Game & Map Screenshots 10

@dupedful Not bad at all, especially for a first map. Try clumping the decorations together instead of spacing them apart like that. Trees and underbrush like to grow together to protect each other, so they tend to bunch up a bit. You don't have to have something to decorate every part. Embrace the beauty of negative space.

@Sharm

Hey!
Thanks for your feedback. I know exactly what you mean and I will try it.



I improved a little bit, but this^ happened before I read your post :)
Let me try to transfer your idea.

Tried my best. I know it's lacks on a few spots, but I like it so far :D
Any spot you would change?

@dupedful If you want to post an amended version of your map and no one has posted since you did, please use the Edit button on your earlier post and change the map there, rather than posting again - which is double posting.

A few things.
The inn has vines on the roof - but they don't connect with the ground, so where do they come from?
You might want to have a look at this tutorial on shift+click mapping. Then you would be able to take your paths actually up to the door and not have that gap of grass between the path and the doorway.
Some buildings (Inn, diner/restaurant/pub) have no chimneys. It is unlikely that public buildings like that would have no form of heating.
Other than the Inn, none of your buildings has an upper floor, at least going by the lack of windows. Take the building top left. You have used windows that are often put on roofs to indicate an upper floor and put them on the ground floor. Why would windows on the ground floor have miniture roofs over them? Where do the owners of the restaurant and pub (and their families, if any) live and sleep if there is no upper, private floor?
If you were to make your buildings 2 tiles high, rather than one, then you would have room to put the restaurant and pub signs on the wall, instead of on the roof. It would also, imo, give a better proportion with the large roofs you have given to those 2 buildings (and the one bottom left). At the moment the signs - which are vertical - are stuck on a roof which is sloping backwards. How do they stand up? Much better to give them a flat surface to be on.

I think the tree placement could use some work, especially on the upper row, which is basically a straight line from left to right.
Really overdoing it with the windows on every wall tile on some buildings. There don't need to be 4 windows on one side of a building.
The scarecrow next to the restaurant makes no sense. It should be placed in a patch of farm land.
The grave marker next to the inn makes no sense either. That would only scare customers away, lol. It should either be somewhere in the corner of the town, or maybe in the garden of a regular house (maybe they buried their pet there...?)

@Kes Sorry, didn't know that.

I scrapped everything around and tried something new. I think this might look better than before. What do you think? (It's not finished yet).

@dupedful that certainly looks more organic and i like the river along the top on the screen. i would recommend shift-clicking the path where it ends in the doorways, though. that bit of grass at the end bugs me but maybe that's just me

@ksart I don't really understand what you're trying to tell me. I've heard of shift-clicking, but I don't know what you mean with the grass. Maybe it's just my lack of knowledge on RPG-Maker. Maybe you could give me a visual example with one of my screenshots?

So that's my finale result of my first village. I'm pretty happy so far with the outcome :)
The spot right above the fountain however bugs me a little bit. Looks a bit empty / not matching.

Shift clicking is when you right click while holding shift to copy a part of the map, and then leftclick while holding shift to paste that part exactly as is was, even if it's an autotile.
So you can do stuff like or more complicated stuff.

Love your map btw, nice amount of details and stuff.

@Elissiaro Amazing, thank you! Now I know. Will try out asap.

Thanks for your feedback.

@dupedful In my first reply to you, I wrote this:
"You might want to have a look at this tutorial on shift+click mapping."

I really do suggest you follow the link, and work through the tutorial, because shift+click mapping will transform what you can do.

@Kes already on it :thumbsup-right:

My newest puzzle room. It's kinda visually boring but I like how it looks

I'd like an opinion - for caves, do you prefer the full ceiling type, or the hollow one?

@jonthefox I prefer the hollow type.

The hollow one makes it feel more closed in and claustrophobic, like a real cave. The other one feels too open imo.

ghosts of war

@jonthefox I think you should choose based on the feeling you want the player to have while in the cave. Do you want it to feel oppressive and dangerous? Larger than life and adventurous? Neither is right so pick what works best in that dungeon. You could mix it up too, I've seen both on one map before and it worked to make that room look unusually tall and huge, like something narrow and low that just opened up.

Lost Dog Woods

I always love it when people use non-standard art. Original pixel art is also always a win! For the mapping though, the forest is still too stiff. It feels carved out haphazardly, not organically grown. Part of the problem is that everything is a little too structured and clumped together. Corners too square, all the trees in a line like they've been planted, ect. When you put that together with the random nature of the path forward and the odd placement of some things, like the cobbles that aren't on the direct path, then the map feels like it's got an identity crisis. Some parts looking like a cultured garden, some looking like it was once a garden and got overgrown, some looking like a wild forest that was cut back, some looking like no one had ever walked that way before (even though it's the only way to get to the next cultured path). I think this would be a better map if you think about how these opening are made and how things are used to figure out where to place things and why. Use the map to tell the story about the place.