Map sizes.

[Emperor Xan]

If that's the case, then how is MV an improvement over VX?  Stories aren't engine driven.  My issue with this is that the engine is defining what you can't do rather than what you can.  Add to this one of the ways MV was described was as allowing you to design over multiple platforms.  That would imply that you can choose which platforms are right for you.  Not everyone likes console gaming or computer games.  There are even those who do not like casual gaming.  What this comes down to is being given the tools that let you do what you envision is right for your idea.  This doesn't seem to be the case with the smaller maps in conjunction with the tutorials for how to convert from VX to MV.  The implication here is that the latter is a superior and more flexible engine than the former and that's what was hyped with all the options available to tailor the look of your game to fit your themes.  Maybe this is all a useless opinion or conjecture to some, but as an English major, I'm a huge fan of the 60+ hour games that immerse you in a world.  I like to feel like I'm living in the world, not just visiting.  There's something that reveals a deeper emotional context in the longer format for me.  That's the sort of games I like to play and make, not to mention the type of fiction I write.

This isn't about a complaint on arbitrary limitations.  It's about the inability to choose the platform that will support my stories and be true to my designs and art by being forced to develop on someone else's scale.  That's an artificial feel that makes for bad experiences and terrible art.

 

[Zoltor]

If that's the case, then how is MV an improvement over VX?  Stories aren't engine driven.  My issue with this is that the engine is defining what you can't do rather than what you can.  Add to this one of the ways MV was described was as allowing you to design over multiple platforms.  That would imply that you can choose which platforms are right for you.  Not everyone likes console gaming or computer games.  There are even those who do not like casual gaming.  What this comes down to is being given the tools that let you do what you envision is right for your idea.  This doesn't seem to be the case with the smaller maps in conjunction with the tutorials for how to convert from VX to MV.  The implication here is that the latter is a superior and more flexible engine than the former and that's what was hyped with all the options available to tailor the look of your game to fit your themes.  Maybe this is all a useless opinion or conjecture to some, but as an English major, I'm a huge fan of the 60+ hour games that immerse you in a world.  I like to feel like I'm living in the world, not just visiting.  There's something that reveals a deeper emotional context in the longer format for me.  That's the sort of games I like to play and make, not to mention the type of fiction I write.

This isn't about a complaint on arbitrary limitations.  It's about the inability to choose the platform that will support my stories and be true to my designs and art by being forced to develop on someone else's scale.  That's an artificial feel that makes for bad experiences and terrible art.

Personally I'm starting to believe, they purposely downgrade a feature of their choosing, every time they make a new version.

Seriously every 3 steps forward they take, they take one big step backwards.

After the first RPG maker, they removed the ability to select whatever page conditions we want, Ace had less map layers then XP, and MV has a alarmingly strict map size restriction(not to mention is exceedingly less user friendly, not a big problems for vets or people use to hands on utility programs in general sure, but is definitely a problem for new comers, so much for convenience).

Like why, why do that, each new RPG Maker shouldn't have downgraded features, they should have everything past RPG Makers had, and improvements/additions on top of it.

 

[Kane Hart]

Worst part the only excuse was given was because mobile users. 2 things bother me about that.

1) New engine they should of gotten tile streaming working right

2) If you limit the game based on the lowest spec item then should you not just build a text only game since even now a nexus 4 is decent spec but only runs at 8fps.

It's just odd I mean I want to love and be happy but at the same time it's just annoying as hell.

The good news is maybe the community can fix things up. Sadly if their going be a pain in the ass about the editor RPG Maker might be soon finding more competition to take them out. The editor is very basic and could even be done via html5 now lol.

I hope they start fixing up the editor and offering maybe some special options like to unlock past their own personal safety limits.

 

[Mouser]

If that's the case, then how is MV an improvement over VX?  Stories aren't engine driven.  My issue with this is that the engine is defining what you can't do rather than what you can.

I can think of dozens of ways MV is an improvement over every prior RPG maker. JavaScript over RGSS being chief among them. This engine has always dictated what you can't do, the details vary from one version to the next, but there are always limits to work with or work around. Expecting an engine like this to have no limitations simply isn't realistic or feasible.

If map size is the single most important thing for you, then this may not be the engine for you. Get that Steam refund. If you can adapt to working with smaller maps, and use other tools to create the feel of a larger world though, you may appreciate all the new things the engine lets you do that XP/VX/Ace wouldn't let you touch. It isn't like the engine is limiting you to 'small' maps:  you can recreate the world map from pretty much any 16 bit era RPG.

