More than 999 maps in a project

[SamJones]

Right on @Hudell !

This quote above IS the point.

Even though I doubt I will hit the 999 map limit, if this limit is in fact arbitrary (and by arbitrary I mean it can be picked and/or changed easily) whether or not people abandon their games is simply irrelevant.

The opinion that by limiting the number of maps a person uses will somehow improve the finish/quality rates is completely absurd, in my opinion. (not trying to offend anyone, I respect your right to your opinion and I hope you respect my right to think your opinion is absurd )

There's actually a term for this (aforementioned absurd notion) in manufacturing, it's called micromanagement, and micromanagement NEVER proves useful, in fact in most cases it's downright counter productive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement

Please read up on it before you make such ridiculous claims.

An arbitrary limit (especially one so easily circumvented as this limit on the number of maps) does not micromanagement make.

999 maps may be arbitrary but it is in no way low enough to be worrying or restrictive to 99.9% of users. For the remaining 0.1%, the already existing solutions should work well enough for the time being and they should be able to have learned how to apply them by the time they come close to the limit.

Therefore I see no urgent need to do anything about it. It will be neat when it it is raised but I won't lose any sleep over it.

 

[Tea's Jams]

@SamJones I'm not saying it's extreme in degree, but I stand by my statement.

If the only reason to ignore the desires of 70.8% of the people polled (according to the poll as of right now) is to keep people from making uninteresting maps, then yeah, that would be a form of micromanagement. read this quote from the site you referenced "manage[ment] or control with excessive attention to minor details"

Since, as I argued, what people do or don't do in regards to game completion and quality is their business, to base the decision to refuse to change the limit on that reasoning would absolutely be micromanagement.

That being said, I have not nor would I ever say that RPG Maker is refusing to change it, or that they feel that way at all(what do I know of their intentions?). Please don't misunderstand me.

I also agree completely with @bgillisp that it's low priority. I'm not addressing the behavior of RPG Maker developers in my post, but rather the notion (by some) that it should continue to be controlled to avoid a minor(imo irrelevant) concern. (aka micromanagement according to the link you provided)

 

[Tai_MT]

@SamJones I'm not saying it's extreme in degree, but I stand by my statement.

If the only reason to ignore the desires of 70.8% of the people polled (according to the poll as of right now) is to keep people from making uninteresting maps, then yeah, that would be a form of micromanagement. read this quote from the site you referenced "manage[ment] or control with excessive attention to minor details"

Since, as I argued, what people do or don't do in regards to game completion and quality is their business, to base the decision to refuse to change the limit on that reasoning would absolutely be micromanagement.

That being said, I have not nor would I ever say that RPG Maker is refusing to change it, or that they feel that way at all(what do I know of their intentions?). Please don't misunderstand me.

I also agree completely with @bgillisp that it's low priority. I'm not addressing the behavior of RPG Maker developers in my post, but rather the notion (by some) that it should continue to be controlled to avoid a minor(imo irrelevant) concern. (aka micromanagement according to the link you provided)

I think you've got it a little wrong. People like me aren't saying, "keep it low because it keeps terrible games from being made". Or anything remotely close to that kind of argument.

The argument, from the beginning, has been "Why does the vast majority of people who get the program need 999 maps?". Most of us would rather see the programmers spend their time and effort someplace else other than raising the map limit for a fair few people. Keep in mind, that while many of us wouldn't mind if they raised the limit, it's typically seen as "not a priority" because there's frankly a lot more pressing issues.

But, the answer we've been getting is something similar to, "I've got 6 hours of content in my game and I'm close to the 500 map mark!". To which, any really experienced user of the program usually thinks, "HOW?" And "WHY?"

So, the argument has thus become, "Is it necessary to raise the map limit for people who aren't familiar with how to use the program in efficient ways... or experienced ways?" My personal opinion on such would be "No, it's not necessary to change the program for people who haven't yet gotten enough experience in using the program to make an informed decision on whether or not they need that limit raised".

