Which One's Better?

[HexMozart88]

So, I was thinking of making AD into more of a point and click style game because I'm really struggling with making these maps not buggy, but they still look good so I want to keep them. So now I'm trying to figure out which one would be better to use: a mouse script and just disable the player entirely, or just use a cursor graphic for the player and you just control it with arrow keys. Pros of the former are that it's much simpler to do because the mouse script will take care of things for me. But the Con is that my maps are rather large and I don't know if it's even possible to scroll the screen with a mouse script. Also, I have no idea how to disable the player without making an autorun on every single map which is probably going to bloat the game.
Pros of the latter are the scrolling capabilities and it will work like a regular RM game. Cons are that people might find it a bit strange that you can't control something that is clearly a mouse cursor... with the mouse.

So what do people think here?

 

[Finnuval]

Hmmm... Point and click with no mouse controls would be... Odd to say the least. That's my opinion anyway

 

[goosetrava]

I would do the second one. it would be weird at first but with a few handfuls of players it could become a whole new genre: scroll and click. or point and walk. I don't know it would be cool.

 

[HexMozart88]

Ah, gotta love two completely contrasting opinions, LOL.

 

[Finnuval]

Well, it's only two opinions so far xD

 

[Zeireth]

There is also option 3, find a fix to the buggy maps. There now you have 3 different opinions so far.

I personally do not know how long you have been working to make the maps work. Just do not give up on your new ideas if those become buggy.

 

[HexMozart88]

I've had parallax maps in my game for several years. I'm good at making them look good, but then the passability is always messed up. Tile mapping would be easier, but I'm horrible at making it look good. So I basically have to decide between making my game look unique and making my maps functional. So I decided to try and find something that would solve both things.

 

[Finnuval]

I've had parallax maps in my game for several years. I'm good at making them look good, but then the passability is always messed up. Tile mapping would be easier, but I'm horrible at making it look good. So I basically have to decide between making my game look unique and making my maps functional. So I decided to try and find something that would solve both things.

Haha I am the same xD

 

[Zeireth]

I've had parallax maps in my game for several years. I'm good at making them look good, but then the passability is always messed up. Tile mapping would be easier, but I'm horrible at making it look good. So I basically have to decide between making my game look unique and making my maps functional. So I decided to try and find something that would solve both things.

Do you use RPG Maker MV? I heard OcRam's passages plugin is good for parallax. Parallax mapping can look amazing. I personally would not touch parallax mapping. The default engine isn't really built for it.

I can't wait for my project to be done. I plan on moving on to Godot or Unity or Unreal Engine 5. I think I will use Godot because I still want to make another 2d rpg but do not want the limitations of RPG Maker.

OcRam - Passages plugin (for MV)

Introduction This plugin uses region IDs to determine a player 'floor level'. Even autotiles can be drawn ABOVE players (if player is on lower ground). I have tried to find this type of plugin for a long time, then decided to code one my self. I know you can use different tilesets or events to...

forums.rpgmakerweb.com

Good luck with your game. I hope you can figure out what you want. At the end of the day it is your decision what to do regardless of everyone's opinions on this thread.

 

[HexMozart88]

No, I use Ace, but thanks.

Yeah, and the maps have unfortunately led people to call my game a broken mess, so I desperately need to do something about this.

EDIT: So I think I might just recruit someone to help with this. I just don't know what the job title would be.

 

[woootbm]

I'm not entirely sure how the plugins for Ace are. In the tinkering with parallax I've done in MV, I just had to make a basic tile map for collision. You can set the background image in the editor to be a version of your parallax (with all the layers merged) so you can see what you are tiling on top of. The plugin I use (Orange overlay) slaps the parallax on top of the tiled map. For the finer edges, the plugin I use allows you to create events with specific collision shapes so you can round things off. From what I remember when looking into this in Ace, the box collision is still the same. You just draw regions instead of tiles on top of the parallax.

Layering is what it is (does the Ace plugin allow layering?). Easiest way is to already be creating your map layer by layer in Photoshop/Gimp/whatever. Then just save each layer as a separate PNG. Otherwise, you're stuck trying to lasso or whatever and manually separate them.

 

[Zeireth]

I'm not entirely sure how the plugins for Ace are. In the tinkering with parallax I've done in MV, I just had to make a basic tile map for collision. You can set the background image in the editor to be a version of your parallax (with all the layers merged) so you can see what you are tiling on top of. The plugin I use (Orange overlay) slaps the parallax on top of the tiled map. For the finer edges, the plugin I use allows you to create events with specific collision shapes so you can round things off. From what I remember when looking into this in Ace, the box collision is still the same. You just draw regions instead of tiles on top of the parallax.

Layering is what it is (does the Ace plugin allow layering?). Easiest way is to already be creating your map layer by layer in Photoshop/Gimp/whatever. Then just save each layer as a separate PNG. Otherwise, you're stuck trying to lasso or whatever and manually separate them.

They do not use java plugins. They use ruby scripts. Modern RPG Maker has made parallax mapping much easier. For instance RPG Maker MZ allows you to draw on different layers plus you can now use different tile sizes that are built into the editor.

I started RPG Maker during VX (not Ace).

 

[Nenen]

Spoiler: Edit2: actually this doesn't really help.

@Hudell's Orange movement scripts might be able to help you out with your original problem.

scripts/standalone/movement at master · Hudell/scripts

Rpg Maker Vx Ace Scripts. Contribute to Hudell/scripts development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Though I haven't tested them out yet. (I'm planning to)
Edit2 continued: I really ought to look more carefully when doing this, I confused his debug scripts for something similar to what Hime made.
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Edit: Though a Scroll and Click game does sound interesting at least.