Kissed By A Star

The roaring crowd (of 2) have demanded I explain how I map for this game. I do it differently from my prior games.

I have a few things I use to work together to bring about this smooth way of mapping. TileD. GALV Layer Plugin (RPG Maker MV). Yanfly Region Restrictions.

You might ask me: why TileD and not the RPG Maker map maker?

Freedom. So much freedom.

Here's how I made a simple map today:



This is in TileD. A simple forest path. As you can tell, I used a LOT of layers here. I find it much easier just using a bunch of layers and using a SINGLE tree sprite than performing brain surgery on a sprite sheet to get the same result. It becomes super easy to make subtle variations to the repeating trees as well. (the trunk bottoms are current erased for a reason I’ll explain in a second)

With TileD you can use as many spritesheets as you want, with any size you want. It's just easy to make a base this way.

I export that as an image then use my preferred paint . net to add details.



You can do anything. Add details to the ground. Change colors around. I prefer to keep it simple for this game and add simple touches. I just paste the flowers and taller grass in a different layer. This allows for more freedom than doing it 24x24 at a time or whatever your sprite size is.

So when you are done with the map, flatten it and save it into your Parallax folder. ALWAYS make sure you add the ! at the start so it stays still.



To make this work, you also need to make use of GALV's Layer plugin, or something similar. So in TileD, I simply hide the ground layer and only use the trees. I also erase the bottom of the trunks. I save this in a Layer folder as GALV instructs for the plugin.



So what does this do? I'LL GET THERE, HOLD ON.

You add it in the engine by doing this in the Notetag. (The Plugin explains quite well how to do this)



So now we have the trees in a Layer above the player at all times. There's one last step to make this work. How do we work in the o tiles and x tiles? Yanfly region restrict!



The 7's block the player. Everything else is passable. You can CLEARLY see where your player can move. (I did this quite fast, there might be some whackiness in the 7's until I properly play test it)

The end result is this:



You can do a LOT with this method. If you need a scrolling sky in background, just make all of the ground in a layer. You can change all Layers in game so you can create some fun effects, even animated stuff. For water, I still use the RPG Maker engine to use animated tiles, but that's it so far. You can still technically do it with this quite easily.

Once you get used to all the different steps, it can drastically reduce the time it takes to make a map. There are several maps where I don't even touch TileD and make it all in paint . net.

Thanks for reading! I hope this helps anyone who might want to do something like this.