 

[Kane Hart]

I can think of dozens of ways MV is an improvement over every prior RPG maker. JavaScript over RGSS being chief among them. This engine has always dictated what you can't do, the details vary from one version to the next, but there are always limits to work with or work around. Expecting an engine like this to have no limitations simply isn't realistic or feasible.

If map size is the single most important thing for you, then this may not be the engine for you. Get that Steam refund. If you can adapt to working with smaller maps, and use other tools to create the feel of a larger world though, you may appreciate all the new things the engine lets you do that XP/VX/Ace wouldn't let you touch. It isn't like the engine is limiting you to 'small' maps:  you can recreate the world map from pretty much any 16 bit era RPG.

I don't agree with you there. You can json edit have map 3k x 3k for example. Sadly the way the client is right now performance on large maps are an issue even medium size maps will be an issue. It will require some work via the community if the devs don't do anything but I don't think telling people to get a refund at this point is fair.

 

[Mouser]

I don't agree with you there. You can json edit have map 3k x 3k for example. Sadly the way the client is right now performance on large maps are an issue even medium size maps will be an issue. It will require some work via the community if the devs don't do anything but I don't think telling people to get a refund at this point is fair.

Yes, you can do the direct workaround. People have been reporting issues with it - like crashing during large fills and throwing unhandled exceptions.

My point is that if Feature X is the single most important thing that you MUST HAVE in order to make your games, then you should work with an engine that includes Feature X. That's what this thread seems to be to me. The engine has cut the map size down. My guess is there are a lot of reasons for that decision and going with larger map sizes (like by changing the json) will open your project up to various issues.

There are other ways to present a large world than by having a single large map. Before you overload the engine, I would recommend trying to be creative and look at some of those other methods using maps the engine is designed to handle. That will probably save you a lot of headaches in the long run. It has nothing to do with whether large maps are a Good Thing or a Bad Thing - it's about recognizing that maybe this engine has some limitations to it (like every piece of software) and deciding whether or not those are limitations you can live with or if it's worth the trouble of hacking workarounds.

And for full honesty, how easy was it to get around the 500x500 limitation in Ace? I don't know because I never tried.

 

[Kane Hart]

I guess my issue would be that what other engines provide RPG Maker like experience. Hell most people like RPG Make just for the tilesets lol. They can't use them outside of RPG Maker.

So their best bet is to suggest or recommend or even cry to have their fav editor improve itself overtime.

I'm betting not just hoping that a few months down the road this community will have already rewrote big parts of the core for performance. I know this because one the best communities out there and these guys are determined to helps others for no cost. It's amazing.

Sadly the editor I'm sure will always be the bottleneck now.

 

[GethN7]

And for full honesty, how easy was it to get around the 500x500 limitation in Ace? I don't know because I never tried.

You couldn't, that was a hardcoded bottleneck.

Thing is, MV made map size a softcoded bottleneck, as in, you could don't have to worry about the ceiling with a little editing, and if the devs were going to leave that door open, it should been considered an edge case they either tested for stability or they needed to hard code it to begin with.

 

[Mouser]

You couldn't, that was a hardcoded bottleneck.

Thing is, MV made map size a softcoded bottleneck, as in, you could don't have to worry about the ceiling with a little editing, and if the devs were going to leave that door open, it should been considered an edge case they either tested for stability or they needed to hard code it to begin with.

So we actually have MORE freedom to create large maps than we did in prior versions.

This way, yes, if we deliberately go past the limits we have to worry about stability and performance, but those are things that are now under our control. The "community" will find ways to improve that, if it's something enough members of the community are concerned about. If not, it falls to the individual developer, which is still better than a hard-coded limit that couldn't be bypassed at all.

 

[Kane Hart]

Yeah right now I doubt you could make a 256x256 map or even close to it without having performance issues. The tile code is quite bad. It needs some revisions for the future. 

 

[DarkWolfInsanity]

I simply made a map that was 200x200, had everything planned, all the good stuff placed. Went into playtest, nearly crashed my computer it took so long to load in. Guess that world map idea is out, along with my Final Fantasy 1 remake (the worldmap for that would be 254x254).

 

[Shaz]

It could be something other than the size of the map

 

[Zoltor]

I simply made a map that was 200x200, had everything planned, all the good stuff placed. Went into playtest, nearly crashed my computer it took so long to load in. Guess that world map idea is out, along with my Final Fantasy 1 remake (the worldmap for that would be 254x254).

Wow that's bad, dungeon maps maybe problematic enough, but how the hell are people going to create large(or even medium) sized city maps, if it can't even handle a standard world map. City maps have all kinds of things going on, potentionally a 100+ events(a lot of which will be animated NPCs at that too), multiple layering mapping going on, exc?