Anytime the discussion comes up about "raising the hard limit" of things, you inevitably run into that problem. How much is enough? Is 2000 skills really enough? 2000 Weapons? 2000 Armor Pieces? What about stat limits? Is 999 really enough? Many of these discussions boil down to the same thing, "Do you really need more than what you've got?". If the number is sufficiently high, then the answer is probably going to be "no", even if people want restrictive limits removed.

I think the proper way to handle such limits shouldn't even be handled via "vote". It should be handled with raw statistics. "How many people create a game that uses every single slot of X?" If that number is sufficiently high enough (I'd personally want that somewhere around 15-20% to make it a worthwhile endeavor to raise the limit), it becomes necessary or even a priority to raise the hard limit.

So, the argument is now basically, "Are you actually using your maps efficiently, or just making new maps every 10 seconds for the sake of doing so?" Do we increase our Weapon/Armor counts to 5000 because a chunk of people have 1000 daggers and 1000 chainmail variants in their game, most of which are bypassed by their players due to being useless/pointless in their game? I'd personally say "no", but people would probably tell me, "I need the freedom to do whatever I wish with the program!".

There isn't really a way to argue against that except to tell people to use what resources a program has more efficiently. There are people that no matter how large your map limits are... they're going to need more. And more. And more more more more more. "10,000 maps isn't enough. I've got 120 hours of content created and I'm already at the 9,000 map mark, I just don't have enough to finish my game, can we raise it even higher than that?"

I don't like having to be down on things like that, because it's silly to. But, at some point, there needs to be a hard limit, a place where people can say, "That's plenty". Maybe even a place where people running out of map limit come to in order to ask advice on either how to break that limit... or to not use so much of that limit in their game (This website does that quite nicely ). It's not about whether or not their game is good, or will be good. It's more about efficiency of their work.

I wouldn't mind a map limit of 10,000 that nobody would ever reach. But, at the same time, I have to think, "Do you REALLY need that many maps? What for? Do you even know what you're doing?" I'd love a removal on all the restrictions. Stats, states, characters, classes, etcetera. Anywhere a hard limit exists, I'd love to see that hard limit removed. But, at the same time... Do I really need that? Does anyone?

I, personally, think the limits we have in MV are perfectly acceptable. If I cannot create a decent 20-50 hour RPG with the limits currently imposed on me... then I feel like I'm not very good at making games and should probably learn some more. I'd wager if I did things right, I could probably get a 100 hour RPG out of the current limits in MV.

The point is, honestly, that it's possible right now to get a 100 hour epic with current map limits. How much further than that? I don't know. But, 100 hours is quite reasonable, I'd say. Especially with most users not creating much more than a 20 hour RPG.

So, while it'd be nice to remove the hard limits on everything, including maps and maybe make it "Infinity" or "really really big"... The question remains:

"Do you really need it? Will you ever use it? Especially after learning about how the program works and game design itself?"

 

[Animebryan]

Since no one else will state how important this would be to some developers (like me), I'll have to give an example to justify it. The reason I've taken a long hiatus from MV is that there still isn't a Random Map Generator plugin yet. For those who don't know what that is, it's a map that randomly generates each time you enter it, never the same layout. Since there's no actual option in the editor or a plugin to do it, there is a workaround to do this. You simply make a 'template' map, then use the random dungeon generator function to create a map. Then you highlight the whole area and copy & paste it onto a bigger map (limit is 256x256). Keep repeating this procedure until the main map is filled with pre-generated maps.

Now, depending on how big a single map is, you could only fit so many on a max size map, which means to produce a pseudo-random map generator, you'll need to make more full sized maps to increase the variations, otherwise the player will still see the same configuration too often. Obviously this concept would be meant for a 100+ floor dungeon where you just screen transition either into the same map or onto another with a bunch of variations. If you wanted to have differing themes as the player progresses, then you'll need more full sized maps to take advantage of this. This would easily require a lot of maps to produce this pseudo-random dungeon, especially if it's not the entire game itself but just a side-quest (like in my project) .

I'm just 1 of a few developers who would actually need something like this. Now I just wish something could be done about that stupid 256x256 max map size limit.

 

[TakeHomeTheCup]

I'm just 1 of a few developers who would actually need something like this. Now I just wish something could be done about that stupid 256x256 max map size limit.

