Game & Map Screenshots 12

Thank you!! :kaohi:

Oh yes! That's because the cliff autotiles weren't playing nice with the roads - I think I was planning to go into GIMP and make individual snowy cliff tiles to manually fix it up later on.

Same with this, as this was also due to the autotiling with the houses.

I was imagining them sort of just built into the sides of the cliffs, but you're right, there's nothing actually visually indicating that! I could put some kind of stilts/beams/supports underneath to make that more visually clear :p Thanks for pointing it out!

And OMG I didn't even think of this. I imagine at the time (again, so long ago now) I was probably just working with whatever the RTP had that looked aesthetically most pleasing to me. But again, you're absolutely right that it makes no actual logical sense :kaoblush:

Another thing I've noticed on my own is the nature of the pipes you can walk straight onto from the ground, and then across like a sort of catwalk across the cliffs or other buildings. It makes no physical sense, and would make more sense if there was just like, a ladder from the ground to the pipes instead (to give a clearer sense of vertical space).

Also, the shading is pretty misaligned between straight and corner pipe parts, and the end parts would look way better if more rounded :kaocry:

There's a way around that problem! If you right click on the map name in the list of maps (like you were going to open up the Map Properties), you should have an option for Shift. You can shift the entire map, events and all, in any direction. The only thing you have to watch out for is that you update the events that transfer onto that map, otherwise you might find yourself trapped in the wall!

Looking forward to seeing how this map continues to develop! Did you have a particular use for this room in mind, or were you mostly looking to experiment with how the piece fit together?

Even quicker is to just use Ctrl+T to bring up the option for which way you want the map to move to make more space.
I thought that too, but felt that I'd said enough and perhaps more points might have been discouraging. It is a good pointer for the future that you were able to see this for yourself.

@Ratatattat I do love the idea of stomping around on the pipes. Definitely add some ladders on the vertical ones like you were thinking!

I find your design really appealing. I like a mix of wood with metal for steampunk, and realistically, since it’s in a snowy area, wood will be more pleasant under foot than metal or stone for your inhabitants. Perhaps combining some metal or stone accents would punk it up a bit but still maintain the warmer feel you created.

I appreciate this! I'm definitely no stranger to critique though (I've willingly put up my writing to be torn to shreds many times), so don't ever worry about discouraging me, at least :) Thank you again, I love all constructive feedback I can get!

Thanks so much! :kaothx: And that's true about the wood, I didn't think about that either! I do think Kes is right about the workshop, though, just from a safety/practical standpoint. But the regular homes can still have wood! Especially since there is a small logging village nearby at the base of the mountain.

And I, too, love the aesthetic of wood accented with metal! Especially like, an ornate trim that you can see all the little screws/rivets holding it in place. Very steampunkish IMO! So maybe I just need to spruce up the wood a little bit~

@TeiRaven Not to go too off-topic, but since you mentioned this...
Something I recently thought of (that I haven't gone back to implement yet lol) to cover my bases for this, is to use a script call to transfer players through doors/passageways, using the X and Y of the corresponding door/passage/whatever event to designate where the player transfers to (or X +/- 1, or Y +/- 1 if applicable). So theoretically I could move that doorway event on the destination map (or shift the whole map) as freely as I'd like, and the corresponding "Transfer Player" command would always just follow it :)

Trying out an interesting idea I had for alternate map markers. Rather liking how the concept has turned out so far, even if they aren't perfect (not that the default markers are either)

@Thunderclan Just a thought, but might it be an idea to take your two camp sites and remove all the grass from them so that when you put them on the map they look like they belong? I think I might also be tempted to use tiny 'normal' trees rather than odd blocks of the auto-forest tiles which look a little odd. You already have a couple of smaller trees in those camp sites, just use more of them.

I like these. My only concern would be some big empty spaces for the player, especially on the quarter maps.

After a few years dabbling in various RPGmaker editions making various game demo's to test various aspects and/or plugins, I've decided to take a crack at a game with more than half an hour of play duration. Below is a screenshot for the first village encountered in my game. No eventing as of yet.
Comments and critique are always welcome!

