trainspotter

I'm using XP. I might have just been dreaming about old thread. I do see the side view system in the resource section, and that would work fine (I'd just have to do without a few features) - just thought someone modified it once so that it was almost an exact replica of the FFIV one.

Hey All, It's been a long time since I've been on here. I was looking around today for a battle system that I thought already existed. I seem to remember a project that was attempting to remake the Final Fantasy IV game, and was simultanously releasing it's scripts - but now I can't find it. Does anyone know of or have access to a FFIV like battle system (side view, character move slightly forward to attack with weapon icon + jump command, steal command, cover command, and summon command)? Thanks, Trains

by golly you're right, figures that I would mess that up. I'll attach a fixed version of the final map.

images fixed, for some reason I thought I had to do links. There are some typos in the text too, I'll fix them later. Now to do the Castle Town request.

Trainspotter's Tutorials: Tower In This was a request, it is not a great example of solid mapping - but instead an example on the use of tiles for the tileset Tower In. If the requester has futher questions, please PM me. First let's look at the tileset. There are some pretty standard pieces as well as some rather unique ones. - Your basic floor tiles are pretty much the same as Castle In, so nothing interesting there. - Youll notice some lighting tiles and shadow floor tiles, which I will demonstrate later but I would recommend avoiding them if you can, they can get sticky and look terrible if not done perfectly. - Moving down youll notice ceiling and wall tiles, also very basic but take note that they black wall/ceiling tiles do not match the autotile in the game, so do not mix them. - You also have the bottomless pit wall tiles as I call them (the ones that trail down into blackness). These are for use if your tower has a long cavernous drop in it. - Next are some window tiles, pretty standard stuff here. You have jail cell windows (which seems to be the major theme of this tileset), and some standard windows. Notice the angled windows; these specifically fit the angled walls. - The unique part about this tileset is the angled walls. There some fun things you can do with them that will help break up the plainness of this tileset. I will show you in my examples below. - Next up are the doors and columns. I personally like all my doors to be events unless they are purely ornamental (which means the player can see them, but can never access them doors players can get to that dont do anything are bad). - Last are all the little doodads and stairs. Doodads are pretty easy to use, but I will show you some of their dos and donts . The stars can be a bit trickier, and I will show you why. Now, lets build a basic tower. First we need a shape for our tower. Lets go with an octagon so we can use some of those angled pieces. Just use the floor tile one at a time to get a basic shape; we can widen the halls later. Next add the lower visual wall, dont worry about all the little ceiling pieces yet just keep it simple right now, that way if you make a mistake or want to change the shape you didnt waste time on stuff you might end up replacing. Alright, weve filled in the lower visual wall (one that we can see) before we move on to the one above lets widen the hallways a bit and the upper visual wall. Now lets do the non-visual walls, these are a little trickier. Well be working in the third layer so that any doodads that stick out from under the walls overhangs can go on the second layer. So first lay down the wall overhang pieces in the third layer, like so: Now go back to layer one, select the floor tile and replace the black tiles under the wall overhang tiles you just placed. Now take a look at your basic floor plan and decide if you like it. For the sake of this tutorial, we do not like it. It doesnt make any sense its just a ring that leads nowhere. So lets change it a little to make it a bit more practical. Hopefully I didnt lose you there. We altered the shape a little bit so that we now have some stairs that go up and some stairs that go down. Notice how I made outcroppings for the stairs and did not sure the side pieces. Ive rarely been able to find a way to make those side pieces look good, and in this case the stairs look better without not great, but passable. Okay, now we have a more interesting shape, and weve added purpose. Remember, a map that looks good, but serves no purpose is not a map worth making. But this tower is a little boring, lets add some rooms, some jail cells and an alcove to be precise. While were at it, since we are happy with the shape, lets fill in the tops of the walls with all the ceiling pieces. Quite a task that was, but now we have our basic shape plus some purpose-serving stairs, and some jail cells and an alcove as well. What weve done is use our unique angled wall pieces to help us create a basic shape that is not boring and repetitive. Notice how the jail cells are small and cramped and not giant holding cells. I do this for two reasons. 1. Jail cells are not comfortable, they are for prisoners. 