THE SCREENSHOT TOPIC RETURNS

...Seriously, again guys?? The room's not even that big, what is the problem now? Even if the maps are big at all, once again as I've stated multiple times in the past, it works hand-in-hand with the random encounter rate for the game .=.

Or would you rather have had me keep the old map which was probably double/triple the size of this current map?

@Xenomic: The issue isn't the size of the map, but the huge, empty space in it. I'm sure that no one here wants to start a fight. You could simply reduce the size of the map somewhat and change the encounter rate or fill the map with more interesting stuff. Everybody starts small. Most of the people here just think that you don't take their advice seriously...

i havent read anything but the open space is fucking fine, it looks like a dojo to me. you know a place with open space.

pff look at this guys map, there's so much space, how can he live with himself

some criticism ive seen in this topic are always worse than the three tile rule and even that was a joke

Eh. I was just clearing up as to why some things are the way they are (mostly about the encounter rate, which I know some people have wondered why I don't change). Tis all.

I can probably cut out like 3 pixels out of the right side to make it more symmetrical I suppose. It doesn't need too much cut out (I just now noticed it's not symmetrical. Blaaaah...)

@Xenomic: Simply put, you shouldn't design rooms to fit your encounter rate. You should set an encounter rate that fits your room. Don't make the rooms bigger than they need to be. Look at maps from games like FF6 and CT and seriously study them. Look at where the tiles might be and get a sense of scale. Imagine you are your hero looking around your map. Imagine each tile is a few feet and get a sense as to where the objects in your room are and how far apart they should be, etc. Compare it to what you see in the real world, and you'll see what people are pointing out to you. The rooms are just big. :/

@PepsiOtaku: Which I understand and would be perfectly fine, if there weren't stuff that dealt with encounter rates to begin with in Common Events. Originally, I did have smaller rooms with higher encounter rates, and larger rooms with lower encounter rates. But due to wanting to implement Half Encounters/Double Encounters stuff, I had to make one set encounter rate for all areas (due to this, smaller areas you probably won't even get into a single fight in, if you're lucky enough you'll probably only get into ONE fight, due to random encounters being shut off for 10 steps after every fight before turning back on). I also had the encounter rate set to where it is so that people didn't get into fights every step (I find higher encounter rate to be much more annoying than "large" maps any day personally).

Sides, most of the revamped stuff I've done thus far is perfectly fine with the mapping (the Scarlet Devil Mansion stuff posted previously is one such thing. Maybe I should do a map collage of that like I did with the Dimensional Rifts...hmmmm...).

If this is just about this one map...it's the inside of a buddhist temple. From what I know, it's usually spacious in there with hardly anything in it, no?

@Unity: The last comment in there was mostly due to how people just complained about maps being too big even when they weren't. It was probably unnecessary.

But seriously...when people complain about how some of the maps are too big, it's superfluous really when ya know, they aren't even that big. That's the thing that annoys me the most. Sure, there were a couple instances where I NEEDED to make a couple maps smaller, but there were some instances where it was just like "Really? But the thing is already less than 20x15, why does it need to be smaller than this!?" kinda thing going on. That's all really.

It needs to be smaller to make it better. This is, of course, not always the case. Your outdoor maps are usually good and look cool, but you have problems with maps that are inside of buildings. Take a look around your room or other rooms where you live. They are usually pretty small.

Even huge mansions tend to be made smaller in games in order to have something going on even if the player stands in the middle of the room. It has to do with the steps the player needs to take to get from A to B and to show the player what exactly that room has to offer. It creates atmosphere. It's hard to explain, but good RPG's are almost always using small, but filled rooms that allow you just enough space to get to every place. The window size of RPG Maker games is pretty small, which makes it even more necessary to provide the player with interesting things to look at wherever they stand.

@Xenomic: I think your map is lacking more background detail. It's all dull grey and brown. Take a look at some Buddhist temples I found (that match the style you're going for):

http://latzdharma.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/wat-asokaram_samut-prakan-8.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/GoldenTemple2.JPG

As you can see, the floors and walls of these temples are sort of ornate, they're colourful. The temple's architecture draws the person towards the statue of Buddha in the centre of the back. On your map, the carpet is just... nothing. It should go straight from the door to the statue, that's one thing that would help.

All REFMAP tiles use the exact same pallet, so you could probably grab some red curtains or gold stuff from the other tilesets and put together a halfway decent temple tileset without a lot of trouble. Also, the general size of the room is fine, just make it symmetrical and it'll look way better. Maybe pull it one or two tiles inward on the left and equal it out on the right.

Perhaps try to make the statue more ornate. It looks pretty much like a bag of poop right now. I doubt people would honor their god like that.

IMO if you have to have a big map, fill that space, but make it meaningful. Too detailed can be confusing though. There's a fine line you have to walk in order to design a good map.