Game & Map Screenshots 4

[Minnow]

That looks awesome, B.Ultimus. I love the colours you're using!

 

[Makio-Kuta]

You... OMG... that's beautiful. This is the best community in the world!! <3 That is magic! I will totally test those tiles (now to figure out a way to use GIMP to transplant it onto my tileset lol.)


And to repay your kindness, I will read through the webstory in your profile if you don't mind. Hope you don't mind comments from my humble editor self  Edit: Lord, the story is longer than I thought. I will keep reading more as soon as I'm not under a deadline! ;D

No problem! And it would honour me very much if you checked out that webstory. XD it is quite long though, but read it as your time allows you. Truly, the best thank you


I hope the tiles work well for you!

 

[Stridah]

@Alkorri yea it is small city-town that's been carved into the very mountains. And yea its HUGE! don't know how long its taken so far but probably 15 hours.

 

[Allerka]

Man, there is some great stuff in this thread. I've been fiddling with this series for years and years, and it still feels like I've got tons to learn about building maps.

So after several months of working on scripts and databases, I've finally started building actual maps for my game (having switched from XP to VX Ace, I've had to redo everything from scratch from what I had in my original demo). Built out a two-story house that's the main character's home (and possibly where the game will start). Still trying to get used to VX Ace's way of doing things compared to XP's, as well as working with a combination of the XP and VX Ace RTPs. Thoughts?

Spoiler

 

[Ksi]

One thing I'd like to recommend is creating a tile to go above the doors - just a copy/paste of the one-tile thick ceiling tiles - and set them to star. That way it doesn't look as disconcerting having a blank space above the door like you currently have.

That said, not too bad. Maybe a few rugs or carpets in bedrooms, even if they're just under the bed. And some of the shadows of the XP tiles need to be edited to be darker so that they fit in with the Ace tiles. An easy way to do that is move the shadow to another layer in a paint program like GIMP or Photoshop, colour them black and then set to half transparency. Merge and use the Smudge tool lightly around the edges of the shadow to cause some fade-out.

 

[Allerka]

Yeah, the doors is the big thing I was wondering about. And I didn't even think about the shadows, thanks! I'll touch those up.

The big thing I'm noticing about the shadows is they have a slight purplish tint to them. So I've stripped that out and darkened them a bit, plus tried to feather the edges a little so they're not quite so hard. How does this look?

Spoiler

 

[Stridah]

@Alkera the floor tile looks like it is on top of the doors, you needa put a ceiling tile on top of the door! Also the picture frames are to high on the walls, makes it look weird.   I would also recomend making the maps a bit smaller unless he is rich living in a very large home.  In game that is going to be a very big area.

 

[Allerka]

Yeah, I noticed the hole in the wall right after I posted the screenshot. Got that fixed, it's all solid-looking now. As for the house, I was thinking it might be a hair too big. Alex's family is middle class, and his father's shop is attached to their house.

Fixed the issues with the paintings (that's how they came by default), they're more level now. I'll see if I can shrink the house a little. Though, I should mention, I do tend to go for big maps.

EDIT: OK, did some more clean-up work, and condensed the house and workshop a bit (by about 1/4 to 1/3). How does this look?

Spoiler

 

[Alexander Amnell]

It looks nice, I especially like the last one as it looks lived in but all around the details nice, roomy without being empty which is hard to do at first.

Here's the first floor of a cave area I've been working on... full of blind monsters that sneak into settlements and kidnap small children in the middle of the night.

Spoiler

and in game...

 

[B.Ultimus]

@Alexander - the map looks good, and with the lighting, the spikes on the ground aren't bad...with some of the rocks though on your map it feels out of place: I feel like they have too heavy of an outline.

 

[Ksi]

@Allerka: Here:

Use that tile above the doors. Now, take your mouse and hover over a piece of the wall tile - say... two tiles to the left of the bottom-most door in the first picture. Hold shift and right-mouse click on it. You have just copied that exact tile as it shows on the map. Keep holding Shift and left-mouse click on either side of the door area where the bordered ceiling tiles are. Now replace the middle tile with the one above, set to above hero. ^.^

The edits do look a lot better, yes. Good job~

 

[Kes]

@Allerka

The windows you have on the front walls appear to be showing blue sky through them.  As they look into the house, this is,,, odd.

