Map Sizing - Black Border

[LancelotXIII]

Heya folks - I'm running into conflicting guideline when it comes to making my maps.

• Thundaga and general search says to try to keep my maps in the 30ish x 30ish, which makes sense - smaller map are easier to design well and run better.
• Pokemon Essentials Doc says to pad my maps to prevent black bars - which also makes sense.

Combine the two and uh... well it doesn't look right.

Green is my "walkable" area and red is where I would need to block off the player so that they don't see black borders.

Only 31% of my map is "useable" space. Which doesn't sound right.

Is the solution here to just have the map connected to empty full padding maps ? I imagine it works but it also sounds kind of ... wasteful?

I can easily maintain continuity if my map connects to 4 others maps, but let's say it's my starting town and there's only 1 way out. Do I make 3 empty map that are connected to the other 3 unused cardinal directions?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Desperado]

I recommend using 30x30 as a guideline for a small map and not a strict rule on how every map in your game should be. I'd only make a map that small if it's a building or cave interior where you wouldn't need the large buffering area around the walkable area since the tiles outside the walkable area would be blacked out anyway. Building and cave interiors only need a 1 tile thick buffer since the edge of the map is reflective and will look weird if the player walks up to a wall and sees a reflection in the black map.

When it comes to maps that aren't inside caves or buildings, in my experience a map can be as large as 80x80 before lag or functional problems start to occur if the map also has many moving objects. You don't have to use that size or draw a lot of detail on that whole area, this is just an idea.

There's a way to create an invisible wall with the tileset. What I recommend is to open the tileset with an image editor, copy an existing tile of ground such as a 1x1 tile of grass or whatever you want to be your invisible wall tile, copy that tile and paste it on top of one of the white X tiles, then open your tileset in RPG Maker and go to the collision page for your tileset. I think the white X tiles prevent walking into them from any direction by default but you should check just in case. Make note somewhere which tile does this or place it apart from the original tile in your tileset so you don't confuse it with the normal version of the tile that can be walked on.

 

[LancelotXIII]

Good idea on the invisible blockers, I'll see if I can work that in. I ended up settling on a nice 42x42 default size, it gives me a nice canvas to work and focus in while maintaining a good ratio of "you can walk here" and "padding trees".

Thanks!