Quote from: WhiteRose on August 23, 2013, 08:36:34 pm
Quote from: Heretic86 on August 23, 2013, 08:27:43 pm
That's very well done for a first serious map - much better than anything I ever did, and quite possibly still better than anything I have ever done even to date. XD
I think a lot of quality maps come from a couple of things:
#1 A good Non Standard Tileset. A merger of multiple tilesets seems to work incredibly well. I started off with the Inquisitor Tileset. Being that his Tileset is just an image and all the settings like Passability and Priority need to be set, it was a major several hour pain in the ass. Thats the tileset I used in that first serious map. I'd release a map with all those settings, but Inquisitor had some legal stuff that I just dont want to step on his work.
#2 Knowing your Tileset. One of the things that I do like about the Inquisitor Tileset, besides it being a pain in the ass to set up, is that once set up, it allows a much wider variety of things for a Player to look at. Instead of just one or two bushes and one tree per map, imagine having 50. Being the tileset is mostly a merger, it provides a sense of consistency where this bush looks like it belongs with this set. I still think the original tilesets actually look pretty good, but there just isnt enough variety in each one alone. Those very large Tilesets take a lot of time to learn. Although I did not do this in that first map, one of my newer tricks is to duplicate graphics and give them different settings. Like walking behind terrain. Remembering where each of those alternate duplicate graphics are and which one has which settings is why I suggest really knowing your tileset is important. And when I say Knowing your Tileset, the emphasis is the word "YOUR". Tilesets were designed to be edited and merged, mostly for expansions of the Tileset itself. As you expand a Tileset to suit your needs, it no longer behaves like a Standard Tileset and more like YOUR personal Tileset. I should probably add to this recommendation that knowing how to EDIT your tileset to expand it is practically mandatory. There are plenty of free programs that can do this, but knowledge can not just be purchased.
#3 Layers. I cant encourage this enough. The more that stuff is stacked on top of other stuff that is behind other stuff that covers up other stuff that is slightly obscured by yet even more stuff I think is what makes a map feel both very chaotic and natural. It also led me to make a whole lot of mistakes, such as using Events for graphics. A lot of times, it is just unavoidable. And I've got other spots, more in the Lightgeist Mountain map, where I've literally had to stack multiple events in the same place to make it look right. Thats one of the reasons that when you go in and out of caves that everything fades to black. When you hit the new map, I have an autorun event that moves a whole lot of events around and stacks them. So I think my limit is about SIX layers deep, using the original 3 from RMXP and Events for each of the following 3 layers, which is just way way too much. But when the Player looks at it, I dont believe that they should notice anything out of the ordinary as everything should look like it belongs there. Normal is what the player doesnt notice.
#4 Using Events as Tile Graphics. This is a questionable practice due to performance issues it can cause. But done correctly, it can allow the Player an added sense of immersion into a map. Such as being able to walk behind Terrain. We know we can walk behind trees and bushes, but being able to walk behind Terrain such as Cliff Edges really adds to playability. The first trick on using Events as a Tile Graphic is to understand that the higher the Event IDs will stack on top of lower Event ID's. This includes stacking Event Terrain Tiles where all of the Events have Always On Top enabled.
#5 Learn to Fail. Many times success is not based on only knowing one way to accomplish something, its knowing how to meet your goal by understanding when and where and what causes you to fail. When Edison invented the lightbulb, you could have asked him and he would have told you that he did not learn how to make a lightbulb, instead, he learned ten thousand ways to not make a lightbulb. He learned from his failures. I think too many people just have it in their heads that failures are not to be tolerated, and instead need to treat them as opportunities to learn how not to do soemthing. Now specifically relating to RMXP is Tree Shadows. A lot of people get confused as to why the Player is able to walk over an area that they believe they shouldnt be able to go. The thing is there is that the Tree Shadow has a passability setting, and if there is no priority on that tree shadow, the shadow tiles passage settings are what allow a player to walk right through somethign that would be otherwise unpassable. This is also a good example of knowing when to use an Event as a Graphic. Create the tree shadow by using an event with the shadow tile, then turn on Through. Through on that event will cause its Passage Settings to not be calculated by the engine. So if the tile below the event is passable, the player can pass, but if the tile is not passable, then the expected cant move there occurs. This is how you can learn to use failure to enable your success.