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

Been working some more on my 'water' dungeon, and trying to work with a bit more 'randomized' walls to make it look a bit more natural.. It's a tough task, and the propositions is something that I'm struggling a bit with as well (I use 2 tile high walls on climbable platforms, and 3 tiles high walls on the boarder since otherwise the character would 'hit' the roof when standing on the platforms). I have a bit of a trouble to work it out, but I'm getting there.

Thought I could put it up and get some feedback, these are still a WIP but thought I could share them anyway.

(Yes, It's the character swiming in that 'pond').

Maps:





In game:



I have also made various improvement for my first dungeon:

Map:



In-game:



Feedback would be much appreciated!

 

[Allerka]

@Allerka: Here:

Use that tile above the doors. Now, take your mouse and hover over a piece of the wall tile - say... two tiles to the left of the bottom-most door in the first picture. Hold shift and right-mouse click on it. You have just copied that exact tile as it shows on the map. Keep holding Shift and left-mouse click on either side of the door area where the bordered ceiling tiles are. Now replace the middle tile with the one above, set to above hero. ^.^

The edits do look a lot better, yes. Good job~

...Huh! I had no idea you could do that! Well, that certainly makes it much simpler! Definitely looks better now, thanks!

I also made the front windows mostly-transparent. I didn't even realize that was a sky reflection, but I see it now. Also also fiddling with lighting effects, though it's hard to get something that both looks good and doesn't bog the game down.

Spoiler

@Dark_Metamorphasis: Those look like a good start! Obviously the first one needs a lot more detail, and I'm wondering about the ladder that goes up from the island, is it going to a higher level or to the next island? The lava cave looks pretty good, great use of double space with the two levels.

 

[B.Ultimus]

@Dark_Metamorphosisecent starts, but here are some areas of opportunity

• For the Cavern maps, they are all very empty.  I'd recommend putting some more nature items around, as well as slim the rooms down a little:  tiny sprites mean tiny rooms.  Be sure you are using colors that complements the area.
• For the Ice/Lava cavern maps, the colors seem a little off.  Try messing around with the wall/ground/lava combination.
• I see you are using some light scripting...it doesn't look too bad but a lot of your areas are very dark.  Subtle lighting will go a long way, unless the darkness is part of a game mechanic...if it is, I recommend a light around the player.

Good luck!

 

[Stridah]

@metamorphis looks like the complexity and detail in some of them is different, for instance the first map is kind of plain very square not overly detailed, then the ingame screen has a lot of variation and detail.  You did a great job on the detailed ones I think you should revisit first add some flavor!

Finally itemized my town, let me know what you think this is the part I struggled with the most. I always have to really watch myself not to over do it and place crap everywhere.

p.s. anyone have any tips on parallaxing fences for some reason the fence took me AGES to get right lol.

there will be cows in the lil fence w the water and brown grass but I have to do interiors before I even start adding npc's.

Spoiler

 

[oztiks708]

@Stridah It is coming along good, good job keeping it simple! Once some nps are in there I think it will bring it to life. the only thing that draws my attention is the well on the very far right, it feels kind of out there. though I know that in game the view is much closer. other than that, I can't find anything that really catches my eye.

Also... Thank you for the suggestions, I did everything you said, looks a lot more pleasing. I am currently trying to finish the map out with a screen tint, I want a cool blue, but I seem to keep overpowering it.

@metamorphis I think the screens show how much you are coming along, I agree with stepping back and maybe revisiting some of the other maps to really fill them in. 

@Allerka - I think your maps are progressing nicely. Once you master that shift clicking, you will be amazed at what you can do. Keep up the good work. The only thing that I have to add is watch those pesky rtp shadows, they don't always line up the way we want them to.

@Alkorri - I was trying the green water, but in the end it was to wild haha, I think I may end up with the regular old water in this one.

Spoiler

 

[Stridah]

@oz thanks I see what you mean about the well you are 100% right let me get rid of it.  Also glad my feedback helped nice job map looks great.

 

[Apollo]

So this is mostly done. Oh and also keep in mind this is for a very jokey, not serious at all, comedy game so i'm not trying to make this look super pretty or anything.

Oh, also quick question: Are curved walls an Ace thing? Because i can't really do those in VX...

 

[Ruby]

You can do curved walls in any program I believe with parallaxing.