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TIPS FOR INDOORS MAPPING?
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1
Bakutex
15
Bakutex
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CloseI consider myself a decent mapper when it comes to forest, towns, etc..
But when it comes to indoors.. I just run out of ideas, and eventually end up disgusted for what I did..
Can anyone give me some advice on what should I do when it comes to indoor mapping?
Im using RPG maker XP by the way.
But when it comes to indoors.. I just run out of ideas, and eventually end up disgusted for what I did..
Can anyone give me some advice on what should I do when it comes to indoor mapping?
Im using RPG maker XP by the way.
amerk
2539
Space is the number one fault of interior mapping. Smaller is often better. When it comes to envisioning interior mapping, I look at each tile as an approximate 2 feet by 2 feet size. That helps give me perspective.
With this in mind, I can easily decide a single bedroom would be around 5 to 10 tiles across and 5 to 10 tiles high, to give an approximation of a minimum of 50 feet (for very small bedrooms) to 200 feet (very large bedrooms). I usually settle for something in the middle.
Also, don't put everything against the walls, which winds up leaving the middle area open. Add a table, chairs, a section of wall for closeting... those help to fill in space without over cluttering.
With this in mind, I can easily decide a single bedroom would be around 5 to 10 tiles across and 5 to 10 tiles high, to give an approximation of a minimum of 50 feet (for very small bedrooms) to 200 feet (very large bedrooms). I usually settle for something in the middle.
Also, don't put everything against the walls, which winds up leaving the middle area open. Add a table, chairs, a section of wall for closeting... those help to fill in space without over cluttering.
Bakutex
15
author=amerk
Space is the number one fault of interior mapping. Smaller is often better. When it comes to envisioning interior mapping, I look at each tile as an approximate 2 feet by 2 feet size. That helps give me perspective.
With this in mind, I can easily decide a single bedroom would be around 5 to 10 tiles across and 5 to 10 tiles high, to give an approximation of a minimum of 50 feet (for very small bedrooms) to 200 feet (very large bedrooms). I usually settle for something in the middle.
Also, don't put everything against the walls, which winds up leaving the middle area open. Add a table, chairs, a section of wall for closeting... those help to fill in space without over cluttering.
You know thats the problem I have, I stick everything to the walls, thanks for the help buddy!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The problem is, it makes sense to put most things against the walls, because that's what we do in real life. I find myself doing the same thing, but instead of avoiding it, I try to make it work better.
If you keep having problems with sticking everything to the walls, here are two more pieces of advice:
1) Add more walls. Especially if you combine several rooms into a single map, you can easily get away with adding walls that go partway into the middle of rooms, dividing a room into two kinda-sub-rooms. Sometimes you can put like a raised/depressed area in part of the room, creating a second wall without splitting the room into two rooms. Making the space you're working with more interesting than just a giant rectangle can help a lot.
2) Make it even smaller. A 5x10 bedroom is really big to me. I would make it about 4x6 or 4x7. When a room is 4 tiles wide, suddenly sticking every single object to the walls makes absolute perfect sense. If you're not creating a mansion or a massive temple or someting like that, this is actually a pretty realistic size, when you look at the size of the objects. The downside is you'll need to do a little more tile editing, since when you're working at that scale, it matters a lot more whether an object is in the middle of the tile or on the right side of it. You're likely to have a lot of tables or counters that are half a tile wide or tall.
Here's one of my best indoor maps, to give you an idea of what I mean. This is the first floor of the main character's house. And there's still enough room to have a Chrono Trigger style battle in the middle of it (which is exactly what happens).
If you keep having problems with sticking everything to the walls, here are two more pieces of advice:
1) Add more walls. Especially if you combine several rooms into a single map, you can easily get away with adding walls that go partway into the middle of rooms, dividing a room into two kinda-sub-rooms. Sometimes you can put like a raised/depressed area in part of the room, creating a second wall without splitting the room into two rooms. Making the space you're working with more interesting than just a giant rectangle can help a lot.
2) Make it even smaller. A 5x10 bedroom is really big to me. I would make it about 4x6 or 4x7. When a room is 4 tiles wide, suddenly sticking every single object to the walls makes absolute perfect sense. If you're not creating a mansion or a massive temple or someting like that, this is actually a pretty realistic size, when you look at the size of the objects. The downside is you'll need to do a little more tile editing, since when you're working at that scale, it matters a lot more whether an object is in the middle of the tile or on the right side of it. You're likely to have a lot of tables or counters that are half a tile wide or tall.
Here's one of my best indoor maps, to give you an idea of what I mean. This is the first floor of the main character's house. And there's still enough room to have a Chrono Trigger style battle in the middle of it (which is exactly what happens).
Keep in mind the people that live there. Give them mini-stories. Perhaps there's a girl who collects bears. Maybe there's a fisherman. A family of five. An old man alone.
They all have tales and decorating their houses to fit the characters make them seem more real.
Don't forget a bathroom. People don't use pits to poop in anymore. Unless your game is medieval or such. You don't even have to make the room accessible. A door on a wall that your MC comments on is enough.
