[TUT] Making a dungeon map w/real time hero icon

[AceJP]

So you have a dungeon, a really creepy, long winded journey thru the bowels of the earth, or maybe it's just a small cave. Either way you don't want your payer to get too lost do you? In this tut you will learn how to create a dungeon map with an icon that shows the player where he stands in your diabolical labyrinth.
The dungeon map will be displayed while the player hold the SHIFT key

First Stop- Creating the Map
First thing you need to do is get some graph paper, or create a graph using your computer and design your dungeon, this will serve as the basis for you nice looking map.
For this tut I created a small 3 room map.

Spoiler: Map on Graph Paper

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/2561/mapqz6.jpg[/img]

Note that each graph tile represents one tile in the RMXP editor
Next
You need to crop the image so that the tiles are even.

Spoiler: Cropped Map

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6185/mapcroppedjl1.png[/img]

Next
Resize the image so that it is 640x480
This is so the entire map will fit onto the screen.
Count the number of pixels each graph tile is.
Remember these numbers. For this tut, my graph tiles ended up being X=26 and Y=24
Where X = the number of pixels across, and Y = the number of Pixel high.

Now make your dungeon using your map as a blueprint. Making sure that if the room has 3 tiles across and 2 deep, you use 3 tile across and 2 deep when mapping it in the dungeon.

Now that the dungeon is mapped, make your dungeon map nice and perty like.

Spoiler: My dungeon map

http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/7003/mapcopyas4.png[/img]

Second Stop- All the event stuff
Now that your map is finished it's time to work on the event side of this deal. Stick with me, it's not that hard :thumb:

Open up the Database tab and go to COMMON EVENTS.
in the first common event, lets call it Variables, setup it up like this as a parallel process.

Control Variables: [0001: Payers Map X] = Player's Map X
Remember those pixel numbers you got? This is where you plug them in.
Control Variables: [0001: Player's Map X] *= Number of Pixels across in your graph. For me it was 26
Control Variables: [0003: Players Pixel X] = Variable [0001: Payers Map X]

And now the Y Axis, same as before just using the Y variables.

Control Variables: [0002: Players Map Y] = Player's Map Y
Control Variables: [0002: Players Map Y] *=Number of Pixels high in your graph. For me it was 24.
Control Variables: [0004: Payers Pixel Y] = Variable [0002: Players Map Y]
Wait: 4 Frame(s)

Got that?

Now import into RMXP your map, lets call it Dungeon Map, and import the icon you would like to use as the hero's icon.

Now we move on to the second Common Event, this is how we show our visual representation of all that number crunching. Set this up as a parallel process.

Conditional Branch: The A button is being pressed
Show Picture: 1, 'Dungeon Map' , Upper Left
Show Picture: 2, 'Hero Icon', CENTER (Variable [0003][0004]
Else
Erase Picture: 1
Erase Picture: 2

Branch End

Remember that since these are common events, with parallel processes, they need to be activating by flipping on a switch.

And your done! A demo is uploaded in case that didn't make sense.
Hope you found this useful!

DEMO

All the images needed, need to be custom made, however the demo has everything needed to demonstrate how to use them

 

[Grathea]

Well, the demo isn't so great, but I can see this being useful to some people.

 

[Terru16389]

I see where you were going with this, but...It's too simple and my hopes were that it would be bigger, even span a few maps at a time.

But it could be useful to some people, as gratheo said.

 

[AceJP]

Yeah, that was the idea. To make a simple dungeon map for all those who just started rmxp'ing.

 

[redmoon3580]

[Deleted]

 

[AceJP]

glad to help
Yeah, using graph paper is just a really great tool for planning.

 

[sludgeball]

Is there a way to make the map, so that the map only reveals the part of it which you have visited?:-/

 

[AceJP]

Yes. But it would be pretty complicated and would require alot of events and pictures. If yu wanted something like that I would suggest one of the mini-map scripts. I believe they have fog-of-war support.