In-depth Parallaxing Guide: Chapter 5 – Outside Lighting

First thing you want to do is open up your outside map. I am going to use the map I made in Chapter 3, but you can use whatever outside map you’d like.

Make a new layer and go to filters —> Light and Shadow —> Supernova.

Create the light to however you like it.

 

Now, go to Filters —-> Blur — Motion Blur.  To make a sun ray, we are going to need to either have it go straight down or at an angle. For the length on mine, I placed it at 161 and the angle at 223.

 

 

 

You can then duplicate the layers to make multiple and stronger rays.

 

 

You can even use the colorize tool to make the lighting look more fantasy-like.

 

 

You can use the supernova filter again and set it up to have more light as well.

 

 

Once you have the light down, export it to your pictures.

 

Back in your editor, make a new event and put it to parallel process.  Go to display/show picture and select your light ray. I placed the picture number to 10 so it will be above other layers.

Take the opacity of it down to about 100.

 

 

Now, grab the wait command it do about 5 frames.

 

Get the move picture event and change the opacity to about 150.

 

 

Make another wait command and do 5 frames again. Then, the move picture command and have the opacity at 200 this time. Now, go back to the 150.

Lastly, make another wait 5 frames again.

 

Test out your game and see if the light is animating like you want it to.

 

If you want to add a tint, you will add it to the top of the event.

 

 

And that is how you make sunrays to the outside of your map.   Since we are using galv’s layers, we do not need to worry about making the tint screen in gimp and can just use the rpg maker one.

 

Comedy Guide

When I took theatre, my teacher said that comedy was the hardest genre to write. I have to agree with him on that.

Not only is writing comedy one of my weakest areas in writing, but there is such a thin line you can walk with it. This guide is mainly what my teacher taught me, but please be aware that I’m not the best when it comes to comedy writing.

 

One good feature of good comedy is intelligence and wit. This can be very difficult to accomplish, which is one of the reasons why most modern comedies use “dumb” characters and slapstick jokes.

Does this mean that those comedies are bad?

Of course not! But there does need to be a moderation of how much of it you use because the audience/player can get irritated or annoyed. This is the thin line I was talking about. You want to make the player laugh or at least smile, but you do not want to get to the point of being annoying, unless you have a scene that requires the player to feel a short term irritation in order to follow through with the joke.

 

One of the more difficult parts of comedy is what is a joke and what is offensive. My teacher gave a heavy warning to not rely on stereotypes for humor since it’s a cheap way to try to get laughs. However, I see it as a bit of a gamble instead of being a “cheap” way to get laughs. There is a better change of someone getting upset instead of laughing.

So, how do we get the best laughs?

The answer is through characters and surroundings.

 

With the characters, the better developed they are, the better the humor can play off them. If you have the humor compliment the personality of the character, then the humor will come off natural.

One way to do this is to have two characters with contrasting personalities try to get through an event. Or, even more simple, have a conversation. What you’re aiming for is to have both characters well developed enough that they have chemistry in order to carry the scene and the joke.

You can also use your surroundings as a way to make humor. If a character is in a strange surrounding and out of their element, this can set up for some humor depending on how you play it out. You can use actions or even the character talking to one’s self as a way to further express the humor.

 

One thing you need to watch out for is how far you take a joke with two characters. It’s a very thin line from going to something being funny to being very spiteful. This can cause problems if the audience, instead of laughing, feels sympathetic towards the victim of the joke and see it in poor taste.

There are comedies that can pull off violence in comedy. If you do want to use violence as comedy, the best advice I can give on that is to make it as over the top as you can.

 

With parodies, the one important thing is to know the original source well. It’s also important to research the original source material to understand the environment and characters. To get a good idea of a good parody, I would suggest Young Frankenstein.

 

I hope this guide helps a little bit, and I’m sorry if it’s not as detailed as my other one. Comedy is my weakest genre in writing, so if you do have more questions, I can try to find some links on comedy writing to help you out.

In-depth Parallaxing Guide: Chapter 4 – Lighting and Shadows For a Room

First, open up the house you made in chapter 1 in Gimp.

 

I am going to assume that everything is merged together and that you do not have a file with separate layers. If you still have that file, this will make the shadows easier since you do not need to hunt for the tiles again.

 

So, let’s take a look at the clock. Go to Celianna’s tiles and look for the clock again and paste it in a new layer in GIMP.

 

The hardest part is figuring out where the light source is coming from. When you parallax, you can move that light source anywhere, but make sure the shadows follow it.

RPG Maker, by default, has the light source coming from the top left, so we’ll keep the position there.

Take the copy of the clock and flip it 90 degrees.

 

Now, you need to go into your Colors tab and click brightness and contrast. You will take the brightness all the way down and the contrast all the way up.

 

 

Depending on how hard you want your shadow, you will adjust the blur and opacity to what you need it to be. For me, I am going to make the shadow light. In order to do this, go to filters, blur, Gaussian blur. I put mine to about 10.

 

 

I turned the opacity down to about 50% and I moved the layer down a little bit.

