SHOOBINATOR'S PROFILE

It looks like you are staying consistent with the wall and floor heights, which is good. Some things to make it better include:

• I see that you have jumping spots available to the player to traverse a couple of small island areas. However, don't feel obligated that the player must be able to access every area that is shown on screen. You can add inaccessible islands as extra eye candy.

• You would have to adjust the wall heights to compensate, but perhaps vary the heights of the floor areas to create more depth throughout the middle of the map. However, what you have works for this area, since it's mostly a skinny path throughout, but for additional volcano areas, that's something to keep in mind.

I also like the lava events which add some variety to otherwise uniform areas.

All the resources for each version of RPG maker have specific resolutions for each kind of resource/image file. The Master Helpful Things Topic has templates for all of the resource types and you can compare there.

author=LockeZ
My RMXP project has Zelda-like tools and I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with good puzzles, so this is a good topic.

Speaking from experience, I think you actually need to give the player a lot of different tools and powers to be able to make interesting puzzles in an RPG environment. You can only combine three tools so many ways. Especially since, because the puzzle has to be positioned in the dungeon in a way that makes sense, there's often not a lot of room to work with, so it can be very difficult to work more than a couple elements into a single puzzle. Some puzzles can span a large area, but a lot of them can't, due to other things that influence the dungeon's layout (like the placement of enemies). I had a previously puzzle-less room in one of my dungeons that needed a puzzle, but I had only about a third of the screen to work with, and only two tools. The end result is, uh, lackluster.

Maybe it's okay to have crappy puzzles like that though to prepare the player for harder ones, the same way that normal battles prepare the player for a boss? You don't want them to ever be totally devoid of any new configurations of elements, but the idea of trash puzzles and boss puzzles is sort of an interesting idea. Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess both sort of did that in a lot of their dungeons, with one bigass over-the-top puzzle that you spent a bunch of time on and could often see long before you could solve it, but I've never seen a game where it was actually a clear strict distinction the way boss battles are.

This may have more to do with teaching how to use a tool more so than puzzle design (although this is a puzzle albeit a real simple one). ANYWAYS, I distinctly remember the room in the Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time where you get the slingshot, and you must immediately use it to solve the puzzle in the room whereby you must lower a ladder to reach the door that you just came from. I've played a lot of games that do something similar to this. Another one is Metroid Prime: you get the Heat Vision visor or whatever, and immediately the lights in the room go off and you must use it to fight some more space pirates. Actually, Metroid has tons of these types of situations where you must immediately use your newly acquired gadget/tool.

author=Kazesui

author=Shoobinator

author=Zachary_Braun
Is it also possible to create an event-only barrier using the "Allow Event Overlap" checkbox?

But wouldn't the monster event be able to move over it as well?

Rather than "allow event overlap" he probably meant "forbid event overlap", which should prevent monster events from moving over it, and would probably be the simplest solution.

ooooohhhhh...... I don't know why I didn't think of just checking that box... :/

author=bulmabriefs144
Easiest way: Make a SameLevel event, and allow a Pass Through move event. You'll be able to walk through it. The enemy will hit a wall. This can be for Follow Hero as well making an enemy basically wait at the stairs.

People keep telling me I use too many parallel processes, but the point is I know when I can get away with it.

Thanks a lot! I will have to try this out as soon as I get the chance. The way I have the monster event set up is that it will only follow you if you get too close, so it won't cheaply wait at the bottoms of the stairs for you, or something like that.

I have one another separate problem though, which involves the monster event's 2nd page movement speed not activating (page 2 is faster than page 1, as it chases you) if I put some kind of move event command right before turning on the switch in the parallel process event that would activate Page 2 of the monster event. I have this extra move command because I want the monster to "react" to the hero coming near by jumping (done via the move event in the parallel process event). This bug makes absolutely no sense and may have to do with a limitation/bug of RM2k3 itself.

In case this explanation doesn't make sense, I will post screens at some point later.