#6 Be patient. It takes me a lot of tries to come up with something that I think looks good. My first attempts I expect to fail. But what is important is that I can learn from what I think makes a map fail visually and learn how to make it look correct. That helps me plan out what ever I have in my head and get it into the map in both a functional way as well as looking visually and logically correct. That first map in my demo took me about a WEEK to complete. That also included the eventing, but that is besides the point. That second map Lightgeist Mountain took several weeks. Mostly because of every cave leading to another map, and there are something like 16 cave maps that interconnect all of those caves. One of those caves I remember took well over two days to complete. I tried an experiment where the structure of the cave actually changes on the player and gets them going in loops. INtended for a Grind Area. The player isnt exactly trapped in the cave. It works more like an Intersection. Come at this intersection from the top and you can only go to the bottom. Come at the intersection from the left or right and you can only go left or right. The structure changes while that part of the map is offscreen and its intended so that the player has no idea that theyve been literally at that spot before. Most of the players that have demoed did not even notice this feature (which is what I wanted) and just thought it was a very large cave. A lot larger than it actually was. THings like that take time to develop, so dont expect to be able to slap stuff out like that in an hour.
#7 Practice Makes Perfect. You have your own custom tileset. You know how to use your tileset. You know how to Edit and Expand your tileset. You know how to use Layers. You know how to use Events for Tile Graphics. You know how to Stack Events just using an Autorun Event. With this set of skills, I truly believe that anyone can create amazing masterpiece maps.
Im not gloating, but really appreciate how impressed you are by the map. So the reasons Im blathering on is not to gloat, its to teach people tricks on how to make a map look better. Layer Layer Layer. Something I think every Mapper needs to do is to take a simple map and pack as many trees as possible into it. The more trees, the better. This as an exercise helps a person figure out for themselves how to work with layers. For example, in spots that are completely covered by a tree tile, you dont need to use a Ground Tile. The Base Layer can be a solid Tree Tile. Tree Tiles that partially obscure the ground will need a Ground Layer to be Layer One and Tree Tiles to be either higher layers or events, depending on what you have there. Try stacking other stuff around the edge of those trees for a real challenge.
I do not believe I am an artist. I used to doodle in pencil before I really got into computers (well, at that time they really sucked). But I was never able to do anything in color. I've tried many a time over the years to do color stuff and think I just suck at creating art. I cant sprite. I cant draw the human form to save my life. I cant use photoshop to create anything original. I cant create my own tilesets. But I know I can edit and combine the living hell out of ones already out there. So when I pick up RMXP and create some maps, I know I can combine tilesets that once put together will look amazing. I also hold myself to some ridiculusly high standards. I believe that if I dont like a map, neither will you. But once I've put together a map, or at least a style of maps (like the cracks in the cave walls in Lightgeist Mountain in the demo), if I can impress myself by what I can create and I am satisfied, that is the point where I'll even release a screenshot that is intended to just blow people away as to what can be accomplished by using nothing more than RMXP and a paint program.
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Edit: For the record, this isnt a competition. We are all here to help each other out and learn from the experience and skills of others. If anyone is impressed by my work, I am honored, and that is enough for me. WHen I see maps that I am impressed with, I try to say so as well, as well as offer constructive criticism on how to improve. This very long winded post is just a big bunch of things that I think most aspiring mappers need to do right off the bat to improve the quality of their maps. I dont know, guess I am just a fan of "as complex as you can make it" style. But we all have to start somewhere.