2. Jail cells are usually pretty bare, with little to no decoration. Tiny room require very few doodads to make them look good. The alcove area can serve a number of purposes. Remember, a section of your map without purpose needs not exist. This specific alcove will serve as a guard post for whoever is guarding the prisoner. Lets fancy up those cells and that guard post now. The main rule when adding doodads is to ask yourself, Why is this here?. Weapons dont belong in kitchens and bookshelves dont belong in armories, ect. We will generally use the second layer for doodads, but sometimes you will need to combine the second and third layer to get them to place correctly. We added some doodads to the cells and guard post, not too many since this is a jail area after all. I had to bend the rules a little bit so that the area wasnt too plain. I also added some event wall torches to help brighten the area up. It may be jail, but we still need light. Speaking of light, lets add some windows to the top visible wall. Windows almost always are added to the second layer. Okay we got windows now. Notice that they are not too close together, nor are right next to the edge of a wall. Building corners are usually load-bearing so you generally do not want windows there. Also, I didnt go too crazy and kept them evenly spaced, symmetry is important with windows. Now were going to go into the very risky art of the shaded and lighted ground tiles. I say risky because even I have a hard time pulling them off, and if not done perfectly they look terrible. For this tutorial we are going to set our light source in the slightly northwest, mostly because the lighted tiles only account for a lighting source from that direction. First place the tiny slivered tiles one tile diagonally to the right of the bottom of your windows along the flat part of the upper visible wall. Now place the larger sliver tiles one tile below the tiny slivered ones. Now place the completely lighted tile one tile to the left of both the tiny slivered and larger slivered tiles. Now for the two windows whos light extends further, fill it in until it hits a wall. Technically speaking, we did this correct but I think it looks tacky. Also it creates a problem for us, can you see it? If you guessed the lone angled window on the left wall youre correct. Light would also be coming out of that window, but at a much different angle. We dont have the tiles readily available to make it look decent, so how do we fix it? We remove it. I know it throws off the symmetry with the angled windows over on the right, but in the end that is better than shoddy lighting technique. All in all, avoid this lighting non-sense the best you can. Im only tossing it in to show you how to use those tiles correctly. Now lets add some shaded tiles to give contrast. Shaded tiles are good to use period because they add depth to your maps and break up the repetition of floor tiles. Now there are a couple rules when it comes to how far out you shade. On standard two-tile high walls, only one tile of shading is need. I use a 2:1 ratio as a guide. So if your walls are four tiles high, you can try out a two-tile shading technique. Shading also needs to be on the side opposite the direction of light, so in this tutorial our shading will be on the left side of our map. First start with the full shaded tile and replace all the floor tiles on the left and bottoms of the walls. Now the first thing youll notice is, Ahh! My angled walls are disappearing! Not to worry, well replace those in a second. Now move onto the angled shaded tiles and fill in the gaps (strait tiles where walls connect at 90 degrees instead of 45). Also fill in the straight line to the left that I missed before (the one right next to the cells). Lastly go to the second layer and fill in the angled wall pieces that we replaced with shaded tiles. You will need to use the pieces with the white bottoms instead of the regular floor bottoms, youll see why. Do you notice the mistake we made? In the guard post the desk piece with the lamp on it has been replaced. Have no fear, well fix it and show you how to use events to add a fourth layer to your map so you can be more complex with your doodads. Also notice that since we used the third layer for the overhang wall pieces we didnt have to fix anything when we added our bottom angled wall pieces on the second layer. Now lets fix that desk. - First go to the third layer and select the correct desk piece. - Place it where it is supposed to go, the lamp with disappear, but that is okay. - Now go to the event tab and create an event on top of the desk piece we just placed. - Double click on the graphic section in the event menu, select tileset and find the lamp select the lamp and hit okay. Now its fixed, hurray! Your map should look like this: Thanks to isaacsol pointing out my huge oversight. On the corners and sides of your angled walls I was using the wrong ceiling/wall topping pieces. Take a look at this next pic to see how I fixed it. I highlighted in red the four tiles you'll need to fix them, go ahead and fix the misteak and spruce up your map. May finished map looks like this:

Well I'm gonna start. Not sure why I am a newbie, since I've been posting here for many years - I am sure it has to do with some major overhauls to the look and function of the site. Starting a seperate post for that requested tower in tutorial.

Sure. Which tiles specifically do you not understand. The Tower In tileset is very limited in my opinion and there are much better options, but I'll put together a little something in the next day or so and we'll see if that helps.

RMXP Unlimited seems like a ghost town lately... where is everyone? If there are some serious users out there that need mapping tutorials, please hit me up - I'm happy to help.

Rookie mistake #1 - the tree canopy autotile, never use it - EVER Rookie mistake #2 - the tree leaf shadow fog thing, never use it either - EVER. Its use suggest that there are giant leaves above the rest of the trees casting huge shadows. @earthboy - do not use an array of trees, trees in nature grown in bunches and forests are usually dominated by one type of tree, with mabye 1 or 2 smaller, less competative tree types growing here and there.