 

 

Now, there are times you will need to go in and crop the shadow so it’s not overlapping the object. However, since our clock has a little edge at the top, the shadow is fine as is.

 

Now, lets say that the light and coming from the center. We will use the couch as an example.

Find the couch object and paste it onto a new layer. Flip it vertically.

 

Go to Colors —-> Brightness and Contrast and take the brightness all the way down and the contrast all the way up again.

 

 

Now, I’m going to make the shadow a bit harder this time. In the Gaussian blur, I am only going to do it to about 5. Once you do that, move the shadow layer up until the darkest part is touching the edge of the couch again.

 

 

Now, take the opacity down to about 58% or so.

 

 

And this is how I typically make my shadows.

 

For windows, there are two ways to do this. The first way is like how we did the shadows.

Find the window tile and place it onto a new layer like you did with the clock and couch.

 

 

select the borders, leaving only the glass.

 

 

Go to the color tab and brightness and contrast. Then take the brightness and contrast all the way up.

 

 

I like to make the Gaussian blur very light. I did 1 for this one.

 

 

I reposition it and change the opacity to about 45%

 

 

I then take the paintbrush tool and connect the window to the light square layer I made.

 

 

Now, go to blur –> Motion blur. For mine, I changed the length to 64 and the angle to 103. Go ahead and position it to where you think it looks good.

 

 

Now, change the opacity to where you get it to how you like. I do mine to about 60%.

 

 

If you do not like the white boxes, you can just use the white streak on it’s on instead.

 

 

 

For lighting, I like to make them overlays. Shadows, I’ve done it both as an overlay or part of the parallax depending on the object.

 

For the border, pick the rectangle select tool and use the paint bucket to fill it black.

 

 

Now, use the Gaussian blur and change it to where you like it. I chose 5 for mine.

 

 

Now, change the opacity to where you want it. I did mine to about 50%.

 

And that is how you make lighting and shadows in GIMP.

In-depth Parallaxing Guide: Chapter 3 – Animated Maps

In this chapter, we are going to cover how to make an animated map. What I like to do is use the animated parallax script. Although Galv has his animations for his layers, I really only like to do that for making custom water. Since we are using tile sets, I find I have more control when I use the animated parallax script.

Open up your map in Gimp.

 

Next, you are going to pick the animated water you want. You can make your own or you can make it through a tile set. In this case, we will go with a tile set.

 

 

Most tile sets you see will have three water animation frames. This makes our lives much easier, but can be difficult as well since we need to line up the tiles. This is my favorite method of doing this.

 

Make four new layers. Now, go back to your water tiles and select the water. Since there is a brick pattern underneath, I need to make sure I select the tile in a way that the pattern can be seamless.

 

Copy and paste that on a new layer. Now, go back to the water tile set and use your arrow keys to move the box over to the next frame. Copy and paste that one onto the other new layer and do the same thing for the last frame.

For all the layers, go to Image —> Autocrop image.

Go to Filters —> Map —> Tile and make the height and width the same as your map height and width. Do this for all three frames. Then copy and paste them onto your map, making sure they are all on new layers.

 

 

Place all the frames behind your map layer.

 

Now we need to make a cut out with where we want our water to be. For those who are a little nervous about cutting the map out, you can use the shape method we did with the outside of our house.

 

 

Select the magic wand tool.

 

Use it on your shape and you should see the marching ants around it. Now, select your map layer and you should still see the marching ants.

 

 

Now, hit delete and then remove the shape outline. You should now have something like this:

 

 

Now, export your map and save it in your parallax folder like you would with any map. However, we are going to do this three times for each frame. Make sure they have the same name, but you are going to put a _FrameNumber at the end.

 

You are going to place your parallax and do everything we did in chapter one. Except, make sure you place the parallax map with the _1 as the parallax map.

 

 

Click ok and test it out.   That is all there is to it.

 

This is why I like using the animated parallax script the most. It does the work for you so you don’t have to use events or codes.

In-depth Parallaxing Guide: Chapter 2 – Creating the Outside of the House

For this chapter, we are going to focus on making an outside of the house. First, create a map and use the paint tool to fill it with grass. Now, go to your game and export that map to your mapshots folder.

 

 

Now, open up Gimp and import your map. Set up your grids like you did with your house in chapter 1. Make sure they are 32 X 32 Pixels.

For this, you are going to need the rectangle select and the paint bucket tool.

Create a new layer and grab the rectangle select tool. What we are going to do is make an outline of the house. Just make your first square and then use the paint bucket tool with the color of your choice to fill it in.

 

 

Now, for if a building will overlap, you can use a different color to indicate that, like so:

 

 

Now, what do you do if you want a different shape?

That is one issue with Gimp; it doesn’t have a line or shape tool. However, there is a way to solve this problem.

This is the free select tool. (Pretend the pen with the line doesn’t exist for now. We’ll go over that tool in a later chapter.) The free select tool is simple to use. You just click on one point like this:

 

Then click to the next point you want to go, like this:

The grid makes this very easy since you can just click to the corners. Go ahead and go all the way around until you connect to the first point. Gimp makes this easy by highlighting when the points are connected.

