How do you reduce the map count?

[Ozirisz]

I'm working an Open World RPG, and the project has a lot of maps (~300), and it was very-very incompleted. I'm using RPGMaker MV,
How can I reduce the map count? Or any idea with workaround this? Later will be problem the editor's limit, and I want to solve this problem. What is the best practice? Lot of outside area, lot of towns (and buildings), dungeons consumes a lot of maps of the limit...
For example, the greatest town has ~30-40 building, so ~30-40 maps. And an bigger dungeon with lot of rooms also has ~30 maps.
I'm interesting about any idea of this, how can I do this with less maps.
Thanks for any advice ^^

 

[bgillisp]

The easiest way is to put all buildings on one map. What I do is I make the map as high as the largest height I need (or as high as the map minimum if none are that high), then put the interiors on the map with enough space that the player cannot see the next interior. That seems to work well for me.

Same with the rooms in a dungeon. You can put all dungeons that have only up/down exits on the same map (with enough space that you cannot see the other one), and all with only right/left exits on the same map. That will cut down the size of some of the maps, and, if nothing else, you can put all your dead ends on the same map at the bare minimum.

The only thing is be careful of how many events you have. In my case, after about the 6th or 7th interior map I go to another map, just to keep the event count low enough that lag is a non-issue.

 

[Gonor]

Edit: Damn. Beaten by 1 minute...
Edit2: Seriously? D.a.m.n. is being translated into "dayum" by the forum?

You could try to create a single large map and put like 10 - 15 building maps on it with enough space between them so that the player won't see them if they are in a different building.
How many of those buildings you can fit into a single map largely depends on their individual size, though.

I wouldn't recommend it for parallax mapping, however.

 

[Sharm]

Wow, that's a lot of maps. Put the interior maps of an area into one map with space between them to hide what you're doing to the player, that will reduce the map count by a lot. You can also shift from quantity to quality, if most of your maps are just filler why have them at all? What would be enjoyable about being in them for the player? If you have too many maps with no actual use it will actually detract from your game. People will call your game boring and empty. If you have very few maps but they're all extremely interesting and interactive people won't even notice if it's all in a small space.

 

[Andar]

there are two answers to this, a technical and a content-based one.

Let's start with the content-based one.

If a town has 30-40 buildings, why should the player be able to enter everyone of them?
You should only create a map if you have content for it - a quest, a shop, a story or something else that is more than "random civilian house with 10 gold to steal". That has a lot of reasons from not wasting the player's time to not wasting the developers/mappers time on insignificant details to limits on space for distribution.
Besides - someone once made a short film on such a scene where suddenly a paladin storms into a farmer house, searching through all chests while ignoring the family eating dinner and stealing their few gold coins despite their protest that those were their year's earnings and they still have to pay taxes. You should not go that route in my opinion...

Never forget: everything you place, every map you do will require your worktime - and most players prefer if you spend your worktime on real quests and good ideas instead of making three dozen civilian houses that don't have any impact on the story or gameplay.


That said, the technical solution is to combine maps - all floors of a house (and sometimes several houses of a village) should be on one map. You just need to make it big enough that you can place black tiles between all the walls and the player never can see the other floor walls outside his screen but on the same map.

 

[Gonor]

Never forget: everything you place, every map you do will require your worktime - and most players prefer if you spend your worktime on real quests and good ideas instead of making three dozen civilian houses that don't have any impact on the story or gameplay.

To add to Andar: I like games that actually have a lot of background. In these cases I think you can have one or two maybe three buildings per Town / City not connected to the actual plot of your game but to enrich its world.

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

I am probably the last person who should be giving advice on this topic, given the monster that is my current project.

However, aside from combining multiple building interiors to reduce the number of maps; I would say consider how many field maps you have, & their respective dimensions. Then determine is there really a need for it to be two or three maps, when you can fit all of them on one map. For example if you have 3 75 X 75 maps, that occupy neighboring space, do you really need those maps to be separate?

Beyond that, consider using very large maps for your dungeons, with areas blacked out in between areas actually explored. So even though you have multiple sections within a given dungeon, there are only two "floors" as it were for the dungeon. For example "Floor 1" has sections A, C, & E; while "Floor 2" has B, D, & F.

 

[Wavelength]

For dungeons, unless the rooms are all on separate floors (etc.), just interconnect them on the same map (allowing the player to walk through passageways between rooms without changing maps nor using warps), unless you have a really good reason not to. Not only will this save you space, it will also increase the player's immersion because they will get the sense they are walking around a large space.

For interiors of homes (etc.) in towns, like several other people mentioned, you can place several on the same map as long as you have enough black/blank space in between them so that the player will never see one interior from another (unless you've changed the resolution of your game, 12 tiles of space on each side should be enough). To avoid lag, avoid allowing more than 50 events to appear on the same map, and don't raise your map size above about 20,000 total tiles (e.g. dimensions of about 150 width x 150 height).

 

[kaukusaki]

I do tile couching / switching and evented items with multiple pages / switches / variables . So each time you enter a shop or house etc I have flags for which map you're entering from and the interiors will change depending on what switch is thrown.
For example I have one map (shops) with 4 separate rooms and switches for them to change which other map you entered from. So town A weapon shop will have a certain appearance but if you come to town B weapon shop it'll change slightly. Even the shop keeper is different including their wares. Keeping documentation helps track everything.

 

[Sharm]

Oh, wow. That's a really interesting way to do it. Probably cuts down on mapping and overall file size too.

 

[Frogboy]

Disable auto-dashing. Why have players rocket around on gigantic maps that are pain to detail when you make much smaller maps with greater detail and have them actually be able to see everything?

 

[Kes]

@Frogboy This is somewhat off topic, as the question is about how to reduce the number of maps. However, whilst I agree with you that many maps are far too big, disabling auto-dash is a great way to alientate a lot of your players.

 

[gstv87]

For dungeons, unless the rooms are all on separate floors (etc.), just interconnect them on the same map (allowing the player to walk through passageways between rooms without changing maps nor using warps), unless you have a really good reason not to.

you can also merge small maps like house interiors into one map, spacing the sets out so that they aren't visible from other sets.

think about how TV shows are filmed.... their sets are often cramped up into one single hangar.

 

[Frogboy]

@Frogboy This is somewhat off topic, as the question is about how to reduce the number of maps. However, whilst I agree with you that many maps are far too big, disabling auto-dash is a great way to alientate a lot of your players.

I was kind of going under the assumption that smaller maps would be easier to identify, maintain and lump together in a large project. But you're right, this doesn't really answer the initial question directly.