Map Boundary Preferences

[TMS]

(I think this belongs here. If it goes in Game Mechanics I apologize.)

An RPG Maker game is made up of a number of maps, and unlike in the real world those maps have edges that cannot be crossed. Back when I was playing around with XP I didn't like to leave the edges of maps to their invisible boundaries. I would place objects around the edges in a way that seemed accidental but the real point of which was to give the character something visible to walk up against instead of just stopping at an arbitrary point. Now I'm mapping the first area of my VX Ace game and thinking about whether I wanted to do that again.

So I thought I'd ask how other people handle this when they're mapping. Do you let the invisible walls suffice, indicating with floor tiles (a rug, a path) where a maps' exits are, or do you give players a tangible reason for why they can't go farther in a certain direction? What do you do about wide open spaces like the middle of the desert? I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, but I'm curious.

 

[bgillisp]

I personally fill in the boundary. If it is still open I have it be an exit, or the party is given a reason they cannot proceed in that direction and then backed up one step too.

For example, in one of my towns, you only need to be in part of the town (as you have no reason to go exploring 690+ houses). So, when the party comes close to the residential zone, one of the other party members says (via an event set to player touch) "That's the residential zone. We have no reason to go there", and then the party backs up one step. That way the boundary makes sense to me at least.

 

[EternalShadow]

I often try and fill in the boundary. It just looks odd when your character walks against an invisible wall and suddenly gets transported to another map upon touching the 'road'.

 

[Tai_MT]

I personally fill in the boundries.  I don't just put like cliffs at the edge.  No, I make my boundries out far enough that you never see the screen "stop scrolling".  I've found that it somewhat wrecks the illusion of freedom when the camera stops at the edge of the map.  On interior maps I tend to just create a lot of "black space" on the edges of the map and then tick the option for "wrap around vertical/horizontal" so at the screen keeps centered on the players.  Inside things like caves or dungeons...  Well, they're meant to feel a bit limiting and claustrophobic.  So, I let the edges of those maps stop the camera and don't include the spacious borders.  As for maps that have roads off of them to other maps...  I typically just transport them either immediately to the "world map" upon touching an area before the actual edge of the map...  Or I teleport them to the next map before hitting the hard edge.

The only exception I have to this rule is when two maps are meant to be immediately touching each other.  At that point, I let the edge of the map be the hard stop and each square that does touch that edge teleports to the other map so that there are no invisible walls.

As a game player, I hate invisible walls.  I hate invisible ceilings.  I hate invisible kill floors that exist off of cliffs.  If you don't want me exploring there, then don't make it look like it's traversable.  I want to explore everything I can see without being hindered by invisible walls and death zones.  I'm more forgiving of cliffs and glass walls than I am of flat-out invisible ones that kill all immersion and act like a middle finger from the devs for daring to try to explore their world in a way they didn't anticipate.

 

[Shaz]

Yep - same. If the party can walk to the edge of the map, they should be able to continue onto another map, for me. Otherwise it's too hard for them to tell where the exits are.

 

[Sharm]

Yeah, the closer to looking like there's no invisible boundaries, the better.  There's a tutorial on this site that explains how to make it seem like there's no transition between maps, I can't remember what it's called though.  If I ever get around to making a game of my own, it'll use that trick everywhere.

 

[Kes]

Like everyone else so far, I agree - no invisible walls.  Give the player a visible reason for not being able to walk somewhere.  If I can go to the edge of a map where there is no path, for example in woodland, or grassland, I expect there to be a transfer event on every tile I can reach.  

Just as bad - there is an otherwise nice game on this forum which has lots of paved paths and clearly defined earthen tracks which go to the edge of the map, so of course I go there to explore what's next, and virtually every one of them is simply a dead end.  No explanation for why I can't go there, no dialogue, no nothing.  I feel I have to check them out, just in case this one path is different, but it's a colossal waste of my time and breaks immersion.  After a while I simply gave up on that game, too irritating to go on. 

 

[Matseb2611]

Most times I find it easiest to bar the edges with cliffs or walls. It makes a job a whole lot easier and without looking out of ordinary. For places like deserts you could have huge ravines, cracks in the ground, or even some other obstacles which make sense in your game world - quicksand, deadly plants, etc.

I'd definitely agree with the others. Reaching the edge of the map and meeting the invisible wall is immersion-breaking. I will go even as far as to say that having characters say 'There is no reason for us to go there' and taking a step back is also immersion-breaking and taking control away from the player. Unfortunately sometimes instances like these are unavoidable (e.g. preventing backtracking), but I personally tend to avoid them where at all possible. If you want for example for the map to look like it contains many paths, but you don't want the player to take them, then you can put all sorts of obstacles in those paths - rocks, vehicles, guards, etc. Make the boundaries so that they are part of your world and do not take control away from the player.

And of course, do not be mean and punish the player for not knowing. For example making the boundary insta-kill the player or deal a lot of damage or inflict a nasty state is unfair to the player. Instead have them stop a few steps short and point out the danger and why it's not wise to go there, or in case of cliff edges and such just make them impassable.

 

[TMS]

And of course, do not be mean and punish the player for not knowing. For example making the boundary insta-kill the player or deal a lot of damage or inflict a nasty state is unfair to the player.

Oh, yeah, I'd never do something like that. Though if I did warn them I'd probably let them choose to ignore the warning if they wanted to see what happens.

Can anyone link me to the tutorial that Sharm mentioned?

