Hi all, it’s me again, your friendly neighborhood Tindy. I imagine you’ve already seen my Big Non-specific Guide to Mapping, yes? This is a step in the same direction, but with some directions of how to achieve the results. ‘Tis the season for snow, and all that, unless you live in Oz, and so by request this is Tindy’s Big How To and Don’t Do of the Snow Town Tileset for RMXP!
When you first encounter the tileset, it seems easy enough.  Some snow, some houses.  But how big to make the map? Will it be hilly, or no? Is it a big, bustling town in the middle of winter freeze, or a small Scandanavian-esque village? You can easily go from having a nice happy village to having empty space that no player wants to walk around in in no time flat, just by making your map too big or your paths too long. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll just be using 20x15 to make the houses – but for a town, 40x40 is a small but decent size.
Fill the entire map on layer 1 with the white snow tile found in the upper left. Make sure it’s the *snow* tile and not the blank tile, because then it’ll come out black when you try to play. My, this is an empty map, isn’t it? No grassy textures to tantalize our eyes. No rocks, no mountains, no nothing. It’s so white, in fact, that you can easily make a mistake and use the blank tile somewhere, and not know it until you playtest. So we need SOMETHING! Go back to your tileset – From the trees up, there's all sorts of accoutrements to add to your dreary map. Rocks, snow clumps, grass, a random ladder! Hurrah! Yay texture. I reccomend putting the snowclumps/rocks in groups of 3 - it'll look better that way.  I also suggets putting them mostly around trees, though make sure you get your open areas, too - otherwise this map will get very old, VERY fast.
Then you must decide: How heavy is this snowfall, anyway? If it’s a light snowfall, use the tall grass more – it’ll make it look like less snow has fallen. Will your road be paved, or will there just be footprints around? These are all details that you must think about! If your road is paved, it implies that either it’s a rich town, or it gets enough business to naturally wear down the snow. A small hamlet probably shouldn't have a road.
What's that? You're unhappy having a running river? You want it frozen? There are two ways around this. One) Request or make a custom autotile. Slightly laborious, but probably the best option. Two) I've used the road autotile as a river. HOWEVER. If you do this, you can NOT use it as a road anymore! Likewise, it's not the best option, really. Now, toning down the purple and putting it in place of the water in the water autotile using a graphics program....ah, now *that* might be the ticket.
Think about placement of things: If there’s a snowman, it was BUILT by someone, right? A snowman in the middle of snow with no footprints is a mighty odd thing – unless, of course, it was built a while ago and it’s been snowing so heavily as to fill in the footprints and et cetera caused by the act of rolling snow into a large ball. Likewise, are there NPCs milling about your town? Even if you don’t use the disappearing footprints event (it’s somewhere around here, by the way), there have to be footprints *somewhere* - otherwise, how would they have gotten out of their house? Can they fly?
Houses with children are ALWAYS more likely to have a lot of footprints in the yard than a house of just an elderly couple. And if they've left their house, chances are good that there will either be footprints leading from the door, or a shoveled walk (read: use the road autotile).
With that, let's get to the houses, shall we?
Basic House
Now, do you see that lovely house sitting in the tileset? DO NOT TOUCH. That is NOT A HOUSE. That is an amalgamation of tiles necessary to build a house. Since houses really ought to be built on different layers, for a greater amount of detail, we’re going to go step-by-step here.
Let’s start with a basic house. The edges of the house, except the bottom, should all be on layer two. Everything else should be on layer one.Â
This shows all the tiles that should be on layer one.
And this shows all the layer two tiles. Note that there aren't very many.
Now, the entire house in the tileset is 11 tiles tall – however, the layer of tiles at the very bottom is NOT the bottom of the house. Keep this in mind as you build.
Now that we have that, do you see that ugly shadow tile? That needs to be fixed. It’s ugly. It doesn’t belong – what on earth would be casting a shadow there? To fix this, use the tiles two tiles to the left of it – except the very top shadow tile, which must be fixed by using the second tile from the left on the very bottom. Now that you have that, I suggest replacing the bottom tiles with the ones covered in snow – found directly right of the house. Once again, the inside tiles are layer one while the edges are layer two.
Now then, the chimney. Chimbly, if you’re from a mining and/or southern family like myself.  You’re gonna want to put it somewhere near a wall – the left wall, right wall, back or front. Not middle (though, if you do, make sure the inside makes sense – middle chimney = middle fireplace). Make sure that you put the top with the correct bottom – it’s going to look really bizarre if you have the center chimney base on the left slant roof. This will easily go on layer two, because we’ve put the roof mostly on layer one, remember?
Now that we’ve got our chimney placed, let’s add details. There’re three windows: a small window and two shuttered windows. It’s really a matter of choice, but in the way we’ve made this house, I think the shuttered windows that are up a few pixels is a better choice than the other. It alludes to there being space between the window sill and the floor. The door, of course, is an event, so you won’t see it on the map. So, now we’ve got a finished house. Sort of. It’s awfully plain! I hope you plan on adding details like a fence. Trees. Et cetera.
Slightly More Advanced House
I won’t show you how to make this step by step, but I will give some pointers:
Obviously, you can’t just copy-paste the roof. Use what you can from that little bit down there, and you’ll also use tiles from the main roof above it and the side-facing roof to the right to fill it in. Again, remember that most of it will go on layer one, with pertinent edges going on layer two.
