How to make a Forest Level: RPG Maker MV/MZ Tutorial

in today's video i'm going to be going over how to make a forest level in rpg maker mz but before i get into the engine side of things there's a fair amount of game design and really level design theory that i want to go over first and if you love rpg maker tips tricks tutorials and just general discussion about rpg maker then scroll down and hit subscribe and the bell icon so you get notified whenever i upload a new video now i've been wanting to make this video for like a couple of weeks now um and you know thinking about this video i'm just like how the do you make a forest like i know how to make it i know how to make it look good i know how to make it look pretty but in terms of level design and the psychology and theory behind level design i'm just like see when it comes to making houses and towns in video games that's like really easy and that's like the easiest thing to do because you don't have to put too much thought into it there's a bit of psychology involved but like a lot of it's just making it look pretty but when you get into things like making a level like a forest or a dungeon or any sort of level there's a lot of thought that needs to go into it so sit back relax because this is going to be a long one and say hello to scotch so firstly i guess the most important thing in level design is having a look at it and thinking do you need this level is this level important to have if it is what purpose is the level there for why is the level here essentially what i'm saying is don't have a level for the sake of having a level it needs to be there for a purpose and that purpose could be you're hosting a fun little side quest in this level but a purpose needs to be had you don't just have someone walking through a forest for the sake of walking through a forest so using the forest as our example because this video is about making a forest and rpg maker the question i want you to ask yourself before you even consider designing this level is what story point is this going to further and what game mechanic are you testing the players on and the reason these things are important is because having someone going to a forest merely for the point of going from point a to point b and fight some monsters in between is completely annoying irrelevant and does absolutely nothing for your game if you take for example the viridian forest in pokemon that forest that's purpose was to introduce the player to bug type pokemon if you look at guardia forest in chrono trigger that forest was there to serve a purpose for making a cutscene so even though the cutscene happens later on in the game they introduce that forest level to get the players used to this forest is here and then later on there's going to be a cut scene that's why it's a really easy forest to traverse there's no hidden quests or puzzles or anything like that it's simply you start in the forest you go through it really quickly and then you're in the castle the point of that forest is that later on there is a cut scene there and in order to have a cut scene after the player leaves the castle they needed a scene so that scene was the forest scene final fantasy vii only had two forest levels one of them was the forest of the ancients and the other was the sleeping forest now the sleeping forest only had two maps in it really you had one where you were walking along and you could see down on the player as he was walking through the forest the other part of that forest was a cut scene so that forest existed really purely just to serve the purpose of a cut scene the forest of the ancients that existed as a side quest an extra area you could visit and that had a bunch of puzzles in it and the player was rewarded by exploring that forest and doing the puzzles with extra material and items that they could use throughout the game final fantasy vi only had one forest level and that forest level was the phantom forest now the reason they had that forest level was so they could change the tone and atmosphere of the game because they were about to go on the ghost train that's the next level but the phantom forest level that serves as to change the music to change the atmosphere to change the tone so that by the time you get to the ghost train you've got this sense of uh spookiness and eeriness that was built up by the phantom forest so what i'm getting at with this is all these aaa titles they only have a couple of forest levels here and there few and far between so what they understand is if you don't need a level don't have a level and that's going to be the most important thing if you don't need a level don't have a level so moving on to reasons why you would need a level there's a few reasons one of them is for a puzzle for a side quest something extra for your players to do another one is that forest serves as a cut scene it either furthers the plot or furthers character development finally it can serve as something to test mechanics i'll start by talking about the puzzle one the side quest one because that's the easiest you don't have to put too much thought into the psychology behind that as why that level exists that level exists to test your players with puzzles with battles you know extra strong monsters and the reward for doing this level is they get things like extra magic extra items stronger weapons this serves as some side content which can add to the player experience the next one i'll talk about is having a forest for a cut scene or any real level for a cut scene all of these things i'm saying by the way can be used in any uh level design the basic fundamentals of you know if you don't need a level don't have a level so let's talk about the cut scene the cutscene one is also very easy because that level doesn't have to be very