I thought there was a way around it? By editing the .json file or something.

 

[Fornoreason1000]

@Animebryan, @TakeHomeTheCup
Breaking the map limit can be done using the method in my previous post.

Breaking the size limit can be done by using archeas's tiled format plugin. Since there's virtually no restrictions in the Tiled engine . this will also break the map limit of 999
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/tiled-plugin-version-1-3-0-released.50752/

 

[ChampX]

Many newbie creators wouldn't know how to set scripts or events to use the same map so that would only be viable for experienced users and anyone that intends to make a decent length game is going to approach the 1000 mark.

Not to sound like a jerk, but I don't think newbie creators should be making ambitious games. Small baby steps first and get practice with the software and just general design principles. Also as people have said, people won't finish these usually. People can disagree with me but I would rather encourage good design.

 

[Shade Aurion]

@Shade Aurion : 1 - 6 hour? How do you figure? I hit 20 hours in my game with ~300 maps. So, no, you can do a 60 hour game with the current limit.

I said it would be "fine" for people who intend to make 1-6 hours. If at 20 hours you've reached a third of the limit anyone making a full length game north of the 60 hour limit are pushing it. Sucks for me. My project is aiming at 80-120 hours.

Maybe this is going to sound like me being a complete jerk... But, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how 999 maps only equals 6 hours of content. At that point, you've got to be doing something horribly wrong in your game design. Something like that makes me worry very much about the quality of your own game.

Before I dropped on into MV, I had roughly 3 hours of content in my game on VX Ace. I'd worked roughly a year to get that much content (I didn't do a whole lot of game design, so it was probably more like 2 months of actual work). What I'd been doing was mapping, mostly, and setting up Quests (and ignoring my Database entirely). I had roughly 15 maps. Vast majority of those maps were for cutscene or house interiors. I had five or so Quests up and running (no skills to use) and about a dozen monsters to fight (a little over 25 total weapons that could be used to fight them).

But, 15 maps for 3 hours of actual content. Lots to explore, plenty of treasure to be had, five Quests to run, maybe 10 levels to gain (if you cared about gaining levels). The actual quality of that exploration and Questing was probably pretty low (since 3 hours of content across so few maps seems like the hallmark of low quality seeing as how you were backtracking across a Hub World quite a bit), but that amount of content could be done on limited map usage.

Starting over on MV, I haven't transferred anything from VX Ace forward (I liked the idea of a completely fresh start to fix most of my newbie mistakes). While I've started with the Database this time and haven't done anything except create TWO maps in game (one is the world map, used for cutscenes and lore purposes, the other is a BETA Test Map which will be deleted once I finish the game), I've got folders set aside for the previous maps in the last version of the maker. I'm sitting on roughly 28 maps currently and the ability to add in Questlines on those maps right this very moment if I chose to. In fact, current plans for my Demo place me at somewhere around 5 hours of content (if I can manage) and about 55 maps (rough estimate, I may get creative as I go along and add more... or find ways to have less).

I'm not even trying to limit map usage, since mapping is one of the things I really love doing. I just naturally "cut the fat" out of my games and eliminate unnecessary "screens" and "maps". I try to remove unnecessary things because why waste my time working on something a player isn't going to interact with much? Why waste time making a bunch of small maps that a player will walk through once and never see again? I'd rather a player spend several minutes walking through a map (or revisiting an existing map) so that my work on said map gets the maximum exposure possible. If a player walks through a map in two minutes and never comes back to it... I have to ask myself, "Is that map really necessary? Was any of that work really necessary since they won't be coming back and likely won't even remember it?"