 

You should now have the marching ants. Now, select the paint bucket tool and fill in the shape. If you’re following the shape I made, it should look like this:

 

 

Now, say that you want to make this a two story house? Well, it’s very easy! All you have to do is duplicate your layer and move it up until the two shapes connect. You can also change the color of the shapes to make it easier as well.

 

 

Now, there are two choices for this. You can either use this method to make the roof, or you can make the walls first and then make the roof.

I like to make the walls first before making the roof since I sometimes change how I want the house to look.

Go ahead and use Celianna’s tiles (or tiles that you want to use) and fill place them over the shapes. You can use the copy and paste method or you can use the tile method from chapter 1.

TIP:

One of the best ways to see if two walls will work together, you can place them right next to one another like this:

 

After getting the front section done, you are probably a little confused on how to do this area:

 

For this, we are going to need this tool:

 

 

This is called the perspective tool. You can manipulate the tile to make it look like it’s on a slant. Before you manipulate your tile though, you want to make sure that interpolation is set to none.

 

The reason we want to do this is because if you keep it at the default, then the image will become blurry. This will keep the image crisp so it doesn’t look out of place compared to the other tiles. You can also change the Guides number to 1 to see the image better. I sometimes do this if the tile or image is very small and detailed.

 

Make a copy of your tile and place it next to the area it is meant to go in, but do not place it right on top of it.

Now, use the perspective tool on the tile.

 

You see that little crosshair reticle in the center?

 

 

Click in the middle of that and you are now able to move the tile over to where the blue slant is.

Why did we move it over to the slant rather than keeping it there in the first place? This is because Gimp keeps the original shape of the tile while you manipulate it.

 

This gets in the way of seeing where you need to line everything up. Moving it over will keep that original shape from getting in the way.

 

Now, grab the squares on the corners of the image and move them over to line up with the corners of the slant.

 

Click the transform button.

 

The tile should now look something like this:

 

Now it’s time to think about how we want our roof to look.

 

 

This is where you will have to play around with the roofing until you find something you like. You can use the shape outline method again if that will help with getting the roof to how you want.

Ideally, I should have made the roof bigger or make the house smaller.

 

Use the roof tile and go around the outline. Use the perspective tool when you need to.

 

Thankfully, Celianna’s roof tiles were able to fix my roofing mistake.

 

Now, I don’t really like the first roof where the slant is. Instead, I’m going to take it off and redo the wall.

 

I like this better, but it needs a little light. The best way to do this is by going to colors —> Brightness and Contrast. Do not overdo it too much though.

 

 

Go ahead and decorate your house and play around with the shadows. In the next chapter section, we will go over the outer house decorations and hopefully get to the lighting and landscaping.

In-depth Parallaxing Guide: Chapter 1 – Creating a House

I am starting with a house first because, for me, that has always been the easiest. The first thing you want to do is make an outline of how you want your house to look.

 

 

Not that impressive, right? Don’t worry, we’ll make it look nice in our image program.

 

Now, go to your game.  Click F7. You should see this window pop up:

 

What I like the most about Hime’s map screenshot is that you can also take screenshots of events, or you can make it so that the events are not shown.

 

Not only that, but you can change the image from png to jpg if you want. The script is very flexible and has many options you can play around with to get it set to how you want it.

 

The next step is to open up your image program. I personally like to use GIMP. I like it because it can be set up similar to Photoshop, but it doesn’t get those little grids when you zoom in really close. This makes pixel art and parallaxing easier for me because I’m not distracted by the grids.

 

After you get your image program up, go to open and go to your game folder. You should see a new folder in there called Mapshots. If you go into your folder, you will see your map that you just exported. Open it up and it should look like it would in the editor.

 

Next, go to Image —> Configure Grid.

To where it says Spacing, change the width and height to 32 pixels. This is the same size as the grid in the map editor. Now, click okay.

 

Now, you need to go to View —> Show Grid.

 

 

Now you should see a grid show up on your map.

 

 

 

The first thing we need are some tile sets we want to use for our map. You can use anything from the RPG Maker ACE RTP to the custom tile sets that others have created. You can even make your own if you’d like, but that might be a bit challenging at this stage.

Celianna’s tile sets are very popular for parallaxing.

 

For my map, I’m thinking maybe a modern loft. The hardest part of parallaxing for me is always trying to think of what tiles I want to use for my map.   Sometimes you just have to mess around with different tiles and such until you find something you’re happy with.

 

The first thing we’re going to focus on is the kitchen area. I chose this to work on first so I can show you the first method of placing down walls and floors.

 

Walls and Floor of the Kitchen

Go to Celianna’s tiles and you should see a tool box for gimp. You want to click on the rectangle tool.

 

 

Go over and select the wall that you want to use for the kitchen. After you select it, you should see the marching ants around the wall.

