lessons learned: modular overworld(not player facing) for open world rpgs

[polar_fawkes]

heya, just wanted to share an approach to open-world gaming i've developed over the years specific to rpgm. i've had to scrap dozens of projects due to overloading the engines with events, but i've finally got a good system for a morrowind-style cell system for use in rpg maker.

i make an 'overworld' map that the player will never see. then i break this into 6x6 grids. each one of these tiles represents 20x20 on the map the player will see. so, for a 120x120 overworld map, you'll end up with 400 or so 120x120 tiles to work with.

you can populate 120x120 with a fair amount of events in rpgmv and have it run fine. here's an image of my overworld(zoomed in)

happy lorecrafting!

 

[polar_fawkes]

also, 120x120 is the perfect balance between 'open' feeling and being too empty/samey. the real problem w open worlds in rpgm is making sure that no matter where the player stops walking, they are looking at a fascinating image. so in my 500x500 prior prototypes i end up with swathes of just green screen where fields are. not good. dead end. scrap project

 

[Iron Croc]

Very interesting. I've seen some people map like movie sets. Only put nice stuff where a player can actually see/walk. The rest is just... smoke n' mirrors.

 

[Micro]

This is a really interesting idea. nice work. :) Maybe you could make a short tutorial that goes a little more into detail on how to make this work, so newbies to RPG Maker can try it out as well! if you feel like it sometime, anyway. :D

thanks for sharing this with us!

 

[jagvang]

I'm newbie to this stuff and would love to learn it if that is possible. It should be fun once I get the hang of it.

 

[Rumdiddlyumm]

How would one link the "cells" together seamlessly while the player travels? ive got a 300x300 project with FAR to many events to run smoothly on most platforms. this just might save another doomed game.