Mapmaking tips...

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

I downloaded the .zip file that someone posted here with all the tilesets in them, and I've put them in mappy with 16 x 16 tiles, and it's been working alright for me, but I still am feeling quite frustrated when making maps for multiple reasons, and I was hoping if someone here would be able to provide me a solution.

1. I need Tips and tricks for buildings

You know how there were buildings with roofs on them that wouldn't reveal what is inside until you opened the doors / walls to get in?

Would I use a separate layer for that stuff?

2. How would I use layers in general

I'm not sure if I should use these or not, but I kind of feel like I may want to use them so I'm not tearing my hair out when I try to make my maps look better. Would this affect how they work once I'm importing them into a game?

3.How to add enemies / other units

I'm sure it's probably something in the hacking tutorial, but I'm starting off with Overtroll's guide, and so I'm trying to figure out maps BEFORE I move ahead.

Any other advice would be appreciated.

[ThatGuyDownTheStreet]

Adding enemies and other units is part of Events, not the map making. Once you go on in the tutorial you'll understand how to add enemies and other units.

[Crimson Red]

Don't use layers (there's no need to), just place tiles on the right on the image on the left, and watch your map dimensions and make sure you use the right tilesets. And you can't use multiple tilesets at once, so don't try. Andddd there are tutorials for this...

For map changes (e.g. roof of a room changes into the room itself once the door is opened) you need to code events for that... which is done outside of mappy. While Mappy CAN be used to do it, it's not recommended unless you have HUGE tile changes... and I also don't feel like explaining how to do this, nor is it in my tutorial (or any other tutorial I know of), so yeah, I suggest just making the plain map as it will first appear, and doing the units, tile/map changes, etc. later with hacking.

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

Don't use layers (there's no need to), just place tiles on the right on the image on the left, and watch your map dimensions and make sure you use the right tilesets. And you can't use multiple tilesets at once, so don't try. Andddd there are tutorials for this...

For map changes (e.g. roof of a room changes into the room itself once the door is opened) you need to code events for that... which is done outside of mappy. While Mappy CAN be used to do it, it's not recommended unless you have HUGE tile changes... and I also don't feel like explaining how to do this, nor is it in my tutorial (or any other tutorial I know of), so yeah, I suggest just making the plain map as it will first appear, and doing the units, tile/map changes, etc. later with hacking.

Well then at least now I know I wasn't doing it wrong before when I was using only one layer. I guess the rest in terms of making the map look good is just going to take some practice...

[Claude C Kenny]

Try to avoid tile spam. tile spam is when you have a ton of the same tiles on the map, usually grouped together. I still have the same problem sometimes, but i'm getting better.

[Celice]

A common strategy to first starting a map is to do the barebones outlines of what you're wanting, then flesh it out. Just give a very rough outline to everything, and then go at it, however you feel best. It helps immensely to go in with a main idea though--one suddenly drawing out a map can be interesting, it's very easy to run into dead-ends because you aren't sure how to continue, or you box yourself in with your designs (too much attention to some parts of map design at the expense of others).

A lot of people I used to know drew out their level ideas on paper first, then worked them over. They liked this because they thought about design different with the map actually in their hands, rather than on a screen, and it also allowed them to refine the map from a different viewpoint once they transplanted the map over into the actual game.