big or very long unless you're using it to further character development through like a small extended story or you're trying to further plot by showing the characters different things that are happening in this forest that's affecting the main plot for an example in this example complete over into the next point as well you have a forest so that the original characters can meet the next character that's going to join their party you need this level so you can introduce that character in a cut scene another reason is so you can give the players monsters that they can test this character out on and that brings me to my next point is testing game mechanics so one of the other reasons you have levels is mechanics so it can be something like adding a new character to the party so let's say you've got two warriors and the new character you add to the party is a white mage what you do then is you put them through that forest level and it has enemies that specifically inflict poison specifically inflict some form of damage debuff or status effect that's undesirable to the characters and then in doing so the players now have this idea well i've got the white mage i can use the white mage to heal these players and really you can't get past that forest unless you're using the specific mechanics that the game's just provided to you in the form of a new party member and levels of those sorts go into some sort of flow like i'll try and demonstrate it but it starts out as the players with the normal right you've just got your two warriors and the monsters they're fighting are just the normal monsters they've been fighting right then they meet the new character new character joins the party now the monsters they're fighting they inflict poison debuffs and status effects and whatnot so now the players are tested with the new game mechanic and then at the end of the level you test the characters knowledge of the new mechanic as well as the combined previous mechanics so you've got your two warriors those two warriors do lots of like piercing damage so you're going to need that piercing damage instead of say slashing damage or bludgeoning damage that some of their other abilities might have but you need them to use the piercing damage you combine that with the fact that this new big boss monster uses things such as status debuffs and poison and all that sort of stuff so you need to combine the old way you used to fight with your two characters with this new way of fighting by having this white mage cast positive status effects or heals and all that sort of stuff so that's the other situation where you would have a level is where you're introducing testing and challenging new game mechanics so now how do we translate this sort of theory of level design and really designing a forest into rpg maker so keeping in mind that you never have a level if you don't need to have a level what we're going to do is we're going to design a level about the last two things we're going to design it around a cut scene and the introduction of a new mechanic so firstly you can get out of rpg maker you don't need it what you're going to do is open up photoshop or a photo imaging software or pen and paper works just fine as well now you can do this with a mouse i'm personally just using a wacom intuos but it's you can still do this with a mouse what we're going to be doing is we're going to be concepting our level because you want to always concept it before you get into the actual design of doing it all in game by the way just before we do all that i did want to say i am now counting and scoring people who comment first if they are the first comment on the video so already in the lead we have nobita resident evil in first place who said first as the first comment one time since i started counting so if you all want to get in there you know what i mean i'm going to create a new layer now keeping in mind what we were talking about uh testing the players on the new mechanics so we want to give them the old mechanics first so it'll be old mechanics then we want them to find a cut scene this cut scene is going to introduce a new character with new mechanics moving on from there we're going to test them with some different enemies that they would have been facing at the start at the start they would have been facing enemies with the old mechanics now they're going to be facing enemies with the new mechanics after facing enemies with the new mechanics we're just going to add in another puzzle so there's going to be a tree blocking the path an old dead tree there's going to be another new mechanic which will be finding an old axe for them to cut down the dead tree and the fun thing is is while they're finding the new axe to cut down the dead tree they'll also be testing the new mechanics by fighting the enemies that they're currently fighting after they figure out this new mechanic then it's going to be the final test and what the final test is is that's going to be a boss battle which is going to combine some of the old mechanics with the new mechanics so for the first section of our level this is just going to be somewhere where the characters are testing their old mechanics so i'm just going to make this two small sections and in these two small sections this is where the characters will be facing monsters they've already faced and monsters that don't really provide any status debuffs or anything like that so this is going to be our first area of the forest where they enter here there's going to be a very simple path which just goes from the start over here to maybe a treasure chest and then up into the next section in terms of clutter elements there's just going to be a few trees sporadically placed around the place in this next scene i'm just going to be changing the atmosphere for