Compromises between open world and parallaxing?

[Carduus]

I started out seeing all the beautiful maps here, learned how to do it, and started populating my cities with this. Now I'm on to the map at large, and realizing that if I parallax the large overworld terrain maps to the degree I did in the cities, I'm going to have more than a gig of images. I love the look of parallaxing and will still do so for overlays/light/fog and whatnot, but I just can't do 400+ uniquely-painted overworld maps without making the game @#%^$^ing huge. I can reuse landscapes to some degree, and use doodads, though I'm not sure how much more DB-efficient that method is.

What tricks do you employ in MV to best compromise between quality and quantity?

 

[Wavelength]

If the file size (and not your own time constraints) are the main concern here, use Yanfly's "Grid-Free Doodads" plugin. Doodads maps are much, much smaller in file size than parallax maps because each object only needs to be loaded in once (in your entire game, I believe) - then the map just references that object, much like RPG Maker's normal behavior; compare this to parallax maps where the game thinks it needs new graphical data for every square inch of every map.

If you think that your game will look much better with a Parallaxed map than a Doodads map (for example because you are doing really advanced stuff with ground textures), I'd say just go for it - people won't bat an eye these days over PC games that are 1GB to 3GB, since most hard drives come with half a terabyte or more.

 

[Carduus]

Yeah, I'm using doodads, but I didn't realize they were that much more efficient. But your post gave me an idea. I could do large-scale partially-transparent doodads of ground cover that I could just overlay in various configurations so each map is different, but just contain some mixture of 10-20 doodads. But then I'd have the problem of large doodads overlapping the character vs. not looking like the PC is in grass. Hrm.

 

[beenbaba]

I think for me the concern would be with how fast the game loads over how big the game is.

If your maps are that big you could consider running them through something like tinypng to compress them, you lose a small amount of quantity but the file size is reduced by a considerable amount.

 

[Wavelength]

But then I'd have the problem of large doodads overlapping the character vs. not looking like the PC is in grass. Hrm.

Doodads can be placed beneath the player/event layer, can't they?

 

[Papillon Effect]

I think for me the concern would be with how fast the game loads over how big the game is.

If your maps are that big you could consider running them through something like tinypng to compress them, you lose a small amount of quantity but the file size is reduced by a considerable amount.

I needed something like this. Thank you for the info.