I appreciate the 999 limit, I just can't see actual game devs hitting that limit without doing something horrifyingly wrong in their own game. Do I mind if that limit is bigger? Not for practicality, no. If a dev legitimately needs over 999 total maps, then it's good for them. The problem is, the vast majority of even AAA titles today don't even use 999 maps. So, hitting the limit is frankly absurd. For me, having more than 999 maps is a red flag in the QA (Quality Assurance) department. It typically means the person making a game has no idea what they were doing and probably has a lot of default 17x13 maps in there for no reason other than they couldn't make a map smaller and it didn't need to be that big to begin with. Lots of screen transitions tend to wear on a player. A "screen transition" is kind of a mental "reset the brain" for many players. You take this small moment to relax and file the last map away into memory (if you do this... I do... not sure about other players) and "clean the slate" to begin the next map. Each transition marks the place of "seeing something new". With a ton of transitions in a frequent manner with nothing "new" to see on each map... just more of the same... It wears on you as a player. You begin to feel like the game is a slog. You begin to feel that while it has a lot of content, that content is as deep as a mud puddle.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I have to get ready for work.

Well you're right. That was super jerky.
1-6 hours is the general length of many completed projects, especially those available on Steam which for the sake of this argument i'm using as the baseline for completed projects. Immediately after my post is a guy who apparently has a 20 hour project who has reached a third of the limit so there is no need to make negative assumptions about my project. I am aiming for a SNES era RPG full length project. Its fine that you want to make every single map 'useful' in your own opinion but the implication that that MUST be the case is ridiculous. As ridiculous as the notion as not doing that makes the integrity of a project questionable.

Lets use Chrono Trigger as an example here. How many maps do you think are in that game? (Its LOTS) Is every map useful? Not in the sense that they're filled with story, battles or monsters but they're useful for depth and spacing the world out. There are plenty of maps people don't return to or cruise through and maybe return to once or never again. Does that mean they shouldn't exist? I don't think so. It makes the world full and rich.

Your gripes are all based on the assumption that maps are not used effectively but that is entirely subjective. That is up to the creator, not something to generalize. The vast majority of AAA games aren't dedicated top down JRPGs so that argument is irrelevant but still, i'd call bull**** on this anyways. Any Tales game would break the 999 map mark. Many Final Fantasy Games would too. I dunno what JRPGs you're playing but your perception of the genre doesn't represent everyone elses. What you strive for in your project may not necessarily be what others strive for. All of that **** is subjective man. You're opinion and your approach. Not the one true truth.

If you don't think you'll reach the limit, cool. This isn't an issue for you even slightly then. Why are you even posting here? It is an issue for those that worry about the limit though and petty jabs at the structure and integrity of other peoples projects, of which you've seen nothing of is BS. Cut that **** out. The bottom line is, you lose NOTHING from an increase in the limit. Those that need an increase have a lot to gain.

 

[Shade Aurion]

Well, I'm completely against this and every other virtual limit of the editor. Even if I never reach the map limit, I've already hit the max number of common events.
EVEN if a higher number of maps meant a game is bad (which it doesn't), people should be allowed to make bad games if they want. Specially when this limit is just a random number that if increased would have absolutely no effect on anyone else's game.

There is a limit to common events? God, why?

 

[Andar]

[dpost]@Shade Aurion [/dpost]
If you want to quote several people, you can use the multiquote option (+ quote) or better yet, don't quote unless you need to, the convention of writing @Shade Aurion is enough to refer to someone and ping them.

That said, in general average it is considered that one hour of gameplay needs about 100 hours of development time to be programmed with everything (including mapping, databasing, playtests etc) - in fact with intense playtests its usually a lot more.
Targeting a 100-hour-game would therefore require 10.000 development hours. Fulltime work is usually considered 168 hours a month, so even working fulltime on it (with no other job, which means no other source of income for your food) will require 60 months or five years of fulltime work.
So unless you have a full development team (and how would you pay those people so that they can eat?) there is absolutely no way for you to complete that in any reasonable time.
Oh - nothing prevents you to do this as a hobby, myself I've been working on my main hobby project for the last 25-30 years (not a computer game) but you need to know up front that it will take a lot of time to complete it under such conditions.


As for the common event limit - everything in the database is limited for technical reasons - you can't make a database unlimited without introducing some other disadvantages. That is something entirely different from the map limit, and increasing those limits will cause much more problems than increasing the map limit would do. Because the database needs to be loaded completely at any given time, while only one map is loaded at the same time.