 

Now, click CTRL + C or Right click and copy. Go over to your map and click CTRL + V or Right Click and paste.

 

You should now see your image on your map and the layer looking something like this:

 

 

What you want to do is click on the paper icon at the bottom.

Your layers should now look like this:

 

Go back to your tool box and click the cross section.

 

Move it to where you need it and make sure it lines up with the grid. I like to use the magnifying glass to zoom in in order to line things up. You can also use your arrow keys to move the image slightly as well.

 

Now, click on the layer and hit the duplicate button. You should now how two copies of the same image.

 

Move the newly copied image to line it up with the original image.

 

Now, if you noticed, there is this ugly line. The easiest way to fix that is to chop off the sections where the line is.

 

Now, you are going to move that over to where it lines up with the original pattern.

 

 

Do this for the rest of the wall.

 

You will see that there is an overlap. What you do is crop by the grid line.

 

 

Right click on the layer in the Layers menu. You should see something called Merge Down. Click on it on the layers to merge them down, but do not merge them with the original map. If you accidentally do that, just click CTRL + Z.

The walls for our kitchen is now done.

 

Now it’s time to move onto the floors.

Go back to Celianna’s tiles and select the floor you want for your kitchen. Copy and paste it over to your map the same way you did with the walls. Click on the paper icon again. Move it over to line it up with the wall and grid.

 

 

 

Click the duplicate button like we did with the walls. Make the copied image line up with the original floor image.

 

 

Do the rest of the floor like you did with the walls. Make sure you merge the floor tiles together but do not merge them with the wall layer.

 

You are now done with the flooring of the kitchen.

 

Organizing Your Layers

 

The best thing we can do now is try to keep things organized. If you don’t it can get really frustrating later on when you have a lot of items you need to manipulate.

 

The first thing you want to do is click on the folder icon at the bottom of the Layers tab. A new folder should pop up in the Layers tab.

 

Double Click on where it says Layer Group and label it Kitchen then press ENTER. Where our floor layer is, label it Kitchen Floor and for the wall, label it Kitchen Wall.

Take the Kitchen Floor layer and drag and drop it into the Kitchen folder. Do the same with with the kitchen wall.

Inside the Kitchen folder, make another folder and label it Kitchen Objects.

 

Adding the Kitchen Objects

Go to Celianna’s tile set and select the refrigerator. Copy and paste it onto your map.

I like to label the object right away. I labeled it Refrigerator so I know what object it is in case I need to move it later.

Note that if you select the group folder and try to paste onto the map, it will not work. Click on your base map instead in order to get the refrigerator layer to show up. Line it up to the grid. You can play around with the position to make it look less grid-like, but to make this chapter easy, I will stick with the grid.

Now, select the counters and do the same thing you did with the refrigerator.

 

 

 

Go ahead and finish your kitchen to where you like it.

 

Here is my finished version:

 

We are finished with the kitchen for now.

 

The Dining Room Floors and Walls

 

We are going to now focus on the open area to the left of the kitchen. This will be our dining room.

 

We are also going to try a bit of a different method of the walls and floors this time. Go to Celianna’s tiles and select the dining room wall you like. Select it like you did with the other wall.

 

This is the different part.

Go to file new and make a new document. Make a new transparent layer and delete the background layer. Now, paste your wall onto that document instead of your base image.

 

 

Now, on the new document, go to Image —> Autocrop image.

 

You should now just have your image and no grey grid anymore.

 

Go to Filter –> Map —> Tile.

 

 

 

For the width and height, I made it 400 X 408. If the pattern looks strange, go ahead and use  Make Seamless first and then tile it.

 

Show grid on the new image of the wall. On my base map, the dining room is five squares in width and two squares in height. I then go back to the wall pattern I tiled and select five squares in width and two squares in height.

 

 

You will do the same exact thing for the floor.

 

This is how mine looks when complete:

 

So, why did we tile those walls and floors like that instead of doing it one by one? Mainly because I wanted to show you an alternative method so you can find what’s most comfortable for you. I like the tile method for larger maps, but I use the copy and paste method for places that are small, like the kitchen or bathroom.  Go ahead and try out both methods and see which one you like the most.

 

Finishing the Decorating

 

Go ahead and finish decorating. Leave the border though since we will cover that next.

 

Here is my decorated house:

 

Finishing Our House

 

Now we need to add the doors and border. If you like the thick border then you can keep it as is.

If you use a thin border, you will have to modify your walls and make them higher until they touch the edge of the border.

 

 

If you are using the thin border, go all around the wide wooden border with that one. This is what mine looks completed:

 

Now, for the sides and underneath, we are going to use a black fill in order to make it look nicer. Select the side wood plank and select the black fill as well.

 

Now, paste that onto your map and on the bathroom side.

 

 

Now, select part of the border, then go to the flip horizontal tool.

 

 

Press CTRL + C and then CTRL + V. Click on the image to flip it. Put it on a new layer and move it next to the bathroom floor tile.

 

 

Do this for all the walls.

 

 

Now we need to add the doors. You can either parallax the doors or you can make the doors animated.