The map will only have two exits (North and South) to other areas. The various houses will have interior area's.

@Scorpioni An interesting map. It looks like the sort of place it would be nice for the player to visit. I do have some queries, though.

Your inn and the house next to it are both mapped so that the implied back wall is literally at the water's edge. No building would be like that, there would be at least one tile between the building and the water.

That house also has a vine growing from the lower roof up past the bedroom window. What is it growing from? There is no soil, or pot or whatever for its roots.

The house in the northwest corner - the little ground floor extension would not only be casting a shadow on the ground, it would also be casting it on the lower part of the main section as well. Without it the perspective is lost. I suggest you consider making a shadow graphic on one of your tilesets and applying it with an event so that it doesn't mess up your window graphic.

Finally the coach (nice graphic, btw) is a bit of a puzzle. It cannot have got there from the south, as the entrance is up steep steps. If it came from the north, how did it get across the bridge and negotiate its way past the first stall? Maybe you need to make your bridge one tile wider on the east side?

This is the starting town for my game, Falrond. Forgive a few of the buggy textures in some places I have been toying with re-arranging some of the tileset and/or removing and replacing some assets in it I don't feel like I would be using.

It may also look kinda bad due to having to reduce the image size so much to upload it on the forum page... (I swear I thought the max used to be 5MB, but I am crazy ;p)


What I'm looking for is
1) Does the layout feel organic enough? I try to maintain the same design throughout the game(2 tile high cliffs per "land tier", leave enough extra tiles on the sides of the map so the player sprite will always be in the center of the screen when moving around at any actual accessible location)

and 2) does the amount of tree's and other "decoration" feel overdone? Like too cluttered or not enough. This town is situated close to a forest area, so I was trying to give off vibes there would be a bit more nature, but I am not sure if I gave enough or too much to the flora)

Here is a zoom-in near the top left blue roofed home to help judge the decoration clutter a bit more once in game... the garden the boy is standing at is all events as later in the game it changes to a graveyard, so that is why they are not showing on the large overall map.

What I do if I want to upload large maps is to use this site to reduce the file size by up to 70%. It does it without loss of quality.

I think the basic layout is fine, but it's far more spaced apart than it needs to be, imo. It would also look more natural if you achieved the space reduction by making your paths a lot narrower. You would need a huge number of people walking around to create such wide paths. The houses would also be closer together for mutual protection and just general social interaction, so that's another reason to make the map smaller.

I assume windows and chimneys will come later.

I wonder about the size of the enormous building at the top. Does it really need to be that big? You could almost fit every other building inside it.

Finally, there is something which I have a 'thing' about but which I know is not shared by everyone, so ignore this if it doesn't bother you. It's this: your cliffs are one colour, the stone for you buildings is quite another. This implies that the stone has been imported from somewhere else, which is unlikely. If you want to change it, you have a choice. Either change the cliffs to grey (it looks like you're using XP cliffs, and there's nice grey one on the beach tileset) or change the walls (perhaps adapting the red walls from the Church tileset).

HOLY CRAP! I didn't realize it could reduce the size of something so much... just tested with that original screenshot and it was -73% on the filesize >__>

As for the spacing, I am trying to go for a natural feeling town where you actually have some distance between homes instead of being able to see what your neighbors are eating through each others windows. I could look into some size reduction, but the rural feeling of the town was what I was aiming for (and maybe a tad overshot, lol)

Chimneys is something I tend to overlook, esp in this town apparently... my tileset reworking I was doing though made all the windows either too small or disappear completely... which Ill be correcting that as I go.

The huge building is the starting characters training academy, and its large enough inside to fit nearly all the other buildings inside of and houses about 40-ish NPCs as well. One thing was was aiming for with the town design was the size of the building in the town map actually is a close rep of the size of the building when you are inside of it on its own map. A tad of realism without being fully 100% accurate (otherwise the building might actually be larger still.) Here is an in-game screenshot of how large it actually looks when playing, sure it was massive in the editor but you barely see any of it once in game playing.