 

[Fornoreason1000]

@Shade Aurion There's a limit on all data types. I think mV is 2000 and vxace, vx and xp was 999. With these older versions I distinctly remember both a hex edit tutorial to bypass these limits. Hell someone even made a script that forcefully adds like 5k empty skills to trick the editor into allowing them effectively breaking the limit.(WARNING these methods probably break TOS)


It should be noted that unlike map data. The entire array of objects is stored in just one file. (All actors in one file, ALL common events in another) Data base objects are ALL loaded into ram on start up(unlike the audio or maps, so breaking the map limit doesn't increase ram significantly) . This means that if you had like 2 000 000 of each you'll run into ram issues since even the empty objects take up memory.

Most 10 year olds don't understand any of that. Hence the limits.

 

[Shade Aurion]

[dpost]@Shade Aurion [/dpost]
If you want to quote several people, you can use the multiquote option (+ quote) or better yet, don't quote unless you need to, the convention of writing @Shade Aurion is enough to refer to someone and ping them.

That said, in general average it is considered that one hour of gameplay needs about 100 hours of development time to be programmed with everything (including mapping, databasing, playtests etc) - in fact with intense playtests its usually a lot more.
Targeting a 100-hour-game would therefore require 10.000 development hours. Fulltime work is usually considered 168 hours a month, so even working fulltime on it (with no other job, which means no other source of income for your food) will require 60 months or five years of fulltime work.
So unless you have a full development team (and how would you pay those people so that they can eat?) there is absolutely no way for you to complete that in any reasonable time.
Oh - nothing prevents you to do this as a hobby, myself I've been working on my main hobby project for the last 25-30 years (not a computer game) but you need to know up front that it will take a lot of time to complete it under such conditions.


As for the common event limit - everything in the database is limited for technical reasons - you can't make a database unlimited without introducing some other disadvantages. That is something entirely different from the map limit, and increasing those limits will cause much more problems than increasing the map limit would do. Because the database needs to be loaded completely at any given time, while only one map is loaded at the same time.

Apologies, i'm used to auto merging posts or the ability to delete posts. I would have edited it in but it was too late.
That said, my project was 60%ish complete in VXA and much of that i'm transcribing into MV at a decent pace. I'm expecting to fulling complete all the story and side quests passed the first continent in 6 months or so. Regardless, this is a project that has been remade and refined since RPG Maker 98 was a thing

And yeah it'll take a lot of time to complete. Some days i'll be at it all day, other times its an hour or two. Its all steps forward though and builds up

@Shade Aurion There's a limit on all data types. I think mV is 2000 and vxace, vx and xp was 999. With these older versions I distinctly remember both a hex edit tutorial to bypass these limits. Hell someone even made a script that forcefully adds like 5k empty skills to trick the editor into allowing them effectively breaking the limit.(WARNING these methods probably break TOS)


It should be noted that unlike map data. The entire array of objects is stored in just one file. (All actors in one file, ALL common events in another) Data base objects are ALL loaded into ram on start up(unlike the audio or maps, so breaking the map limit doesn't increase ram significantly) . This means that if you had like 2 000 000 of each you'll run into ram issues since even the empty objects take up memory.

Most 10 year olds don't understand any of that. Hence the limits.

Fair point but I think its still a tad tight. I mean 1500 maps or 2k maps I doubt anyone would need to surpass and is a reasonable limitation. 999 though.. anyone making a full length game is approaching the limit. The limit should be reasonable yet unapproachable. Plus nothing would suck more then getting near the end of an 80 hour project only to hit a brick wall. Screw that.

I'm against any limits TBH but I also don't think creators should have to break TOS to get around something that can be flicked off like a light switch

 

[SamJones]

Lets use Chrono Trigger as an example here. How many maps do you think are in that game? (Its LOTS)

I counted 137. Which is less lots than 999.

 

[Shade Aurion]

I counted 137. Which is less lots than 999.

Lol, count again. Keep in mind that there are ages with different versions of maps, dungeons with many different screens, houses and shops, the End of Time, etc etc etc..

