Hyperborea Dev Diary #1 Using Regions to Make Connected Maps in RPGMaker

Dear Friends,

Greetings I have begun work on Hyperborea: The Frozen North in earnest now. I wanted to explain a little tutorial to aspiring developers regarding how to make “seamless” transitions between maps in RPGMakerMV.  This technique works best if you have maps with large borders. Hyperborea, for the most part, is a barren and open environment. This, of course, lends itself to a maps with borders around 100 tiles. Doing this manually is a drag and if you make one mistake, R.I.P. Below are the steps that I took to ameliorate this issue.

Requirements:

 

1) Setting up your Regions

hyperborearegions 

Using the Map Paint tool, go to the “R” tab and select a region that you have not used. You only need to draw a region line one tile thick, however since I was counting tiles, I used the rectangle tool to draw large rectangles instead.

2) Setting the Common Event

The next step is setting up the Common Event. In this system, you will need a Common Event for every region that you traverse. Below are two examples of code. The first one is one that takes the player south. The second one, in text, takes the player west.

hyperboreacommonevents

◆Control Variables:#0005 YHyperborea = Map Y of Player
◆Control Variables:#0004 XHyperborea = 243
◆Control Variables:#0006 MapID = 16
◆Transfer Player:{MapID} ({XHyperborea},{YHyperborea}) (Fade: None)

Explanation of the Variables:

  • YHyperborea: Determines where the player will spawn on the Y axis. This iteration is based on their position. Since the player is traveling from the East to the West in the text commands above, YHyperborea is variable.
  • XHyperborea: Determines where the player will spawn on the Y axis. This iteration is static.
  • MapID, this is an indicator of which map they are traveling to.  It is a number obtainable from the bottom of the screen when working on a map.

mapid

To obtain some of the variables like Map X or Map Y of player, you can click on Game Data and select the character option.

variables

3) Adding the Event to Yanfly Region Events

hyperboreaplugin

Perhaps the simplest thing in this is tieing the region to the event. Open the plugin manager, select YEP_RegionEvents, select the region that you have painted, and choose the custom event! Voila! You should be set to go. Making region transitions “seamless” however, is another step that requires a bit of tinkering. It largely depends on how you have set your screen resolution. You will have to set the region markers a certain distance away from the borders of the map so that the player has the illusion that they are always in the center.

 

William Lucht

Self-Insert Draft: Developer Diary #10 Conditional Options 2018-07-24

Hello Everyone,

Apologies for the delay! Hope that you all had an exciting and fun-filled weekend. We’ve been super busy at Arcani and in my personal life. We just adopted a new kitten called Nike, after the Goddess of Victory, not the shoe! With regard to Self-Insert Draft, I am working on instituting conditional options based on your relationship with characters. Kind of like how in the Fallout Series you would have skill checks in dialogue (and other things), Self-Insert Draft will have relationship checks in dialogue. To this extent, relationship not only measures your bond between the character and yourself, it also measures your investment into the character.  While not game-blocking, using your party members to convince the folk of the world will become a critical component in advancing the story peacefully. Of course, if you want most of your dialogue to go violently… well, go ahead, you can do that too.

 

From,

William Lucht

Self-Insert Draft: Developer Diary #9 Quests and Quests 2018-07-16

Dear Viewers,

The progress with Self-Insert Draft has been proceeding well! I have finished the third and fourth “quests” in the system. We are starting to move from the starter town to greener pastures. At a certain point, related to the quest the player is forced to choose between two different characters: The Redeemed Bandit and the Chosen One. The Chosen One is a character that I particularly fell in love with. You entered this world. A world that she was meant to save. However, you have been getting the glory. To some extent, she can serve as the true foil to the story, especially compared to the eponymous Emo Foil. 

Additionally, I apologise for the new format. I thought it might be more palatable and a bit less formulaic to use a more casual and less structured style. Let me know what you think!

From,

William Lucht

Hyperborea: The Frozen North

Hello friends,

I am excited to announce a new game I am working on alongside Self-Insert Draft. Called Hyperborea, it follows the adventures of Hypatia as she gets trapped in the frozen wastes up north of the Tigotierian Empire.

done.png

Plot:

Hypatia is a soldier detached from the Tigotierian Exploratory Legion. Trapped and lost in the wintery Hyperborea, the Land North of the North, beyond all civilization, Hypatia must struggle against nature… or succumb to it.

Gameplay:

Hyperborea is a top-down survival horror game using the RPGMaker MV Engine.

 

From,

William Lucht

Self-Insert Draft: Developer Diary #8 A Brief Reprieve 2018-07-09

Progress Last Weeks in Numbers:

Lines of Written Code: 500

Story:

  • Finish 3rd quest

Please tune in next Monday!

William Lucht