Announcement

[Luneth]

Hey guys, welcome to part two of my Parallaxing Tutorials!
I decided to do towns today because there are a lot of places that I have parallaxed, but there is one type of place that I have never done well with.
Towns.
I am not going to lie, if you go into building a town with absolutely no idea what the end product will look like, you will have a horrid time.

ANYWAY, before we get into the steps, I want to tell you that I use the techniques from the last tutorial, so you may want to
aquaint yourself with those. It's here: http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=52756

I'll try to make this tutorial more organized, since the last one was kind of a cluster.

Tips and Tricks!

Spoiler:

Before we start, I'd like to show you guys some tips to make these things go easier.
Tip 1:
Separation of tile regions
Remember how I told you guys to use the grid in the last tutorial? Well, there are some things that the standard 32 by 32 grid cannot do.
A useful tactic is to go back into the Preferences and change the subdivisions of the grid into 2. Doing this will divide the 32 by 32 square into 16 by 16 little squares.
That way, you can create walls like the editor does, since the 16 by 16 pixel square is how it does it.
Tip 2:
City Editor
When parallaxing towns, you might get sick of piecing together the walls. You can always save what you're working on, upload it into the editor as an
unfinished parallax, and then draw the general shapes of the buildings. Then use the Map Saver script and put it back into your image editing program.

Now, let's get to the steps.

STEP 1

Spoiler:

Just like last time, go into either Photoshop or Gimp and create your blank/base template template for your map using one of the two techniques I showed you.
Easy, right?
Afterwords, time to start making our basic stuff for our town!
I'll be using Cel's stuff again, just to let you know
Use the pattern overlay technique I taught you guys last time, and it'll take about a minute to get the ground done. Everything else is just
copy pasta work! Now, there has been debates on walls around towns or no walls around towns. Well, it really depends on your game.
IF there are monsters roaming around the areas around the town, there are going to be walls. Unless the town is inhabited by a warrior people,
then no walls would be fine in that case.
And, a 'wall' doesn't have to be an actual brick or stone wall. Towns in RPG games usually have some sort of natural barrier around at least
one side of them, i.e. a river, dense forest, a steep hill/mountain, you name it. With my town I'm building, it'll be a wall for simplicity's sake.
Here's what I've come up with.



A word of caution!!!
Just like with the last area we parallaxed, an error will draw the player's eyes almost immediately! With buildings especially, since there is such
fine pixelwork. Be sure you're precise!

STEP 2

Spoiler:

Alright, now we got the basic layout. ALWAYS do the ground and ground features before the buildings. Towns are built from the ground up, right?
Add anything that you'll need to get around (if you need anything) and in my case, I do. I need some stairs, and some railings so my people
won't 'fall off' of the raised platform. Here's the after.



A good idea if you're using raised platforms; Use what I call the 'Rule of Sprite'. I always use railings or a protective barrier around raised platforms, or
basically anything, that is taller than your characters.

STEP 3

Spoiler:

REMEMBER!!! Keep a seperate layer for ALL of these! This is to make sure you can pass beneath certain things when we're all done. Now, to add the
buildings. These are the worst part of creating towns, by far. Keep them uniform, but unique. I know that made absolutely NO SENSE, so you may
want to look at the picture as a reference.



Be mindful of the shapes of the actual buildings. A king's residence probably won't be a shack on the end of the lane, just sayin'.

STEP 4

Spoiler:

This step, we're going to get detailing! Oh, details on buildings, how you annoy me so~
Also, this is the step that we actually get to make passages out of the town! Don't ask me why I wait to do it until this part of the process,
but for some reason it just feels right to me. You can make the entrances and exits all the way back in step 1 if you want, it's just a matter of
personal taste I guess. Mooooving on~
Since this is the detail stage, this is the time to add your own personal flair to it. Not every game designer's towns are the same. They
all have a similar concept, but they are all different. As you can see with mine, I went for a dark feel. But, that's just one style that
I can do, and same with you! You can create anything you wish, you just have to put time and thought into it!
Now, here's how mine looks.



Now, there is usually a centerpiece to every town, whether it be a local deity's statue, a grave site of the town's guardian, or some such, people usually
have some sort of legend or hero that they will enshrine where everyone can see.

Step 5
Keeping up? This is the error correction stage. Go through and skim your image, and see if there are any errors. Usually, with me, there is A LOT.
Once you're done with that, add any more buildings, roads, fountains, you name it, until your city is BOTH walkable and eye pleasing.

Now, I said that I was going quick, but I have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section right here, for you guys!

FAQ

Spoiler:

Q: I'm stuck with the general base or layout for my town. Help?
A: For me, I go into either paint or photoshop (Or just my sketch book) and draw out a simple diagram of it. Here's something I did real quick.



I can use this, almost like a map, to draw out the town. Remember, this is a town, not a city. Although almost the same, there are little
differences, depending on the era of time you wish to convey (even your own time!) For example, a town in medival Europe would probably be small,
houses for maybe 2-6 people per house, MAYBE have a fountain, have a path (Either stone or dirt path) and would have fewer vendors than a city.
This, however, is just my view and opinion of it, so it may not be historicaly accurate. I'm just piecing common sense together with my views to
create an image, so it may be wrong But, this is how I would create a town's layout.

Q: Slanted roofs?
A: The slanted roof tiles are very easy on the eyes indeed, but they can be quite difficult to work with. If you're a beginner, then start small. Even
the angled flat roofs are better than just plain square roofs (Although those do have their uses) Many custom tileset artists (Like Lunarea, Celianna, etc.)
have created slanted roofs to go with their tiles, so you should be fine there. However, if you want the RTP roofs slanted, you should
visit this site here: http://junkhunt.net/vx/yane.shtml
Here you can build your own tileset with certain slanted roofs. It really is useful.

Q: My roof(s) that should be over my character are a different color than the rest!
A: There are either 1 of 2 problems.
1. You are using a picture and you did not tint the picture to the screen tint. It took me until a couple months ago to realize that I should
probably do that when I tinted the screen. It'll blend in nicely after that
2. You are using the modified version of Woratana's Fog Script, the one modified to show fog in a battle. Although an AMAZING edit, it
does not tint the fog with the screen tint like the original. You can either tint the fog in photoshop/gimp, or use a script command to tint the
fog. $fog.tone = [red, green, blue, gray] # Put numbers where the colors are to fit your tint!
That should fix it. If not, then use a fixed picture, and follow the number 1. method, and see if it helps.

Q: What kind of water should I use for my town?
A: Well, with towns, it depends on the style. If it's a grassy town, use the natural water auto tile or anyone else's technique for water. If it's a
stone or city like town, then you will want man made water canals. This sound obvious but I've made the mistake of mixing them up, and it's not
pretty.

Q: How should I design my buildings?
A: It depends on the occupants. I know that it's counter productive, but think of it this way. If a rich man inherits his poor parents' house, he's either going to add
onto the house or build a new one and move there. I highly doubt he'd live in an old decrepet house, but you could make an interesting back story for
a character like that. Anyway, if they're rich, they are going to have a bigger house, maybe an upstairs, maybe a downstairs, more intricate windows, and
a chimney.
A poor character won't have an extravegent house, it'll have fewer windows, a shabby chimney, and so on and so forth. Now, if it's story related, then
be my guest and break these guidelines, because I for one would love to see a story on an NPC like that.

Q: Castles/Mansions! Why u so hard?!!!
A: I FEEL YOUR PAIN.
Castles and Mansions are the ABSOLUTE HARDEST thing to map in RPG Maker (In My Humble Opinion) so I will actually make a completely seperate tutorial for that.
But, beware, I'm not going to do it very fast, because I hate mapping castles and mansions.

If you guys have any type of question, I'll answer it and add it to the FAQ section for everyone to benefit from.

[OBubblesO]

Never as good as your Forest tutorial, still a great one.

Excelent tutorial.

Thanks for sharing.

[Luneth]

Eh, yeah. I wanted to kind of leave it a bit less so I could really help people with a general guideline. I will be adding a specifics section, like crowded cities, spacious villages, etc. This is just a template pretty much. But, thank you for stopping by! Hope this helped at least somewhat