Mapping Tips - Ground Levels

じ☆ve冰风

Mapping Tips:​

Ground Levels​

 ​

Working with different ground levels may be advantageous for several reasons, one of them being the ability to fill your maps, avoiding that common appearance of empty. So let's try to apply this in our RPG Maker games!​

English is not my first language, please let me know if a made any mistakes =)

Spoiler


Well, I chose to make a forest map for this tutorial. First, decide the map size, then select the entrance point on the map (in my case - below) and the exit point (in my case - right). Okay, now, usually all that beginners do from this point is to complete the path and fill as much as possible of the map, as in the following example:



Done, I decided to put a piece of river, various grasses and trees, my map is relatively full without being polluted. So, is it right to do this? Of course! Nothing wrong with this map, but it is a bit bland, right? Nothing really draw attention. Moreover, the map has several tiny things thrown on the floor and, despite the large number, the map does not seem so full. What if I want to make it really "full", without looking like a child's room full of toys scattered?
Let's use the ground levels then! For this, let me start the project from scratch again.



 
Spoiler


Back to the initial map, enclose the area you will increase (or decrease, in this tutorial we will only increase) the ground level. Try doing that thinking in the path that the character will have to make to reach the destination. This step is not definitive, over my creation I changed some details several times (positions, sizes, shapes) but nothing too far from my plan at this stage.



 
Spoiler


Now the fun part begins, follow your plan and make the level elevations, use this phase to correct minor errors of calculation. After you make the base elevations, create new ones on top of them, just use creativity and common sense.



 
Spoiler


The map is already very robust, and all it has so far is ground, it means we will not need so many things to fill it, it also means the objects will fit better, without appearing thrown at random. I started with my river, that I tried to do early on, remember? Well then, this time I felt much more at ease drawing the river among the rocks - this is not very realistic, but I think it's cool.



 
Spoiler


Now,it's  time to get your creativity to work! Start filling with trees and everything that goes on the floor - on this map, the number of things on the floor is almost equal to the first version (71 on this against 74 on the other) and it is now much more robust - then start to "decorate" the walls, river, etc.



 

Once you finish filling out the map, finalize it as usual. Make your light effects, fogs, color corrections, etc. This is my final version, what about yours?​

本贴来自国际rpgmaker官方论坛作者:Musashi处,因国际论坛即将永久关站,为了存档多年珍贵资料,署名转载到本论坛存档,由于官方帖子为英文原帖，需要中文翻译请点击论坛顶部切换语言为中文就可以将帖子翻译成中文浏览,方便大家随时查看,原文地址：https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/threads/mapping-tips-ground-levels.40312/