Game & Map Screenshots 12

@TESTOSTERONE LMAO, these ones I made myself.

@TESTOSTERONE Thank you. I'm using a couple of tilesets from refmap but I might change
the tilesets if I find something better.

@rpgLord69 Thanks. I like how your forest map looks.

Working on semi-transparent tiles to break up monotony and to better convey a decaying dead mall

All it needs is a couple dilapidated Auntie Anne’s in there!

Thinking I need even moldier tiles to convey what I'm going for

I haven't come up with a parody version of Auntie Anne yet, maybe I'll call it an 'Uncle Joe' or something. Not many male names starting with U that rolls off the tongue...

@Gensun I think it would help if you made the objects (fridges, cupboards etc.) scuffed and dirty. It's because they are still pristine that your map doesn't look mouldy enough (imo).

Uncle Umberto's (?)

This screenshot is more indicative of what the maps will look like during gameplay.

@tropical8878 this map is crazy nice. I love how the trees next to each other are different, so it doesn't feel mundane.

@TESTOSTERONE thanks man. I tried to improve as much as I could from the map designs of my old game.

I'm working on creating a mountainous area for my MV game. The idea is the player meets up with his scouts in the bottom right and proceeds ahead to meet the enemy army in the top left. The map feels really empty in a lot of places though, and I am not sure what to add to a mountain region to make it not boring to look at. I am using the basic outside tileset. I tried adding a few water sources, since I know that water flows downhill, and including some explorable cave entrances, but otherwise it still feels dull. Any suggestions for improving the map?

In your default tile assets, you should have a lot more decorative things like dried plants, bits of rock debris, and even ancient debris.
I have used them before a lot for decoration in my own game, so why not spread some of them around your map?

Think of those decorative assets like salt. You want to sprinkle some around so that it adds flavor to your map, but you don't want to overdo it either.

There's a pinned thread for map feedback where you'll likely get more responses:
Game & Map Screenshots 12
There's a fair bit of funkiness going on with your wall heights, and it's hard to tell which is intentional because of layering elevation and what might be inconsistencies.

Aside from that, the emptiness is from...well, emptiness.

There are a lot of stones and plants and things you can scatter about.

There are also different colors of sand, you can mix it up so not all of the ground looks identical. Same for applying some of the cracks/vines/other features to the walls so they're not all the same stone.

Shamelessly advertising my own tutorials here:
[mostly graphics]Avery's Tutorials - an overview and a good starting point
While they might not all apply to your scenario, you can pick a lot of tips and tricks up that will help you over the process of your game.

For your map in particular, your mountains still look very blocky and uniform in height, there you can easily map in more variation.

You could add in one or two different ground textures to mix things a little up, maybe of a very similar color, but just to make things less bland. (There is the 5 min autotile transition hack tutorial in my list as well)

You can add smaller rocks and pebbles that fell off the cliffs. You could add some sand variation, look at these in Maru's tileset for VX Ace: https://pandamaru.de/index.php/downloads/rpg-maker-vx-ace/rpg-maker-vx-ace-tilesets/


Especially around the water you can add some plants.

Well, you could always add some desert flora and fauna to the map such as cactuses, brush, desert flowers, etc. You could also add more elevation to your mountain tops or maybe some hole in the ground.

Here is a crude example of what I'm talking about.

Well, first of all, your map looks like a sandbox. With that neat and tidy little border around all edges. Then I'm wondering why your mountainous area looks like a desert with random hills instead of a rocky-looking area.

Then we got the size. Two options here: 1. You neeed A LOT more details and decorations. 2. Make the map A LOT smaller. One or the other will fix this. A good rules of thumb I used back in my infant mapping days: The player should have at least 5 different things to look at at any given point. (Source: Toasty)

Another thing I'm noticing is your map is flat. Sure, you got some hills and stuff, but they are inaccessible. Your player is never moving up or down on the map.

Here's a map I'd consider a mountainous area in RTP(30x30). I quickly threw threw this together to demonstrate my points:


This area is quite lush, so maybe you may want to use the snowy tiles instead? Desert kinda makes no sense to me.
Anyway, in this example you can see there are multiple ways of going "up" and "down". There's plenty of "things" to look at at any given point and the "Sandbox" border is gone. Despite popular believe, you don't need to straight up wall off everything that's not an exit. The exits just need to be clear enough.

Aside from the people's advice here(Avery's tutorials are great from what I've heard), there are also plenty of sample maps that come with the engine. Maybe you can take a look at those too.

Alternatively, you can always hire people to make maps for you. (May not be the most popular thing to suggest, but it is an option.)

Hope this helps, best of luck on your journey.

I will have to echo what everyone has said: More decoration, and/or Make the map a lot smaller.
Your map is absolutely gigantic, I can see it very easy for players to get lost with all the same color all around. And I also see it likely they'll run out of resources before they get anywhere near the enemy, assuming there will be random encounters/other enemies to fight on the way.

Additionally, you should check the tutorials on shift-click-mapping and learn how to use that.

Especially on the larger lake the bottom border should go behind the mountain under it, and that can only be done with shift-clicking.

.....

Boss time in your mecha!

@rue669 Just a thought. The lights given off by your crystals are clearly defined circles with quite strong boundaries. Light doesn't really work like that, it is more diffuse. I'd suggest blurring them outwards quite a bit.