There is an abandoned stone mine in the left side of the village, but yeah... the coloring of the buildings... I could actually make a Lore reason behind that since the Elementalist Academy in town DOES teach control over the elements and how to manipulate things (and oddly enough, one of the NPCs in the town is a Stonesmith.) We use out magics when building to change the color of the earth we are using to make bricks/building materials. ;)

I was going for a kind of umm I guess terrain kind of setup where this starting continent/area was a more earthy location, the 2nd was going to use the stone cliffs you mentioned, the 3rd continent was going to use a bit of both... the main goal was so that even if I were to use the same tileset for everywhere it would change up to decor a bit so it wasn't the same through the entire game and become (as) stale.

Def gave me some food for thought and Ill look back at some of my maps as I'm working on my tiles and see what I can change and whatnot :D

It's always impressive to see what you all can do with traditional top-down mapping presentation. I am admittedly working with something of a gimmick, but I am happy with my progress and growth so far. Hopefully I've attached the image correctly.

Thanks for the input! Your queries are exactly the sort of thing you kind of glance over during mapping (Well for me at least).

Below you can see a revamped version of the village.
- Vines have been removed where they don't make sense.
- Bridge has been made wider (and I added more cliff curves to enhance the sense of depth).
- Added 'backyards' for the inn and farm that were previously too close to the cliffs.
- I added the cliff faces on the southern part of the river (oops).

I'll look into the shadows as events when I get to that part, but it looks like an 'easy' solution.
As for the coach, that's a sprite of PandaMaru (easily the best one I found for a coach or cart). Perfect for a traveling gypsy that can give clues to the player with her fortune telling!

The road through the village is meant to be a major trade route as the village is the sole crossing point over the river for region. So the road down south is also meant to be used by traders (carts, coaches,...). I placed stairs for the moment because I have no idea how to properly implement a ramp. Do you have some suggestions for that?

@Scorpioni
I like the layout of your town and it has lots of lovely details, but I think in comparison to the market, the houses seem a bit small. That might be an artistical choice, but personally I would make them bigger, like having the walls at least 3 tiles high etc.

@Candacis
First of all, your and Avery's sprites are a godsend, and are a de-facto RTP++ for me. Thanks you for providing these to the community!

I share your concern about the market. Both the stalls themselves and the market as a whole are quite big. On the other hand, I am quite set on walls two-tiles high, because walls three-high makes buildings too tall imho (even with tall actors). This is even more visible when you have buildings with 2 or 3 stories.

I'm in the progress of making the smallest buildings wider instead, to see if this (partially) solves the problem.

Thank you!
I don't quite understand why it makes the buildings too tall. Buildings are tall :LZSgrin:

@Scorpioni Here are a couple of ramps from my current project. They are taken straight from the editor using snip, rather than a screen shot in-game, so not the highest quality.

Vertical ramp

Shadows are important to give a sense of depth. You will see that the ramp's shadow starts off quite narrow and then becomes wider as the ramp gets 'higher'. (I need to do a better transition between the 2, I'm doing that in the polishing stage. The 'missing' shadow on the stone is because that bit is on an event, so doesn't show up in editor.)

Horizontal ramp

You can see where I have turned the ramp so that it becomes a vertical one, but with the horizontal section, the ramp has a more gentle slope (and yes, the vertical section doesn't have its shadow yet). You may have to do something similar to achieve a ramp gentle enough for a coach to go up.

@Candacis
Maybe my explanation was not clear. Below is an example of what I mean. It's a quick example, so I'd have to nudge the windows a bit up in the tilesheet if I'd actually use the building style on the right. For me, having a wall 3 tiles high for a single story building seems 'ugly' for lack of a better word. There would be too much 'wall' above the door and actors. Ideally I would have walls 2,5 tiles high, but that's not possible :p



Of course I'm not opposed to buildings with multiple stories, like those below: