What's your Mapping wishlist?

[Shaz]

I never really used anything earlier than RMXP, so I can only comment on that and what's come since.

Thinking of all the different versions of the engine, what might be possible in other engines or mapping tools, or what you'd like to see that you haven't yet seen anywhere (except 3D - please don't mention 3D), what would make a great map builder and could actually be implemented into MV without turning it into a completely different engine?

For me ...

• More layers
• More control over what goes on what layers
• Autotile drawing like XP (drawing with autotile A doesn't cause what you've already drawn with autotile B to get messed up)
• Autotile expansion (double-click on an autotile and it opens up all the patterns so you can choose which one you want to use)
• Lots of autotiles
• Mix & Match tilesheets (like Ace's & MV's tile slots)
• Priorities (like XP, so tiles correctly show in front of or behind the player and events)
• Tiles that act like a counter but don't draw like a counter (I'd like to be able to designate fences as counters so you can talk to NPCs on the other side, but if you do that, they don't draw properly)

What can you add? I'm sure I've left a lot out and will only realise it when I see other responses.

 

[TheoAllen]

1. I'm pretty much like the VX style mapping than XP actually. While XP can do more freedom, it adds more time to setup one map plus having to deal with 3 manual layers. So what I wish is, it has automatic layering like VX style but you have an option edit them manually like XP.

2. More tile size. While I understand it could be troublesome on the actual implementation, at least I wish it has option to switch to a predefined tile size. I don't expect that you could write any tile size you want, but I do expect there's a switch between 48px and 32px.

3. Grid-Free doodads. Pretty much like Yanfly's. This doodads can be set into 2 priorities at least. Always on top / bottom of characters. If it set the priorities to above, it will be placed all placed tiles and character. If placed below, it will at least be placed above ground type tile. And it will set below anything else.

4. Ability to turn on/off any layer.

5. Export map to png function

6. Manual tile flagging. Something like region ID, but it has function to override tile property. For example, I want some tiles to be impassable. But I don't want to set passability for a tile, or place empty events, or manually evented them so player will step back.

 

[Shaz]

1. I'm pretty much like the VX style mapping than XP actually.

I didn't really use VX much - skipped from XP to Ace. Is the VX style of mapping pretty similar to the Ace style, with the exception of multiple tilesets?

nice list.

 

[Faye Valentine]

As someone that have been through all RPG Maker versions, I can put some on this list. I'd go like this: (and I know I'm fantasizing a bit here haha)

>Choosing Z index: treating tiles as objects, you could choose the Z index of your selection. This would "eliminate" layers, and make it so the ground layers would be the lowest Z and other objects (trees, etc.) would be accordingly higher.

>Toggle grid: treating tiles as objects, you could choose whether your selection will follow the grid or not. The issue with this would be passabilities. But it'd be a neat feature.

Or, in fact, if we talking 'bout mapping as in general:

>Choose grid size: boy, just imagine if you could choose the size of the grid. I mean: 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, whatever thing. That'd be a gamechanger, ain't it?

>Unlimit tilesets: even if I actually *like* MV's mapping, one thing I didn't like is that they still pushed the "tileset groups" thing. You know, A, B, C, D and E. XP could only have one at time, yes that's correct, but you could edite the file to be up to 30.000px long! and phew, there you could have a lot. If groups are eliminated or you brought back XP's tile system, that'd be also cool.

I don't know what else though. It's quite early in the morning here and I'm not functioning well haha. Besides you pointed out basically everything. But yeah, interesting thread, let's see what people can think of!

I didn't really use VX much - skipped from XP to Ace. Is the VX style of mapping pretty similar to the Ace style, with the exception of multiple tilesets?

VX style marked a tendency even in MV. Ace it's the same as VX, with, yes, the exception of multiple tilesets. VX Was too strict on this side.

 

[TheoAllen]

I didn't really use VX much - skipped from XP to Ace. Is the VX style of mapping pretty similar to the Ace style, with the exception of multiple tilesets?

I said VX mapping style because it's what Ace and MV use. It was originally from VX, but they expanded it much further like adding multiple tileset switching, 4 directions, and many QoL stuff. But they way they did mapping was similar (Tile A for autotile, B-E for second layer). Except VX doesn't have shadow edit feature.

 

[kovak]

Be able to rotate and mirror tiles.

 

[TheoAllen]

Tile mirroring is understandable. But rotating, I'm not sure. I never have a case where I want to rotate a specific tile though.

Speaking of which, one crossed in my mind. Ability to set the speed of animated tile like water tile. So it's up to you if you want it to play it faster or slower.

 

[Shaz]

Be able to rotate and mirror tiles

That is not a mapping function. The tiles need to be drawn rotated. Test it out - grab one of the character sheets that has items on it, open it in an image editing program, and rotate the whole thing. You can see that simply rotating (a single tile or a group of tiles) can't be done - they have to actually be drawn from a different perspective.

If they were 3D objects it would be a different matter, but they're not.

XP could only have one at time, yes that's correct, but you could edite the file to be up to 30.000px long!

Those massive tilesets also caused massive lag though, as it took so long to draw the map and so much memory to hold the tileset.

Ability to set the speed of animated tile like water tile.

YES! Have you noticed how the waterfalls animate much more slowly than the water itself? At least in MV. Not sure if VX/Ace were the same. Actually, were VX/Ace waterfalls the whole 3-groups-wide, and MV was the one that did the weird thing with the waterfalls on the A1 sheet?


That makes me think of another one ... or two

• Autotiles with transparency
• Autotiles on upper layers

They kind of go hand-in-hand, and probably come under the "more control over layers" point I already listed.

 

[Milennin]

Not that much more to add, but I wish mapping a layer wouldn't affect another layer. Like, I place down trees, and I want to map tall grass beneath it, it erases the trees in MV. Used to work fine in RM2K/3.

 

[cabfe]

Depth. Not 3D, but the ability (like a smart ☆) to display a tile B-E either "below" or "above" depending on the Y position of your character.
Of course, it only has meaning for character sprites bigger than the default tile size.

 

[Tai_MT]

I would like to take a couple features from RM2000.

1. Ability to set passability of map tiles for VEHICLES. Gone are the days when you could designate certain mountains as "impassible" by an airship. Now, if you have an airship, it crosses over everything, regardless. Well, unless you muck about with eventing or scripting or plugins or whatever. Same with boats and such.
2. Ability to set the battle backgrounds via the tiles. I find it very irritating that a map has a set background for all battles, unless you event it out or use the extremely cumbersome "tile ID" (which is actually a downgrade from simply flagging where enemies appear and just drawing a freakin' box on the map and the engine itself taking care of the issue rather than having to paint every individual tile for each encounter).
3. I'd also like the ability to have certain tiles allow passage "under them" while also allowing the dev a certain amount of freedom to change the layer of those tiles later so that they can be "passed over" during gameplay. You know, so you could pass under a bridge in the mountains... then you loop back around the map... and now you're passing across that same bridge. I'm not sure if that's doable, but I'd like to see that functionality in the future as it currently demands a lot of "mucking about" to get something so simple to work.
4. I'd also like to see "direction face" tiles. Currently, there are only North-South stairs. I'd like something where some of these tiles have "options" to change their facing. Sort of like you can do with Sprites (maybe have some of the tiles work like the sprite sheets? They could have animation frames and facing frames?). I think this would make mapping quite a bit more versatile.
5. This last one really just applies to the general art style trend... I'd like an option to have "slanted" and "curved" end walls for cliffs and buildings and such. Everything looks too "square" and unless you look for or alter the tileset yourself, there's no option to change this. I miss the old "45 degree slant" cliff faces you could get, that would make the world look more interesting.

 

[Hudell]

I want a note box per tile, so I can add as many custom data on the tile as I need.

 

[Andar]

1. Ability to set passability of map tiles for VEHICLES. Gone are the days when you could designate certain mountains as "impassible" by an airship. Now, if you have an airship, it crosses over everything, regardless. Well, unless you muck about with eventing or scripting or plugins or whatever. Same with boats and such.

I would like a completely different way to handle passability that would solve this and also other problems.
Basically it would be an 8-bit-passability coded in a number from 1-255.
Each tile would get such a passability number as well as the player/vehicle and all events. And then it would be a simple AND - if an AND between the tile-number and the object-number (with object being any movable event, player or vehicle) is zero then the tile is impassable and if not zero then the tile would be passable for that object.

For those who are not programmers: that would be a very easy way to create eight different passabilities and include the option to have any object being able to combine them in any desired way. Each of those eight passability would be controlled by one bit (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128) and if a vehicle or event had one or more of those bits set, it would be able to move on all tiles that have one of the same bits set. Then simply assign each bit to a different form of movement - walk, run, shallow water, deep water, air, road, rails, space, whatever.
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Additionally I would like to have more options of animated tiles instead of only A1 - the maps would be much more lively if you could animate grass or trees without eventing.

 

[Shaz]

3. I'd also like the ability to have certain tiles allow passage "under them" while also allowing the dev a certain amount of freedom to change the layer of those tiles later so that they can be "passed over" during gameplay. You know, so you could pass under a bridge in the mountains... then you loop back around the map... and now you're passing across that same bridge.

This is doable in MV using the Overpass Tiles plugin. I've never seen a really good description of how to use them, but one of the FMS packs (can't remember which) uses it well in the sample game.

I think #4 and #5 are more about the tilesets/images than about being able to do something with mapping that we currently can't?

 

[Tai_MT]

This is doable in MV using the Overpass Tiles plugin. I've never seen a really good description of how to use them, but one of the FMS packs (can't remember which) uses it well in the sample game.

I think #4 and #5 are more about the tilesets/images than about being able to do something with mapping that we currently can't?

5. Is definitely about the images. But, #4 is about your tilesets working more like Sprites do. Where you would have the ability to have "animation" frames (3 in the case of sprites) as well as frames for "facing" if they existed. This way, you could have items that were not necessarily the "auto-tiles" be animated without having to throw an event in... Or, you could have those pieces of "tiles" that you can't access as "objects" in the events also be able to be animated or have 'rotated' sprites for them without pulling in a new piece of art for every individual object you want to Event. It would save the issue of dealing with events when it was available via tile.

 

[jonthefox]

1. I want some kind of grid-free doodads function. This would solve so many other problems - it would clear up room in tilesheets. But an important thing is, these doodads need to show up in the editor - because i don't like mapping or eventing without knowing exactly what i've put on the map so far.

2. the ability to switch between 32x32 and 48x48

3. a built-in ability to do lighting, fogs, clouds, shadows, and all those things that make a map look truly nice.

 

[Shaz]

Or, you could have those pieces of "tiles" that you can't access as "objects" in the events also be able to be animated or have 'rotated' sprites for them without pulling in a new piece of art for every individual object you want to Event.

If I'm understanding you correctly, someone else mentioned rotating sprites. It doesn't work in 2D. If you take a 2D bookcase that faces down, and rotate it, you get a 2D bookcase that faces down, lying on its side, not a 2D bookcase that faces left or right. "Rotating" 2D sprites requires redrawing them.

I'm sure you know this, so I'm thinking I'm not quite grasping your meaning. You could have a "character sprite" styled sheet with the same object being animated or facing different directions, but you will still require a different sprite for each frame and direction. Is that what you mean - have them in a similar format to the characters, rather than all taking up room on a single tilesheet? Now that I say it, I think that's probably closer to what you mean.

 

[Tai_MT]

If I'm understanding you correctly, someone else mentioned rotating sprites. It doesn't work in 2D. If you take a 2D bookcase that faces down, and rotate it, you get a 2D bookcase that faces down, lying on its side, not a 2D bookcase that faces left or right. "Rotating" 2D sprites requires redrawing them.

I'm sure you know this, so I'm thinking I'm not quite grasping your meaning. You could have a "character sprite" styled sheet with the same object being animated or facing different directions, but you will still require a different sprite for each frame and direction. Is that what you mean - have them in a similar format to the characters, rather than all taking up room on a single tilesheet? Now that I say it, I think that's probably closer to what you mean.

Yep, that's what I mean. Handle the tilesets like sprite sheets so you can create different sprites for "facing" and set them while you're mapping rather than have to make events.

 

[Wavelength]

The biggest change I would like to see is using an Objects-based approach to mapping, rather than a tile/layer based approach. Only one layer would be necessary, but objects (including tiles themselves) could be placed onto the map at any X and Y location (not just at multiples of 32 pixels), and would not need to be assigned to tilesets before drawing them. Objects would be assigned a Depth by the designer in order to determine which objects (or events or players) will draw on top of each other when they are at the same X/Y, and Objects would be tracked individually by the editor so that they could individually be moved around, changed, or deleted without needing to redo part of your map.

As points of reference, Yanfly's "Grid Doodads" plugin package, as well as GameMaker Studio's Room Editor, are fairly similar to what I'm suggesting.