Treasure. Players like to be rewarded for looking everywhere, so give them something every now and then for checking out your town. Let them find little gifts from you to them, encourage them to keep looking around. If players know they won't find anything of use in houses, they're going to stop looking in them and skip then. You may as well not have made them in that case.
Population. Give a house people. Nuff said.
Enough beds for all occupants. Nuff said.
Small rooms are better rooms. Think of it this way - one step by the player is about a metre in length. How big are normal rooms? Twenty metres? Ten metres? Usually you can take a few big steps across a room, but not many, right? One thing, though. Make sure the player has a clear path that they can walk.
Wall height should be uniform in every house (bar a few special ones). If you have a house that is two tiles high outside and two tiles high inside, then have another nearby with two tiles high outside and five tiles high inside, you have a big problem.
Carpets are square or rectangular. Do not make them some odd, twisting shape.
Overlap. Walls are high. To give the illusion that there is empty space below lower walls, have some overlap. To do this with carpet, hold shift when placing the autotiled carpet against the edge of the roof tile. When you've made the shape you desire, click around the edges where the normal ground tile is and the edging of the carpet tile will form. Don't click the side that is overlapped by the wall. Once complete you'll have shift-mapped. Congrats.
Use shift mapping. Holding shift while copying an autotile will copy just that frame of the tile. If you hold shift straight after and place the tile, it will be the same tile you copied. Holding shift without copying before-hand, when placing an autotile will place the middle tile of that set. Master this ability~
Tile displacement. Sometimes you want the tiles you use to look like they're pushed up against the wall behind them instead of standing in the hallway. You can do this by editing the actual tileset and moving the tiles up by 8-16 pixels. Keep in mind that this will mean you need more room on your tileset and the piece moved will then take up an extra tile - a cabinet that was 2 tiles now becomes 3, a box that was one now is two.
Other edits. You can take some of the small things that are in the tilesets and edit them so that they're more varied. Or find pieces here and there from other free-to-use compilations, as long as they fit the graphic style. There's a lot of free resources available for game creators nowdays so as long as you give credit and abide by the conditions of use, go for it.
Examples:
An example of carpet vs rug, overlapping, different rooms, personal clutter, displacement of tile edges and varied decoration.
A small house with a 'hidden' door into the bedroom.
A simple Inn layout without filler.
They all have tales and decorating their houses to fit the characters make them seem more real.
Don't forget a bathroom. People don't use pits to poop in anymore. Unless your game is medieval or such. You don't even have to make the room accessible. A door on a wall that your MC comments on is enough.
Treasure. Players like to be rewarded for looking everywhere, so give them something every now and then for checking out your town. Let them find little gifts from you to them, encourage them to keep looking around. If players know they won't find anything of use in houses, they're going to stop looking in them and skip then. You may as well not have made them in that case.
Population. Give a house people. Nuff said.
Enough beds for all occupants. Nuff said.
Small rooms are better rooms. Think of it this way - one step by the player is about a metre in length. How big are normal rooms? Twenty metres? Ten metres? Usually you can take a few big steps across a room, but not many, right? One thing, though. Make sure the player has a clear path that they can walk.
Wall height should be uniform in every house (bar a few special ones). If you have a house that is two tiles high outside and two tiles high inside, then have another nearby with two tiles high outside and five tiles high inside, you have a big problem.
Carpets are square or rectangular. Do not make them some odd, twisting shape.
Overlap. Walls are high. To give the illusion that there is empty space below lower walls, have some overlap. To do this with carpet, hold shift when placing the autotiled carpet against the edge of the roof tile. When you've made the shape you desire, click around the edges where the normal ground tile is and the edging of the carpet tile will form. Don't click the side that is overlapped by the wall. Once complete you'll have shift-mapped. Congrats.
Use shift mapping. Holding shift while copying an autotile will copy just that frame of the tile. If you hold shift straight after and place the tile, it will be the same tile you copied. Holding shift without copying before-hand, when placing an autotile will place the middle tile of that set. Master this ability~
Tile displacement. Sometimes you want the tiles you use to look like they're pushed up against the wall behind them instead of standing in the hallway. You can do this by editing the actual tileset and moving the tiles up by 8-16 pixels. Keep in mind that this will mean you need more room on your tileset and the piece moved will then take up an extra tile - a cabinet that was 2 tiles now becomes 3, a box that was one now is two.
Other edits. You can take some of the small things that are in the tilesets and edit them so that they're more varied. Or find pieces here and there from other free-to-use compilations, as long as they fit the graphic style. There's a lot of free resources available for game creators nowdays so as long as you give credit and abide by the conditions of use, go for it.
Examples:
An example of carpet vs rug, overlapping, different rooms, personal clutter, displacement of tile edges and varied decoration.
A small house with a 'hidden' door into the bedroom.
A simple Inn layout without filler.
RyaReisender
200
I think when it comes to indoor mapping the best thing, as Liberty already pointed out, is to think of little mini-stories on who lives there and then design the rooms just like a real-life person that is like the person who lives there would do it. It always gives me so much ideas on stuff I want to put that it never looks empty.
