Well I have been making an rm2k3 game and am finding it hard to map.So what I'd like to know is if you have had any hard obstacles to hold you back and what you guys did to get over them.In my case I have mapping(which I'm terrible at to be honest) and am having a hard time trying to get better.
So what were your obstacles?The reason I ask on this forum is because everyone here seems to be professional.

I was never truly... 'horrible' at mapping, (not to boost myself up) but for some reason I always had a sense of what looked completely bad and what didn't.

I compare/d a lot of my maps to those of Ara Fell and all those other widely acclaimed popular games. I also checked out all those mapping competitions on Gaming World and got a sense of how to map in the way that other people (and myself) liked it. It's kinda a mix of a tiny bit of open space with layers and layers of objects and details. I'll get back with some pictures later.

(Firefox just crashed but it saved my paragraphs lol -- gotta love it)

Looking at your screenshots of HERO 1 I gotta say your quite good at mapping.Sometimes when I plan things out my mapping will look decent but never anything close to as good as yours.

I can give you a tutorial of what I do, though I don't think I'm that great.

First, I draw something extremely simple:


Then, add another tile onto it:


Add some grass around it if you wanna:


Then draw heaps of other things:


That's usually how I do it. I don't think it looks particularly good, though. I've done better, for sure.

Edit: The crap? The slashes have come back!!!

Mapping has definitely been one of the hardest obstacles for me to overcome. I'm not particularly good at mapping, but I've been improving slowly.

I usually start by getting some idea of what I want the map to look like, and then begin with the terrain. Have some parts of the ground raised and some lowered. This is usually done randomly to mimic the randomness of actual terrain, although some areas will obviously have been altered in some way by the people/monsters/catastrophic events (ect.) in your game.

After you've carved into the once completely flat land and made it look a little more realistic you just have to start placing stuff. If you're mapping out a town for instance, place houses next to each other in lines or separate them and place them semi-randomly. Throw in some paths or roads to connect your buildings next. Throw in some statues, fountains, trees, flowers, and other random items and you're done.

In my opinion, good maps are very detailed and overall pretty random. If it's a man made area it should be relatively orderly but still have some things be a little out of place. Some houses should be a little run down, some flowers and weeds should be sprouting up in undesirable places, ect. Adding those little random details are what make a map amazing instead of just good.

I actually only stumbled across Starless Umbra because I was looking for a little bit of graphical inspiration. I downloaded 5 different highly rated games and played each of them for about 20 minutes while taking some tips, but decided that SU was worth playing all the way through. In other words, had I not have had any trouble with the mapping in my game, I wouldn't be here to add my 2 cents to this thread in the first place. :D

For me (to this day) it's pretty much dialogue and cutscenes. There's a lot of cool ideas I need to get out to my players like... ASAP and it's just tough sometimes to balance what needs to be revealed with how the dialogue should flow. I pretty much know what people need to do but then when I go down to write on paper what they say sometimes things take a different turn.

I have a tendency--especially post-ch 5-- to sprite original poses whenever possible, and that can be unnecessarily complicated. I spend an hour creating a rolling log for a cutscene that's only about three seconds long, or another hour timing how two characters interact because I want them to hug/fight/kick/strike whatever. XD

In the end I really do like spriting even if it is overwhelming and adds another layer of complexity, but I hope that it also adds some sort of element of realism, because words can only go so far.

As far as overcoming these problems, it's just a matter of balance. I really felt like mapping and creating puzzles/minigames post-su6 so I've got all my custom gameplay taken care of, but now I have to go back, add cutscenes, NPCs, and default monsters everywhere. Errhgh :\

Also I created a gif of all the phases of mapping Zett forest. I wish I could find it... it was really cool! :[

Yeah thats happened to me DragonHeartMan sometimes when I write dialog down on paper it sounds great but then when I actually implement it into the game it sounds really cheesy So i decided that the dialog I write down on paper is a rough copy and that I change around the dialog when i have to.Sometimes I get my brother to read through it and he helps me out.

Quote:

I spend an hour creating a rolling log for a cutscene that's only about three seconds long, or another hour timing how two characters interact because I want them to hug/fight/kick/strike whatever. XD

This is exactly what I do. ALL THE TIME :]

Lol, I do that too. Most of the time when I spend hours working on animations or sprites that aren't really that critical it's to take a break from coding. I've actually come to really enjoy spriting as a result.

I don't really like spriting exactly. When it turns out good, then I like it. If it ends up turning out bad, scratch start again and that really pisses me off.

Quote:

scratch start again and that really pisses me off.

You get used to it. Especially when you finally make it look good!

Yeah lol. I have trouble mostly with putting sprites into animations. That is hard

My biggest problem... I think I have a the biggest problem of being impatient which usually never works out in the end. So I am still learning to be patient.

I look at what alot of people have done though and I believe "I can do that. If I want to invest my time into it."

Music solved that problem for me though... Kind of like sketching I can whip out alot of ideas and then carve and shape it down into something that's practical. I can work fast in music and I feel progress every step of the way.

Other then that I haven't taken the time to program because it bores me, I have done some pixel art from scratch that I was happy with but not happy with the time, I have mapped some things but again it bores me quite often, and writing seems to do it to for some reason. Even though I have written two novels, a short film script, and tons of ideas. :)

The main obstacle I have is dealing with extreme cases of copying and pasting, and then the (vast) hours of going through and changing thousands of variable triggers to reflect a different situation (each character). Don't get me wrong, i love what i accomplished, but the work behind it was mundane and repetitive to the worst case possible.

If i want to add a fifth primary character that's totally customizable, it would probably take a few hours, on top of the fact that i may change things up, a lot, to make battles more... interesting, instead of the default system, being the issue with most all rpgmaker games before the newer ones (xp and vx)

I have an image map of the mess somewhere.

That's great. I had that problem for a while, but now I script with scalability in mind so I can avoid those situations. It's difficult in RM sometimes, but it helps out tremendously.

Now if only 2k3 were OO. ;)