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[ArkMercenary]

Got a PM from a fellow member on the forums who played the demo of my game and was wondering how I mapped my houses so rather than type it all up in a PM I figured I make a tutorial on it. So for my first tutorial I present to you guys Mapping Houses: ArkMercenary Style.

First off just begin with mapping the basic frame of the home. Kinda like this:



Once you're done with that we'll move along to setting up the door which is what the local member was asking me how to do in the first place. By doing this, the hero will be able to walk under some of the tiles while entering and exiting the home. To map this we'll need to use the E tile set so a little screen capturing and copy past is in order. From the house frame you just made, press the PRINT SCREEN/SysRq key to take a screen shot of that map and just past that shot into good ol' MS PAINT. By the way, the PRINT SCREEN/SysRq key is usually located over the number pad all the way to the right of your keyboard and should be next to the SCROLL LOCK and PAUSE/BREAK keys. (Well that's where mine is anyways. =P) Alright, when you have that screen in paint you should have something like this:



I used these four tiles to make this simple frame (The door tile is in the B tile set while the rest are in the A set.):



Now then, that door tile is going to be a place marker for the two tiles we'll be copying from this screen. Select the selection tool from the left side of the screen in MS PAINT (That box drawn out in a dotted line.) and click and hold on the pixel directly above the far left side of the door tile (This will be much easier if you magnify the pixels to the max by using the zoom tool. [Looks like a magnifying glass]) and drag your mouse up and to the right until you have selected exactly 32x64 pixels. (You can see how many pixels are selected by looking at the status bar at the bottom right of MS PAINT.) Now release your mouse button and you should have these two tiles selected:



Now then, simply hit CTRL+C to copy these two tiles (You can also go to EDIT > COPY from the top of MS PAINT if you're into that. =P) and then open RPG MAKER VX. Open your project and then open up the resource manager. In the manager open up the system folder and select tileE. Click the export button and simply export the file to your desktop. Minimize RPG MAKER VX and find the tileE on your desktop and right click it. Select open with and open the file with MS PAINT. once the file opens simply press CTRL+V on your keyboard and those two tiles should appear at the very top left of the picture. You should have something like this:



Alright, now close MS PAINT, go back into RPG MAKER VX, reopen your game, open the file manager again, click on the system folder, and this time click the import button. Import tileE from your desktop and it should automatically over wright the tileE already there. TAKE NOTE! It won't ask you if you want to over wright the existing file! Make sure you included all your existing tiles in tile set E in the new file or you will lose them and mess up your current maps that used tiles from set E. Be safe and keep backups. (Trust me, it sucks losing all that hard work over a silly mistake... =_=) There you go! Hard part is done. Now you just need to set the pass ability for these two tiles. Thanks to the changes in VX this is as simple as it gets. Just select your tile set E from the maker, click the button that looks like a little guy with two "))" to the right of him, and chance the symbol on your two new tiles to the star by clicking on them twice. Now your hero will be able to walk under these two tiles and still be blocked by the rest of them. Now lets finish up that house.

First before using these two tiles, we'll have to finish up the inside and outside of the map. I found out that if you place these two tiles before finish the outside of the map the wall tiles will go funky on you like this:



I'll explain, when you draw tile next to the wall tiles as shown in circle A the wall tiles around the tile E tile in circle B will not recognize it as being linked to it and will draw itself as it weren't by a similar tile. (Hope that was clear enough. Don't really know how to explain it better... ^^') So then we'll just finish the map using normal tiles from sets A-D and then we'll use the two from E. So you should have a map like this before moving on:



Well it's not finished but as long as you're done using linked tiles from tile set A on the outside you'll be fine. Now if you don't know about it yet there's a nice little trick in the RPG MAKERS that comes in handy. By holding down the SHIFT key while placing tiles, you'll place the center tile graphic in linked tiles while not affecting the graphic of surrounding tiles. For example, by holding down the SHIFT while placing tiles, you'll get this:



Instead of this:



So what you're going to do now is hold down SHIFT while placing blank tiles on the two tiles that we copy and pasted above the door tile. You'll have something like this when you're done:



Notice the auto-tiles didn't get affected when you placed those tiles? That's what's so useful about the SHIFT key. Now you can place those two tiles from your tile set E and thanks to the SHIFT key they'll blend right in with no trouble at all. And there you have it! Your doorway is all done. All that's left is to place the actual door and this is also made simple thanks to VX. Just switch from map editing to event editing and right click the door graphic, go to quick event, door..., and select the door graphic and the place where the hero will appear when they teleport to the new map. Can't get any easier. Now you can add all the nick-naks from tile sets B-E you like. Finish up the outside of the house and spruce up the inside with some windows and furnishings and your house is complete!