One more thing I want to point out: Small is nice, but if you only do narrow paths there is a risk that you create situations where an NPC moves in your way and you can't get out of the house anymore. This is super frustrating and should be avoided. Keep that in mind.
One more thing I want to point out: Small is nice, but if you only do narrow paths there is a risk that you create situations where an NPC moves in your way and you can't get out of the house anymore. This is super frustrating and should be avoided. Keep that in mind.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Another tip that I've found useful for making towns is just to create a bigger variety of types of buildings for the player to enter. Why is it so often just shops and houses? Let's make a town that has an inn, a fisherman's guild (where a bait shop sells items), a shipyard office, a detective agency, a courthouse with a jail in its basement, a stable (where a traveling merchant who's waiting for the horse he bought acts as a weapon shop), and a lumber mill.
Of course, you might not be able to work all of those into the story. But were you seriously gonna work all the random houses into the story? I didn't think so. So what's the advantage of the random houses, again? (I would assume just laziness; it's way easier to make 50 similar buildings than 50 different ones.)
Though, obviously not every building is a house. But the thing about people standing still is probably true in most other buildings too. If they're already inside, they're probably already where they want to be, so most NPCs don't need to be moving usually.
Of course, you might not be able to work all of those into the story. But were you seriously gonna work all the random houses into the story? I didn't think so. So what's the advantage of the random houses, again? (I would assume just laziness; it's way easier to make 50 similar buildings than 50 different ones.)
author=RyaReisenderRandom movement is kind of a cop-out anyway, and is especially unnecessary inside a house because it makes way more sense for people to be standing still if they're in their own home.
One more thing I want to point out: Small is nice, but if you only do narrow paths there is a risk that you create situations where an NPC moves in your way and you can't get out of the house anymore. This is super frustrating and should be avoided. Keep that in mind.
Though, obviously not every building is a house. But the thing about people standing still is probably true in most other buildings too. If they're already inside, they're probably already where they want to be, so most NPCs don't need to be moving usually.
If you're in Ace you can always use the 'Move Restrict Region' script that blocks certain regions for NPCs to walk on. Just change the region in front of a door and no more NPC blocking your exit. Say thank you to Yanfly everyone~
In 2k/3 you can just use a blank below-hero event. It's automatically set to disallow event overlap so it comes in handy. Helps a LOT that 2k/3 handles many (empty) events on-map well. Unlike VX/Ace who have an issue in that regard.
I'm pretty sure the event thing works in XP as well, though you might have to pick 'disallow overlap' or something of the sort in the blank event. It, too, handles blank events well enough, from what I remember.
In 2k/3 you can just use a blank below-hero event. It's automatically set to disallow event overlap so it comes in handy. Helps a LOT that 2k/3 handles many (empty) events on-map well. Unlike VX/Ace who have an issue in that regard.
I'm pretty sure the event thing works in XP as well, though you might have to pick 'disallow overlap' or something of the sort in the blank event. It, too, handles blank events well enough, from what I remember.
Bakutex
15
Thank you everyone! For the town I have no problem, really, I have a theme for each town.
For example the hometown in my game is supposed to be a bussiness only hometown, with the exception of your house, which was build by the mayor/your father.
Thus, the town has training grounds for those who want to become a swordman.
An Inn with a restaurant in which you can work on.
A town hall which has a jail in the basement actually, it also serves as the guards HQ.
For example the hometown in my game is supposed to be a bussiness only hometown, with the exception of your house, which was build by the mayor/your father.
Thus, the town has training grounds for those who want to become a swordman.
An Inn with a restaurant in which you can work on.
A town hall which has a jail in the basement actually, it also serves as the guards HQ.
RyaReisender
200
Apply those themes to indoor as well. :-)
Or are you talking about a completely different indoor?
Or are you talking about a completely different indoor?
Bakutex
15
author=RyaReisender
Apply those themes to indoor as well. :-)
Or are you talking about a completely different indoor?
Nah don't worry, xD every town will have it's own story.. I think you all will be impressed... I hope?
SnowOwl
5188
author=Liberty
If you're in Ace you can always use the 'Move Restrict Region' script that blocks certain regions for NPCs to walk on. Just change the region in front of a door and no more NPC blocking your exit. Say thank you to Yanfly everyone~
In 2k/3 you can just use a blank below-hero event. It's automatically set to disallow event overlap so it comes in handy. Helps a LOT that 2k/3 handles many (empty) events on-map well. Unlike VX/Ace who have an issue in that regard.
I'm pretty sure the event thing works in XP as well, though you might have to pick 'disallow overlap' or something of the sort in the blank event. It, too, handles blank events well enough, from what I remember.
The thing with empty events blocking the path for NPCs works well in VX Ace too. Probably easier to do than adding a script.
Yeah, but if you have too many events on a map in Ace it lags to high hell, even if they're empty. :/
Bakutex
15
author=Liberty
Yeah, but if you have too many events on a map in Ace it lags to high hell, even if they're empty. :/
True dat. I think that's what happened in Homework salesman.. I don't know but it lagged like hell...
Wait im going off topic here..
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