For this tutorial, we’ll just keep the animated evented doors.

 

I like to add a little black space for where the doors are. I’m sure there’s better ways to do this, but it was how I’ve made doors since I’ve first started RPG maker and it’s hard to break that habit.

 

 

And now we are finished with our map.

 

Making the Overlays

 

This is a bit tricky since it takes looking at the grid and guessing where our character will be behind an objects. On our map, here is what I pointed out as what needs to be an overlay:

 

 

I would recommend that you do highlight what needs to be an overlay on your map like this until you develop an eye for it. It may feel like busy work, but it is very helpful when you are working on maps, like a forest where there are a bunch of trees overlapping one another.

 

Now, select the parts that will be an overlay. Copy and paste them onto a new layer. Make sure you stop at the grid line or the character’s feet will pop out underneath the overlay.

 

 

Now, export the map (not the overlay) and save it in the Parallax folder. Name it something like House 01 or whatever will help you remember what map it is.

 

 

 

Now, hide that layer and have just the overlay showing. Export that map and save it to the Layers folder you created earlier. Label is something that you can remember, such as House 01 Overlay.

 

Now it’s time to go back to our editor.

Go to map properties again and select parallax background. Select the house and have it show in editor.

 

Erase the map blueprint we did in the editor.

 

Now we need to make things passable. Currently, your character should not be able to move. If you go into your tilesets tab in the database, you’ll notice that the interior tile set does not have a  passable tile. How I fix this is I take the Dungeon tile B and have it be the Interior Tile Set D. The top of the tile will be a blank passable tile.

 

 

Go back to your editor and instead of clicking the blank tile in tile set D, click the Green plant next to it. This is so we can see what we are making passable.

 

 

If you notice, there is no way to get behind the chairs unless you have a diagonal script. This means we didn’t need to make an overlay of the chairs, which sometimes happens with parallaxing. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

 

Go back to your tile set tab and select the blank tile set. Select the bucket fill tool and go over all the plants. Your map should look like it did before, but now you can walk around.

 

Now we need to add the shadows.

I usually do this in the image program, but for chapter 1, we’ll just use the auto shadow. The light is going —->  so we need to have the shadows hit the left side.

 

Now we need to add the overlay. Go to your  events tab and make a new event that is either a parallel process or an autorun. Depending on how you have your game set up, one will be better over the other.

 

If you use an autorun event, make sure you add a self switch A = on at the end of the event and make another page with the Self Switch A condition turned on.

 

Place in Galv’s script code like this:

 

Here is the guide to what all these numbers mean.

 

 

Now, for the layer number, it does not mean it’s going in front or behind the player. The layer number is similar to the picture number where you need a different number for each picture to show up on a map. In order to make the image be in front of the player, you need to use the Z level. Galv had his at 200 and it works for here as well, so that is what I’m assuming it should be kept as if you want an overlay image.

 

The scroll speed is for animated layers, which we will cover in a later chapter.

 

Click OK and test out the overlay. You should be able to go behind the overlay image now.

All you have to do now is add in the doors and transfers and you’re done with your map. You can also add a tint to your map since the overlays will be tinted as well.

 

And that is the end of chapter 1 for making a house.   I’m willing to take suggestions for other parallaxing tips and tutorials that you want for other chapters and such.

 

In-depth Parallaxing Guide: Introduction

Requested by KevinSSS.

 

Also, THEAQIB posted a very helpful tip on how to get the photoshop grids working here.

“Can anyone point me out to any very basic parallax guide for dummies?”

 

I am here to bring:

Introduction:

Parallaxing is a great way to make your maps detailed and to make it look like your game does not have a grid. This method was very popular with RPG Maker VX due to the limited tile sets. This method is still used for VX Ace and can still be a handy tool to make your maps unique and detailed.

Lets look at the pros and cons of parallax mapping:

PROS

✐Detailed maps

✐Off-Grid looking maps

✐Unlimited tile sets

✐ The ability to manipulate the map by hand

 

CONS

✐File Size will be much larger than using the editor

✐Takes much longer to map than using the editor

✐ Chances of errors to occur

✐ A higher chance of your maps becoming too cluttered and busy

 

Now, lets get started.

 

The Scripts You Need:

 

Galv’s Layer Graphics

Yanfly’s Parallax Lock

Hime works Map Screenshot

 

Why are we using Galv’s layer graphics instead of the lock pictures event? Well, when you use the lock pictures, it works well, except that if you use the tint screen command, the overlays do not get tinted as well. Due to this, I switched over to Galv’s layer graphics, which is a powerful script and it also keeps my picture folder from becoming cluttered.

 

Getting Set Up:

 

The first thing you need to do is make a layers folder. All you have to do is go into the graphics folder and make a new folder and call it Layers. This is where we are going to put all our overlay maps and such.

 

Now, we need to go into the game editor and go to the script editor. You can find it here:

 

Now, place the scripts above ▼ Main Process.

