces. Try to avoid them if possible.)

I don't know, it kind of looks out of place still.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find animated battlers

I mean Jesus Christ it's like Stalin burned them all or something

If some of them end up slightly different styles than others, I will count my blessings. Each frame only appears on screen for one fifteenth of a second anyway. For non-animated things it's more noticable, you probably wouldn't want to use that gun with cartoony graphics, you would want to use a drawn gun. (But I'm lazy and would still use this one because it appeared at the top of GIS)