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Tip of the Week - Random Tips by Petros

Having been using RMXP for about two years nearly now, I've come to realise that mapping, eventing, spriting e.t.c. is not the only thing that makes a game interesting. Sometimes it's the little things that can fix tiny bugs that can be irritating.

Every week I'm going to add a new tip to this thread. It can range from the smallest thing, or how to help with restrictions on spriting if you don't have Photoshop and only have paint like myself.

A commonly seen mistake even in such masterful RPGs as Master of the Wind, is that when a player enters a new map, they often may need to turn directly left or right. However this usually causes the character to be transfered back to the previous map.

A way to fix this so that character can walk straight across the teleports with easy but still be able to turn in the direction of the map and walk back to the previous one is this:

Set a Condition Branch so that the Player must be facing the direction of way the player should be headed if he were to enter a new map. Then put the "Transfer Player" event inside this and leave the rest blank.

See, simple but it saves alot of irritation from the players who keep accidentally walking back and forth between maps.

This Tip is for those spriters who don't have photoshop or some fancy graphics program. It involves re-colours and making your own sprites and/or edits. MS Paint, whilst a basic program to someone who's been trained to use it can still be pretty effective in re-colouring and creating sprites.

RECOLOURS

First off create yourself a palette of colours by double clicking on the standard colour and adjusting the tone bar several times and creating yourself one or using a ready made one. Next zoom in on say for example the hair of the character you wish to re-colour and use the colour selector tool to chose the darkest shade in the hair colour. Now move your mouse over to the darkest colour on your palette and select as the secondary colour using right-click on the mouse. Now select the eraser and hold down the right mouse button and shade over the the entire section of the hair or other object you wish to re-colour and only the darkest part will be coloured in the new colour, now repeat but with the next shade of colour up and continue until the entire area you wish re-coloured is done.

EDITING

Taking bits and pieces off of other sprites and placing them onto a new one is one of the simplest things to do using paint. Simply cut out using the cutting tool and paste it onto new sprite. However there comes an occasional time where you may just wish to darken or edit objects to place them on a new sprite. To do this, open a new paint file, paste the object in there and save the file. Then right click on the file and select MS Photo Editor a basic program for all Windows XP and above users. Using the transparency tool make the background transparent so it is easier to see the object. Select the icon that looks like a sun of sorts, this will allow you to adjust the brightness of all the colours, or simply on of the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colours manually to do. Once done you can copy and paste onto the desired sprite and voila. Problem solved.

Hope this tips come in handy to some people. If not, I've not wasted any time in trying to help.
 
When the player is inside a Player Touch event, it has to walk out of it and back in for it to execute again, so this method is quite a nuisance to have in games.

I always transfer the player from map A to map B to map B's transfer point to map A, and make it step one step forward so it goes out of the new transfer point, otherwise the transfer point would be inactive until the player goes out of the event and back in.
 
Not a whole row, just add some different dirt, shadows or something at the one, two, three tiles you want to have for the transfer.
 
Well it may be redundant but it's just a little tip. There'll be pleanty more, maybe you'll find some more useful. Watch this space.
 
Nice one, Petros. I've seen this imperfection in many commercial games. Ultimately Irritating.
BTW, is this a greek name? Noble origins, pal? :D
 
The recolouring tip is good, I never knew I could do that with paint...and it's fourth on my list of programs (ordered by use) beaten by Hearts, Word and RPG maker XP (nothing beats a game of hearts).
 

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