Play with layers! Not everything on a layer will always stay on that layer.
I suggest not putting this one directly next to the basic house.
When you first encounter the tileset, it seems easy enough.  Some snow, some houses.  But how big to make the map? Will it be hilly, or no? Is it a big, bustling town in the middle of winter freeze, or a small Scandanavian-esque village? You can easily go from having a nice happy village to having empty space that no player wants to walk around in in no time flat, just by making your map too big or your paths too long. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll just be using 20x15 to make the houses – but for a town, 40x40 is a small but decent size.
Fill the entire map on layer 1 with the white snow tile found in the upper left. Make sure it’s the *snow* tile and not the blank tile, because then it’ll come out black when you try to play. My, this is an empty map, isn’t it? No grassy textures to tantalize our eyes. No rocks, no mountains, no nothing. It’s so white, in fact, that you can easily make a mistake and use the blank tile somewhere, and not know it until you playtest. So we need SOMETHING! Go back to your tileset – From the trees up, there's all sorts of accoutrements to add to your dreary map. Rocks, snow clumps, grass, a random ladder! Hurrah! Yay texture. I reccomend putting the snowclumps/rocks in groups of 3 - it'll look better that way.  I also suggets putting them mostly around trees, though make sure you get your open areas, too - otherwise this map will get very old, VERY fast.
Then you must decide: How heavy is this snowfall, anyway? If it’s a light snowfall, use the tall grass more – it’ll make it look like less snow has fallen. Will your road be paved, or will there just be footprints around? These are all details that you must think about! If your road is paved, it implies that either it’s a rich town, or it gets enough business to naturally wear down the snow. A small hamlet probably shouldn't have a road.
What's that? You're unhappy having a running river? You want it frozen? There are two ways around this. One) Request or make a custom autotile. Slightly laborious, but probably the best option. Two) I've used the road autotile as a river. HOWEVER. If you do this, you can NOT use it as a road anymore! Likewise, it's not the best option, really. Now, toning down the purple and putting it in place of the water in the water autotile using a graphics program....ah, now *that* might be the ticket.
Think about placement of things: If there’s a snowman, it was BUILT by someone, right? A snowman in the middle of snow with no footprints is a mighty odd thing – unless, of course, it was built a while ago and it’s been snowing so heavily as to fill in the footprints and et cetera caused by the act of rolling snow into a large ball. Likewise, are there NPCs milling about your town? Even if you don’t use the disappearing footprints event (it’s somewhere around here, by the way), there have to be footprints *somewhere* - otherwise, how would they have gotten out of their house? Can they fly?
Houses with children are ALWAYS more likely to have a lot of footprints in the yard than a house of just an elderly couple. And if they've left their house, chances are good that there will either be footprints leading from the door, or a shoveled walk (read: use the road autotile).
With that, let's get to the houses, shall we?
Basic House
Now, do you see that lovely house sitting in the tileset? DO NOT TOUCH. That is NOT A HOUSE. That is an amalgamation of tiles necessary to build a house. Since houses really ought to be built on different layers, for a greater amount of detail, we’re going to go step-by-step here.
Let’s start with a basic house. The edges of the house, except the bottom, should all be on layer two. Everything else should be on layer one.Â
Now, the entire house in the tileset is 11 tiles tall – however, the layer of tiles at the very bottom is NOT the bottom of the house. Keep this in mind as you build.
Now that we have that, do you see that ugly shadow tile? That needs to be fixed. It’s ugly. It doesn’t belong – what on earth would be casting a shadow there? To fix this, use the tiles two tiles to the left of it – except the very top shadow tile, which must be fixed by using the second tile from the left on the very bottom. Now that you have that, I suggest replacing the bottom tiles with the ones covered in snow – found directly right of the house. Once again, the inside tiles are layer one while the edges are layer two.
Now then, the chimney. Chimbly, if you’re from a mining and/or southern family like myself.  You’re gonna want to put it somewhere near a wall – the left wall, right wall, back or front. Not middle (though, if you do, make sure the inside makes sense – middle chimney = middle fireplace). Make sure that you put the top with the correct bottom – it’s going to look really bizarre if you have the center chimney base on the left slant roof. This will easily go on layer two, because we’ve put the roof mostly on layer one, remember?
Now that we’ve got our chimney placed, let’s add details. There’re three windows: a small window and two shuttered windows. It’s really a matter of choice, but in the way we’ve made this house, I think the shuttered windows that are up a few pixels is a better choice than the other. It alludes to there being space between the window sill and the floor. The door, of course, is an event, so you won’t see it on the map. So, now we’ve got a finished house. Sort of. It’s awfully plain! I hope you plan on adding details like a fence. Trees. Et cetera.
Slightly More Advanced House
I won’t show you how to make this step by step, but I will give some pointers:
Obviously, you can’t just copy-paste the roof. Use what you can from that little bit down there, and you’ll also use tiles from the main roof above it and the side-facing roof to the right to fill it in. Again, remember that most of it will go on layer one, with pertinent edges going on layer two.
Play with layers! Not everything on a layer will always stay on that layer.
I suggest not putting this one directly next to the basic house.