 

 

Now, go back to the editor and right click on your map. You should see something called “Map Properties” open up. This is where you can change your tiles and background music. In this case, we are going to just focus on the Note section. We are going to put <tile lock parallax> into the note field.

 

 

Now, where did I get that code from? This is from Yanfly’s parallax lock script. If you look at the script, there are a few codes you can add, but we just want the tile lock parallax. This is to keep the tiles from scrolling with the player on larger maps. Basically, it makes the parallax act like the editor tiles. You can also use the <full lock parallax> command as well.

 

We are ready to work on our map.

 

Mapping and Outlining:

 

There are two options now. You can either go straight into the image program and make you parallax from scratch, or you can add an outline for your map to get an idea of how you want it to look.

 

We are going to go with outlining since it’s the easiest.

 

*NEW* Layer Command Key Guide For Gimp:

Here is a guide to what the buttons mean for the layers tab in gimp:

[REQUEST] Epic Game Guide

When some hear “epic game”, they tend to think huge maps. While it’s true that a large map helps make the game feel epic, there’s a bit more to it than that.

Yes, that blue little square is my character.

 

What makes a game epic is the importance and the exploration. It varies from person to person on what makes a game “epic” since people have different tastes and different opinions, but I will try to explain what I feel makes an epic game.

 

Writing

I am a bit hesitant to do this part since I do feel there really isn’t a “right” and “wrong” way to write something. There is so much variation with writing that it’s difficult to make a concrete tutorial on this. However, I will write a guide for those who are really struggling with this section and need some inspiration or ideas.

Please do not take all this at face value and believe it’s the only way to write a story.

 

 

Make the NPCs Important

 

Source: Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask, Gameplay by MarioWorldHacker

 

If you’re going for the hero saving a town or world, it’s important to make it so that the hero has a reason to save these NPCs and their town. The best way to do this is to give a variation in dialogue and make them talk like how people in the real world would talk. Even if it’s in the Middle Ages, you can still look at books or movies from that period to get an idea of how people would speak to one another. Make them not only give you hints, but also show that they have a life outside of standing around and waiting for you to talk to them. Perhaps you can make a side story between three or four NPCs where talking to them will give out a scandal going on through the town.

Another way is to show the culture of the town. Maybe they have a different religion, or they have different ideals of what is taboo and what is acceptable in their society.

In short, the best way to make NPCs important is not to think of them like tools to get the player from point A to point B, but as unplayable characters who have their own life and stories.

 

 

Make the Goal Important

 

Source: Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons

 

What is the motivation for the player to complete this goal? The typical one is saving the world or stopping the antagonist, but sometimes it can be difficult to make that the only motivation unless the player cares about the characters. For making a game epic with the goal, there are different methods of achieving this. The first one is saving the world/village. The second one, which I like the most personally, is making the goal personal to the playable character. This gives the character a motivation to go out and achieve the goal and depending on the situation, can make the playable character sympathetic to the player. This will make the player root for the playable character and want to achieve the end goal.

 

 

The Explorer Protagonist

 

Source: Syberia, Gameplay by GamerZmaj.

 

One of the best ways to show that a world is grand is by having the protagonist view it as grand. One of the easiest ways to create this is to make the “explorer” protagonist.

This protagonist has a thirst for adventure and looks at the world with wide eyes. A protagonist can start off not being an explorer type and develop into that throughout the story. That would also give the protagonist some personal growth as well.

Other types of protagonists that work well in making an Epic game would be the Silent Protagonist and the Observer.

 

The Observer

 

This protagonist doesn’t have much character development and does not play much importance in the world. However, they are essential in being the eyes for the player to see the grand and vast world filled with various people. One of the most popular observer character is Nick Carraway from the Great Gatsby. Another one would be Watson from Sherlock Holmes.

 

The Silent Protagonist

 

This protagonist doesn’t have dialogue and doesn’t really have much to say at all. The purpose of this protagonist is usually to make it so the player is the protagonist. The most popular silent protagonist is Link from the Legend of Zelda series or Red from the Pokemon games.

 

Game Design

For this we are going to look at making the game feel grand.

 

Create Optional Side-quests

 

Source: Fable, Gameplay by VolitileGabe

 

Some players love side-quests and some hate them. My solution to this is to make side-quests optional. That will let the people who hate them skip over them and play the game for the story. The players who love them can get rewards such as money or a special item not needed to complete the game as rewards.

With side-quests, it’s important to make them interesting. Combining this with making the NPCs important, you can make the side-quest fit the NPC and maybe have it connect to their story. This will give a rewarding feeling for the player to help the NPC. You can even set it up that the NPC doesn’t ask the protagonist for help, but the protagonist can decide to do it any way as a kind gesture.

One important thing is to make sure that the side-quest mechanic isn’t too annoying or frustrating. It’s important to give a challenge, but don’t make it so that the player wants to rip their hair out with the quest. Don’t be shy about asking for beta testers specifically to test your side quests.

 

Make Buildings Feel Big

 

I don’t mean that you need to make every building feel big. A variety is good for making the game visually appealing. However, making a big building will make that building feel grand and important.