Edit: To Shaz: Fair enough

To Darkwolf: Were you running multiple parallel proc events, have a Parallax background or anything of the like, that is known to cause stability issues with MV?

If you're using a Parallax background, tre removing it, and then seeing how it runs.

 

[DarkWolfInsanity]

Wow that's bad, dungeon maps maybe problematic enough, but how the hell are people going to create large(or even medium) sized city maps, if it can't even handle a standard world map. City maps have all kinds of things going on, potentionally a 100+ events(a lot of which will be animated NPCs at that too), multiple layering mapping going on, exc?

Edit: To Shaz: Fair enough

To Darkwolf: Were you running multiple parallel proc events, have a Parallax background or anything of the like, that is known to cause stability issues with MV?

If you're using a Parallax background, tre removing it, and then seeing how it runs.

I wasn't using any backgrounds, had no events set up yet, or anything. I build maps before I start working on events.

 

[Zoltor]

I wasn't using any backgrounds, had no events set up yet, or anything. I build maps before I start working on events.

OK.

Naturally, but your post made it sound like you may have had some events made, so just making sure you didn't have a bunch of parallel proc events running. 

Yikes, then that's atrocious, so it is having a problem just handling a 200x200 area, that is just full with tiles, nothing else huh

 

[DarkWolfInsanity]

OK.

Naturally, but your post made it sound like you may have had some events made, so just making sure you didn't have a bunch of parallel maps running. 

Yikes, then that's atrocious, so it is having a problem just handling a 200x200 area, that is just full with tiles, nothing else huh

We just need to wait for a script that can fix these issues. Javascript can do miracles.

 

[Astralweaver]

I totally agree with you Zan my overworld has always been 500x500 because I like to have several kingdoms in my games and I like them to kind of have a decent amount of land without all being cluttered together. The 256x256 is something that I am not happy with and will take some adjusting. Have you ever played any of the Suikoden Games Xan? The way they connected their kingdoms was by using borders or border bridges with guards. That might be a decent way for you to enlarge your world map, You can use the bridge to lead to a new kingdom and can make that kingdom its own map. Just a suggestion if this is still an issue.

 

[Bex]

Didnt read all but 500x500 Map uses much of the available performance resources before FPS would start to drop or lag happens.


But realise that you have an Event Limit of 200 no stuff doing Events (250 - 300possible  but not all at once on the Visible Screen)


So 200 Events to fill a 500x500Map (256x256Map) with much Content isnt easy. You would start to reuse Events, this makes much stuff


terrible to read and to remember if you made a break from project. Sure some people use regions insteed of events to connect stuff like worldmap towns to maps.


But this should be kept in mind when atempting big Maps.


Also do i use Pictures , Weather Effects, Tint Screen other Scripts that could use performance reserves?


Best thing is to set up testmap with all this different stuff to experiment with.


Unclean Eventcode or missuse of some Eventcommands can cause severe Lag, or uses more resource reserves than needed.


Edit: In Ace you dont have that extra Maplayer like in MV, which costs ace more events for mapping.


Hope this helps somehow.

 

[Frogboy]

It's a mild nuance but you can stitch world maps together and make it as big as you want.

 

[Allinardo]

This post might be dead by now but I found a pretty good workaround for this, that doesn't require you to overload your game with events.

You could really make your map as big as you want if you do something similar to what Pokemon games do if you divide your map into regions. In fact, let's use Hoenn in our example here, shall we? First things first, get two variables to track the player's X and Y position on the map.


Let's call this map "Littleroot" for...hopefully obvious reasons. In this map you can see I constructed both Littleroot and Route 101 to the north, with trees stretching indefinitely in all directions(or at least as far as you can see via map scrolling).






Now THIS map we'll call "Route 101". As you can see, now we can see both Littleroot to the south and Oldale to the north.





What you want to do is create a teleport event with no fading to the EXACT SAME SPOT on the other map to make it a seamless transition, and for all maps you want every adjacent map to be visible as well for the transition to appear seamless.
And of course for the map "Littleroot", only place the important events within Littleroot itself, not any of the events that would be present in Route 101, just so you're saving on resources a little bit. This of course can work a larger scale that is less rigid as well, but I'll leave the experimenting up to you. But to do that, now the variable I said to make earlier comes into play.
Have a parallel process event(or common event) check the variable with the X/Y position of the transition points between the maps, and if they line up then teleport to the other map. This will reduce the amount of events you need to create for the teleport, and consequentially reduce lag as well.
Now unless you're going to argue you need map AREAS with ACTIVE EVENTS larger than 256x256, then this should work just fine, especially if you're good at using events. Just gotta fine tune it and all. Hope this is helpful to at least someone who stumbles upon this post like I did.