Any problems you have with this tutorial or any errors you notice please let me know and I'll fix it up right away. Hope it comes in handy for some of you. =)

[Astel]

Good tutorial on "open" houses as i call them, you should also add something about the "closed" type (the ones with black space around the house).

[ArkMercenary]

Good tutorial on "open" houses as i call them, you should also add something about the "closed" type (the ones with black space around the house).

Thanks man. =)

Though I don't really like the closed houses really. =/ The black space kinda gives it a dungeon like feel to the house. =P

[Harmill]

Very nice. It seems like a bit of work just to make doors (need to do the MS Paint thing for all the different wall textures), but I'm sure it's quick and easy once you've gotten the TileE part finished.

[ArkMercenary]

Very nice. It seems like a bit of work just to make doors (need to do the MS Paint thing for all the different wall textures), but I'm sure it's quick and easy once you've gotten the TileE part finished.

Yeah, just getting the tiles into your E set is the hard part. Once you've got that done it only takes seconds to make the door way once you've done it a few times. It's a bit of extra work but it looks nice in my opinion once it's done.

[Krobelus]

Very nice, I hope you don't mind me copying this yea? I needed something similar for inside houses, but it'd look weird if there was no ceiling over the door, xD

Thanks again! =P
-Krobe

[kenlongjr]

Followed to a T, I have a problem though, If I set the two new tiles in TileE to the (star) symbol, they act just like regular tiles, I can't walk through them. Without changing anything else, if I change the passability to O, I can get to the door, but it's via the roof! (I just walk over the tiles), I go back and change it back to (STAR) and it's like a brick wall again..

Anyone know where I'm F'n up?

[Aërendyll]

@Kenlongjr: As far as I know that's a bug in RMVX itsself. Make the E-tiles passable (with the O-mark) and right-click on them. Now you have a star-symbol that shouldn't block your characters.

[Krobelus]

If you guys like ArkMercenary's tut, and want your own Tileset E without the work, then you'll love me too!



There, I did it for every wall/roof tile that comes with VX.

Enjoy!

Also, Arkmercenary, you may put it in your first post as a resource. =P

-Krobe

[Edit] I fixed it, but it's still weird? I'm not sure why... o.O?

This post has been edited by Krobelus: Mar 7 2008, 06:27 PM

[kenlongjr]

My transparent tile was set to non-passable. errrrrr

I change those tiles a lot by accident.

Thanks

[Mr. Anonymous]

Alternately, you could set events with the corresponding tileset graphic above the doorway as "Through" and "Above Character".

[Anaxim]

About the auto-tiling problem: I was able to recover the selection drag box tool from XP. Found it on some Japanese blog:
Shift + Right (Drag) Click and then Shift + Left Click will copy what you choose, instead of the autotile's middle tile defenition.
Should help

[Mr. Anonymous]

Very nice. I was wondering why that function wasn't included.

[Anaxim]

Actually, it was never removed (I check XP, it was there too - select tool was for all 3 layers. ShiftRight was for only that one layer.)

[Sheena-Tiger]

About the auto-tiling problem: I was able to recover the selection drag box tool from XP. Found it on some Japanese blog:
Shift + Right (Drag) Click and then Shift + Left Click will copy what you choose, instead of the autotile's middle tile defenition.
Should help

Konnichiwa!

i just started using the VX and tried that copy/paste
its working without using shift... just drag a box with right button what you want to copy. you get a box on your cursor that you can place everywhere with a left-click

just be careful with the drawingtool you use.
-using the pencil gives the exact copy you can draw around while holding your button down
-using rectangle and elipse gives the same you copied, while you drag around your mouse holding down the left button but has nearly no effect when simply clicked on the point where your mouse points

[Anaxim]

You misunderstood what the point of shift is.
It copies what is layed down EXACTLY.
That means that if you want to put the left edge of the tall grass autotile in the middle of a tall grass patch, shift it.

[Sheena-Tiger]

aaw sorry
i think now i get it :/

^^ still learning

[calvat]

It dont seem to work for me. the wall part works but not the roof even doh i did the same thing for both. any help would be great.

This post has been edited by calvat: Mar 15 2008, 09:09 AM

[jeremyah]

great tutorial. you're a huge stud.

[tehl33tjim]

The shift stuff is incredibly useful. I had no idea you could do that. That'll help a ton now, thanks much.