 

 

Let’s look at this image here. This is for the typical chibi character. The building that is 3 squares high would be a way to shrink the area down. This is useful if you’re wanting to show a town that has limited supplies or is mobile. I recommend these for small huts and possibly little log cabins.

The 4 squares high is the normal building size. What I like to do is use this as the base as what the normal house size would be and then modify it to if I want to make the area feel bigger or smaller. You can even use this for an individual house to make it feel more or less important than the other houses.

The 5+ squares would be for large houses. These tend to be castles and mansions.

 

This method isn’t just for houses. You can use this for trees and cliffs as well.

 

The World Map

 

Let’s take a look at the world map from Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time:

 

It looks pretty massive, but in reality, it isn’t as scary as you’d think:

 

These are the main sections that I highlighted. This is excluding the dungeons, but it gives you a bit of an idea of how the world is divided.

And this would be the outline if we take away all the details.

 

 

The Little Details Matter

 

 

One of the best ways to make the game feel grand without making 500 X 500 maps is to make the world interactive. Not only make the tiny details, but add ways for the player to interact with them, even if it’s just having footprints in the sand. Small details and small interactions are important in the long run and can make the game feel polished.

 

 

The Importance of a Good Battle System

 

 

There are so many different types of battle systems you can do for RPG Maker. For an “epic” fantasy game, I typically enjoy an ABS system. This is a matter of personal taste though. You can use turn base or a strategic base battle system as well, but make sure you keep it balanced. If you have random encounters, I highly, highly recommend you either have on screen sprites so the player can evade them if they wish. Or, alternatively, you can do what Pokemon does and have it set to a patch of grass.

 

 

Deciding on Party Members

 

 

For an epic game, either having it be a single character/player or having the option of party members is completely up to you. If you do decide to go for the party members, make sure that they are just as interesting as the character/NPCs/world. Give them personalities and insecurities. Give them flaws and give them strengths. There’s a chance that a player will like one character over the other, but that’s a good thing! Different personalities are going to be appealing to one player but indifferent to another.

An example would be Power Rangers. When I was little, my favorite power ranger was the blue ranger, but my cousin liked the red ranger the most. His sister loved the pink ranger the most. Neither of these characters were better than the other, but having a variety to choose from made the show more appealing.

Having a variety of personalities, you give your game more options of people being drawn to a character, resulting in the player rooting for the whole team.

 

 

The Conflict

 

Source: Mario 64, Gameplay by SilentSlayers

 

For conflict in an epic game, the best ones I would say would be Person vs Person or Person vs Society.

 

Character Against Character: The character is in conflict with another character

Character Against Society: The character is in conflict with the rules of society. Can overlap with Character Against Character.

 

There are others you can play with, but these are the easiest to make the conflict feel grand. It also gives an idea of who the antagonist is so that the player can focus on the world building. If you go with character against character, I would recommend that you have it so the protagonist takes the antagonist seriously.

With this, I don’t mean that you need to make your antagonist a brooding serious and dark character if you don’t want to. You can have your antagonist ham it up and chew the scenery if you’d like. What I mean is by taking the antagonist seriously is to make them a threat to the protagonist. They don’t need to kick kittens in their free time and light fires to orphanages to be an antagonist. An antagonist is, in simple terms, someone to be an obstacle for the protagonist.

With that said, there are different viewpoints on what makes a good antagonist. You can make a truly evil character, or you can make a character who does bad things but has another side to them that makes them sympathetic. Whichever you decide to take your antagonist, I would recommend researching that type from other commercial games, indie games, or stories. Then you can decided what qualities you like, what qualities you want to change, and what qualities you want to drop completely.

 

 

Using Tones and Lighting

 

 

The obvious difference between making a game and writing a story is that a game is visual. You can use visuals and lighting to set the mood and to create the atmosphere instead of having to rely on just words.

Fog and Rain can invoke the feeling of dreariness.

Red can invoke the feeling of urgency or uncomfortableness.

Blue can invoke the feeling of calmness or melancholy.

Yellow can invoke the feeling of happiness.

 

Play around with the tint screen and try out various colors. If the tint invokes the emotion you feel is right for your scene, then that should be the tint you should go for.

 

 

Using Music and Ambiance

 

This is something that is a little tough for me to give advice on. Music and ambiance can be very powerful at completing a scene or area. The best thing I can recommend is listening to the music all the way through while having the game in play mode. For me, I just download a lot of royalty free songs and go through trial and error until I find what completes the area the most.

 

And that is my advice on making an epic game. You can find ways that are completely different than mine and still make an amazing epic game. These are just suggestions to help you get started and hopefully give you inspiration.

Alternative Way to Map Walls and Floors (Parallax)

I really hate doing the duplicate layer and arranging them since I use GIMP. I started to use this technique, which felt easier on me, and makes mapping the floors and walls easier for me.

 

The first thing you want to do is have your map ready. Then, open up the tiles/parallax tiles of the floor image that you want to have.