the players so this area this is going to be like a light sort of forest so i'm going to place a river running through the middle of the map there's just going to be a bridge that crosses this river now when the players get to here what's going to happen is i'm going to tint the screen a darker color moving from here to here i'm going to lower the volume of the music this side might have one or two trees placed sporadically with the path still leading to the bridge this side there's going to be a lot of trees placed with lots of undergrowth and like lots of different plant life on the floor of the forest now the next part of the forest is going to be a cut scene so we'll just have this take place over here so it doesn't need to be too big just a very small simple level the players are going to enter through here and exit through here but when they enter this level a cut scene will play and right in the center of the screen is going to be the new character the music i'm going to have for this section of the game is going to be tense so this new character is going to be in trouble maybe the character is being attacked by a monster or something of the sorts and then in terms for the aesthetics of this level there's going to be lots of trees maybe a pond of water but other than that we're pretty much yeah really going to put a lot of effort into this scene we're going to introduce this new character now we're going to have a battle after this cut scene the new girl is going to join the party and when she does she's going to explain that a lot of the monsters in this forest have status debuffs and with her magic you're able to avert those status debuffs so she's letting you know about the new mechanic before you continue and then she's saying are you guys traveling through this forest as well well then i'm going to probably need your help to get through it uh we need to get to the town on the other side or something like that but that gives it a narrative reason to continue as well as just testing the mechanics now this next section of the forest this is going to test the player's ability so let's say they enter through here there's going to be more of like a linear structure to it so there's trees all along here the players have to come over here there's a branching path so the players can come up here and go around here to maybe find some treasure and then the players will have to come around here and then the players will come around and exit this map over here the next scene is just going to be the characters come into the map over here so this is how they go in they come into the map over here and they're still being tested with the new mechanics and the new monsters and when they get to over here there's an obstacle right there's going to be a dead tree and this dead tree is blocking their path so in order to move forward they need to find an axe somewhere so what happens is this level is going to be broken up there's going to be trees running down this side so the players can come down over here then they're going to go up over here into a new map now again this new map can be quite linear so i have some trees coming out over here the players make their way around testing the new mechanics and then they find an axe sitting in a tree right they pick up the axe and then they go back to this level over here coming to cut down the dead tree now after they cut down the dead tree they're going to be leaving this level through the south that's just going to take them to this area here and in this area here there's only one exit which is over the other side and that's the exit to the forest but this is going to be a cut scene where they face the final test and this is going to be a big bad monster so now we understand how the flow of our level is going to be so these first two levels are testing the mechanics of the game like it's giving the players what they already know this one over here is a cut scene so you know up to this point we've changed a bit of the music we've had this cut scene moving on to this next part now we're testing the new mechanics as well as a new atmosphere playing different types of music all that sort of stuff so the enemies that appear in this map over here not going to be the same enemies that appeared in the original maps up here so we're testing the characters knowledge of the new mechanics as well as changing the atmosphere coming on to the next map over here we come across the obstacle and that obstacle needs an item which is the axe to pass so they then go up the other side of this map through the next map and they find an axe then they come back they get rid of the obstacle and then finally they face a boss which is going to really test their metal understanding the old mechanics which are these ones and the new mechanics and this plus this equals this which is the final test and that's the boss and that's how we're going to structure our level so the aesthetics we can do that really easily and i'll show you some tips and tricks on how to do that but in terms of structuring a level we now have a level that's there for a reason not there for the sake of being there now you can jump over to your rpg maker editor so we're just going to make a new map i've already got one here and it's just going to have the outside tile set and i've just got this 17 by 13. now if we look at our photoshop drawing this map is just a small little l hookish looking shape so what i'm going to do is i'm going to do that with a path over here so it's just going to be a path like that and then i'm going to fill the area in with a lot of grass and trees now when making forest mats grass maps any sort of maps that are like in nature what i like to do is go over to the b tile there's a whole range of different grass options over here so