 

[bgillisp]

Yes, I'll second the idea about warning the player. That's what I do in my game if you are about to stumble into an optional but hard boss, usually one character will say something like "This looks dangerous. Should we be going this way?" or, in one case, you have to find a key to unlock the gate blocking the path to the creature (and the whole time they are warning you that it is really dangerous and you should let it be).

As for the not supposed to be here messages, I mainly use it in large cities to prevent them from being larger. After all, does your party really have a reason to go knocking on 6957832 houses doors? It usually, in my game, shows up at the map edge when you are about to leave the main hub where all traveler's tend to go, and enter into the zone where all the houses are, which, honestly, you don't have a reason to go to.

 

[TMS]

No, I make my boundries out far enough that you never see the screen "stop scrolling".

It seems like that would make mapping very difficult, since you'd not only have to design the current map but design things beyond its explorable borders that might be parts of other maps (which may not have been created yet). How do you deal with that?

 

[Tai_MT]

Currently, my maps don't need anything "beyond the explorable borders".  As in, they don't connect that way with other maps.  It only seems difficult at first, but once you get a handle on how much screen you actually have, it's easy to remember where to put boundries like trees and cliffs and other such things.

The only way I ever deal with the "these two maps actually touch" is to simply teleport the player to the touching map before he/she ever reaches the edge.  As in, you'll walk a bit down the road, then you'll teleport and it'll appear as if you'd moved perhaps far enough away that you can't see the other map you just came from, only a portion of the path you took.

The only time I make it a "hard transition" from screen to screen is in dungeons (or other interiors).  When you move left off the screen in a cave, you appear on the right in the very next piece of the cave and vice versa.  This is intentional.  These map breaks in a dungeon tend to come when you've likely seen everything on a particular map or done everything with it.  It's a mental "checkpoint" that all players log (whether they know it or not) and it makes finding their way a bit easier as well as how close/far the end of the dungeon may actually be.  It also helps separate boss rooms from the normal portions of the map and separate puzzle rooms.

Otherwise, with just about any other map, I just have the "soft transition" where you don't actually see the pieces of the map between the two maps and it appears as if you're still just exploring.  It makes the world feel a lot more open that way and not nearly as restricting as say Zelda 1 on the NES does with its maps.  Mostly, it's there to subconsciously tell the player "hey, there's some boring bits between where these two maps connect and you're just being placed in the next cool area to explore and wander through without having these two maps weirdly connected at the border with a strange screen fade in/out to connect them".  It just feels more fluid that way.

 

[TMS]

Okay, now I understand. It's sort of like what Kingdom Hearts does, where you'll leave a village and if you look back on the next map you'll see a long road leading off to that village in the distance. I may go that route myself, though I'll have to decide if I want a world map between the two. It is indeed hard to create the sense of a globe-spanning adventure when all of the maps are right next to each other.

 

[TMS]

I'm still working on my first map, and I thought I'd try making it Tai_MT's way, but I don't know if it works for me. I can't block off all the edges in a way that isn't extremely obvious, especially when it comes to an open area like the field I'm currently working on. Should I just make a line of events that transfer the player to the next map?

 

[Tai_MT]

Even "open fields" have things like hills and minor cliff edges.  Some could even have fences and such.  You can make the "cut off point" less obvious by moving it in and out or cutting off corners of a map and other tricks.  My current map has a river running through the center of it and a bunch of cliffs at the northern end.  At the western end is a "void" of weird scrolling background.  The southern end is a mixture of "forest" and "cliffs".  The player will know it's a boundary, to be sure, but it doesn't look like a "hard stop" boundary.

Honestly, it takes a bit of practice.  I keep even refining my own edges every so often.  I add character to them.  Maybe foot paths atop the cliffs that are unreachable.  Maybe small breaks in the trees to hint at movement beyond them.  Sometimes I throw in other map features along those edges to keep the illusion going.

No matter what you do, a player will always know when they're "at the edge of the map" and "about to transition to the next".  There's not really a way around that.  What you can do is make it feel like it's not a hard stop or hard transition.  Make it feel like even though that is the hard boundary of the area you're in...  There's still things out there beyond the edge.

You're actually shooting for the illusion that there's a world out there that exists beyond the edge of the map.  It exists despite you not having a map for it.  It's less jarring that way.

 

[TMS]

Maybe I need to play some games like that and see examples. If the characters are in a grassland biome it seems odd to have random cliffs in places. Also, kind of off-topic, but can you even make distinguishable hills with the RTP?

 

[Tai_MT]

With the default RTP?  Nah, can't really do "hills".  Though, you can kind of do an illusion of hills if you use cliffs just right.  But, those hills will always end in at least a 1 tile cliff somewhere.  You'd likely need to find or edit some resources in order to get actual hills.

Also... I live on "The Great Plains" of South Dakota in the United States.  our "plains" actually have a ton of rolling hills and some minor "dirt cliffs" that go into valleys and such.  In fact, in the area I live in, I live almost at the top of a hill some 200 yards above the river that flows through town.  The whole outer edge of the town is hills while the "ghetto" parts of town are in the valley along the river.  My hometown was actually in it's own small valley between two sets of hills with a creek running through it (population of 400 or so).  The flattest land you find around here is land that's been flattened by people in order to make fields.  Anything that's not farmland is fairly hilly with a few random "dirt cliffs" or really steep inclines to hills some 200+ yards in the air.

I don't think I've ever seen plains that are as flat as the ones in most video games.

 

[EternalShadow]

I know of areas with large, flat plains like those in FF12, albeit without cliffs, just trees and rivers.