Other tiles are blacked out to follow Celianna’s policy of not distributing her tiles. Please go here to find her tiles on her deviant art page if you would like them.

 

Create a new image and paste your tile on there. Then, select autocrop.

There is an optional step you can do now. You can go to Filters —-> Map —-> Make seamless. I tend to not do that due to most of the floor tiles already being seamless, but if it maps out strange, consider this option to fix it.

 

Now, you are going to go to Filters —-> Map —–> Tile.

A window should pop up. I like to put the default rpg maker size on there, which is 544 X 416. You can make it how big you think you need the flooring to be. I also keep the create new image clicked. Then click okay.

 

Your floor should now be tiled.

 

Now, go to View —-> Show Grid. If you need to, go to image — configure grid and make sure that the grid is 32 X 32 pixels.

 

Take your rectangle select tool and select how much of the floor you need. Click the SHIFT button to add more of the rectangle box if you need it, and the CONTROL button to remove parts of the box.

Once you have the outline of the floor, click copy and go over to your map image. Then click paste. Then, you just need to line it up to where you want it. Make sure that the grid is on.

 

 

And that’s all there is to making the floor. You can also keep the tiled floor image on hand in case you have more of the same floor tile to use on the map.

 

Walls, on the other hand are a tiny bit trickier.

First, pick the wall that you like.

 

Now, go to your map image and paste the wall like you’d normally do.

Remove the middle wall and paste it to a new layer. Put the edge of the wall to where it needs to be like so:

 

 

Now, you want to take the middle wall and put it on a new image. Autocrop that image like we did with the floor.

The tile step is exactly the same as the floor. With this one, I just change the width to 544 but do not change the height. You can if you want though.

 

Turn on your grid again and select how much of the wall you need. Mine is about five squares for the width.

Copy and paste the image back to your map image. Arrange it to where it needs to be and then put that layer behind the end walls that we placed earlier.

 

 

And this is how it looks without the grid:

 

 

The pros of using this method is that it is a bit faster once you get used to using the buttons. It also feels like less of a hassle, but that might be more of my bias.

The cons is, as you can see, is that it sometimes doesn’t pattern exactly like it should with more complex patterns. You can still go in and change it if you need to.

 

 

Credits go to Celianna for the tiles.

[REQUEST] Creating a Trail Of Breadcrumbs

This was requested by _Aqua_ in this thread here.

First, I’d like to say that I used Unpropro’s buying and placing items eventing tutorial as a base to set this up.

 

If you want to add an animation of the character placing the bread, check out _Aqua _’s post here.

 

The first thing you need to do is set up your map. I use the premade lost forest map for this tutorial.

This event requires quite a bit of switches and variables, so let’s get those out of the way first.

 

Items you need to create:

Bread

 

Switches you need to create:

Bread crumb 1

Bread crumb 2

Bread crumb 3

Bread crumb 4

Bread crumb 5

(Make as many switches you need for the bread. I’m just using five for the tutorial.)

 

Variables you need to create:

Player X

Player Y

Bread 1 X

Bread 1 Y

Bread 2 X

Bread 2 Y

Bread  3 X

Bread 3 Y

Bread 4 X

Bread 4 Y

Bread 5 X

Bread 5 Y

Bread Amount

 

Now, make an event and call it Bread 1. In the conditions switch, have the Bread crumb 1 switch on.

 

Do this for all the bread crumbs and make sure the switches are changed accordingly.

 

After you finished making your breadcrumbs, create another event and set it to parallel process. Go to Set Event Location and for the first bread crumb event you made, click designation with variables and put in Bread 1 X for map X and Bread 1 Y for map y.

Do this for all your bread crumbs.

(Note that all those that say Bread Crumb are all different events. I forgot to label them Bread Crumb 1, Bread Crumb 2, etc when I created the events.)

 

Now we need to have it so we can erase, or collect all the bread if the player messes up on the puzzle. To do this, I’m going to use the Q button as a way to set up the erase feature.

Make a conditional branch for if we press the L button. Make a choice option (just in case the player accidently presses it) where it says “collect all bread” or cancel.

In the collect all bread, turn all the bread crumb switches off. Under all those, click change items, then click on the variable option and choose the Bread Amount variable.

Under that, click control variables and put the Bread Amount to 0.

 

Now, create a common event and label it Bread. Go to your item and connect the Bread common event to your item.

 

Go back to your common event and set the Variables Player X to map X and Player Y to the player’s map Y. Then set the variable Bread Amount to add 1.

 

Now, create a conditional branch to where if the bread amount is equal to 1. Inside that, turn the Bread crumb 1 switch on. Next, set the event location of the Bread crumb 1 event and set it to the variables of Player X and Player Y.

Under that, you will have Bread 1 X equal to Player’s map X and Bread 1 Y equal to Player’s map Y.

 

 

Do that for all the breadcrumbs.

 

 

This is what your common event should look like when you are finished:

 

Now, just make sure you give the player the bread items so they can use it.

And that is how you create a bread crumb trail.