137.. lol no

http://www.snesmaps.com/maps/ChronoTrigger/ChronoTriggerMapSelect.html

I stopped counting at 450

Keep in mind that these screen are crammed together. Many map frames are many maps.
Many maps are also enormous

 

[bgillisp]

You can do different versions of maps without doing a new map though, by using the switch tileset command and/or events which set up different decorations and such based on where you are on the story. So if you do that, you can get it under 999.

In another thread, someone actually calculated how much space you'd need to recreate Skyrim. They got it to fit in the 999 map limit we have. I think you can also do FF7, 8 or 9 easily with the current limits, just by putting each interior map in one map in the engine.

 

[Tea's Jams]

Lol, count again. Keep in mind that there are ages with different versions of maps, dungeons with many different screens, houses and shops, the End of Time, etc etc etc..

137.. lol no

http://www.snesmaps.com/maps/ChronoTrigger/ChronoTriggerMapSelect.html

I stopped counting at 450

Keep in mind that these screen are crammed together. Many map frames are many maps.
Many maps are also enormous

Also, they were working with a total size limit of 32 meg (4Mb, the troubleshooting demo's we provide in bug reports have much more memory than that.
Just a fun fact I thought I would throw in

 

[Shade Aurion]

You can do different versions of maps without doing a new map though, by using the switch tileset command and/or events which set up different decorations and such based on where you are on the story. So if you do that, you can get it under 999.

In another thread, someone actually calculated how much space you'd need to recreate Skyrim. They got it to fit in the 999 map limit we have. I think you can also do FF7, 8 or 9 easily with the current limits, just by putting each interior map in one map in the engine.

I'm sure the world map would but every shop, building cave, different scene.. I dunno man. Those maps rack up fast

Also, they were working with a total size limit of 32 meg (4Mb, the troubleshooting demo's we provide in bug reports have much more memory than that.
Just a fun fact I thought I would throw in

Which is part of what made Chrono Trigger and many Squaresoft titles so great. They were pushing the boundaries of their projects but these days such limitations are unnecessary.

The only reasons I see to be against this are:
1) Most people won't need more then 999 maps
Some will though

2) Too many maps will cause increased RAM use
No one is asking for 10,000 maps. Doubling the limit would be more then enough for me and likely most others who want more maps.

3) Make maps how we say
No. I already cram my maps together at the cost of having to use the same tileset on all crammed together maps.

If they doubled the limit tomorrow, and included it in an update without mentioning it in patch notes, everyone against it wouldn't even notice.

 

[bgillisp]

I'm sure the world map would but every shop, building cave, different scene.. I dunno man. Those maps rack up fast
.

And that's the problem. Using a new map for every shop, building, cave and different scene is seen as bad design, as it is a wasteful use of maps. You can cram multiple shops on the same map. You can put multiple interiors on the same map. In both cases, the player will not know they are the same map.

As for scenes, I handle those with a switch (21), which I turn on when I'm in a scene, and off when I'm not. If I need more than one on the same map, I use a different switch (22). From there, its good use of events and conditions for when they should show to make it work.

Using both of those tricks would easily allow you to make FF7, 8, or 9 within the limits of the current editor.

 

[Shade Aurion]

Its not a matter of if its bad design or not. Thats not a good enough reason to vote against an increase in the limit. People should be allowed to create as ****ty a game as they like. Personally I already combine maps but if you wish to use a different tileset, you have to make a different map otherwise you're limiting yourself so a single tileset and I personally would call that poor design.

Obviously any creator should seek to suppress the unnecessary use of maps as much as possible but the limit shouldn't be so easily approachable. At least thats the way I see it. Currently most voters have voted yes, the second most amount of people have voted yes but not important so MOST people are either for it or just not against it. It's surprising to see so many people arguing against something that likely wouldn't even effect them in the slightest.

With 28% of people against it, those against are by far the minority.

 

[bgillisp]

You have a point on that. Still, that's why most of us are saying its not important when even using a little bit of decent design practice fixes the problem for 99.99% of games. Plus, RPGMaker has a little bit of a rep to try to protect as it got unfairly hurt when Steam Greenlight first released due to all the shovelware that was shoved onto the platform using it. So right now, anything that makes it easier to make a bad game is something people are leery of implementing, regardless of the reason.