what i'm going to do is click one of them and then just start placing it sporadically around the mat once i'm happy with that randomness i'm going to click on another one and again just start placing it sporadically around the mat and i'm going to do that for all of these different types of grass tiles [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] do okay so i've finished mapping out everything that we dictated in photoshop now it's time to get on to the meat of this level first we're going to need some characters so here we go we've got slick vayner and macy now the party is going to start with slick and vayner and so slick and vayner are just going to enter this forest and face enemies that they can deal with so we have slick who uses a sword we have vayner who uses magic and we have macey who's the white mage she's going to be doing all the healing and curing and whatnot now this first area of the forest is going to contain enemies that are good for vayner and slick so these enemies aren't going to be dealing any status effects like poison so we're going to have a wolf and a bear and those are going to be the only monsters that are starting out in this uh starting area of the forest but before moving on to the next scene what we do want to do is put a little cut scene in here just explaining why they're in the forest and just lastly we're going to select a nice backing track for the start of this forest i like this one on the second map of the forest in the middle of the bridge what we're going to do is we're going to make a event which happens when the player touches it and it's going to tint the screen so we're going to go over to the second tab in the event commands and hit tint screen and then we're going to tint it this sort of dark bluish greeny color to make it look like the canopy is starting to overlay the forest and then we're going to uncheck wait for completion and hit ok then we're just going to do a self switch a and new event page self switch a copy that event and then we'll test it in game and the reason we're testing it in game is just to make sure that the color works there we go now that's actually quite dark so what we're going to do is go back into that event and make a little lighter and this 60 frames is too little time so i'm going to change that to 180 frames there we go that looks much better that looks really cool also pro tip feel free to throw some treasure chests around to give your players a reward for exploring now in this next map this is where the cutscene is going to take place where macy joins the party so she's going to be under attack from some monster and that monster is going to be doing things like inflicting status ailments on the party when they fight it so i'll get to work on that after we've done this cut scene now it's time to move forward onto the next map and in this map it's just going to contain enemies that now have mechanics such as poison and petrify that the new character macey is able to counter this is where you can place things like treasure chests hidden to the left or right as well in this next scene we're going to be creating an event where the characters come down through the map and then when they get to this point here they're going to come across a log that needs to be cut in half because this log is blocking their path forward so i'm just going to make this image the tile set be log a log is blocking the way maybe there's something around here that can cut through we're going to copy this event page and paste this event page now over here what we're going to do is if switch and i'm just going to turn it over here number three is going to be havax so if switch have x is on then let's cut this log it'll play a small animation and then it's going to turn on a self switch and then you just go new event page self switch a so now what we have to do is find an axe so this whole map is still going to have the same enemies it's going to have the wolf and geckos which the geckos are the things that unleash poison the gear the bear and geckos and just the geckos the difference is on this map when we make our way through the level at the very end here there's just going to be an ax sticking out of the ground we're going to go direction fix on and simply when the player walks up to the axe this could come in handy what we're going to do is turn on the control switch for have acts a new event page if havox is on nothing will happen now this final map is going to be where we have our boss encounter and now we just need to make a bit of a cut scene for it [Music] so right so there we go what we have done is we've created our level and i'll go over it one more time so this forest level in our first scene we've got these two having a little cut scene talking about having to go through the forest now for this map and this map here the enemies are going to be enemies that don't do any sort of status debuff effects or anything like that because that's what they're used to when we cross this bridge the scene darkens showing that they're going deeper and deeper into the forest when we get to this scene here they find a new character who's being attacked so they run in and help her out and then she joins the party this monster that they were fighting is using status debuff effects like poison she joins the party and then they continue now the monsters in these areas are different to the monsters in the previous areas the monsters in these areas have the ability to inflict status debuffs so that's where the players are training with the new skills that they have with the new character macy getting over here they find a puzzle which is this little tree that's blocking their road they then have to go over to this map here to find the axe to get through and then once they do that this entire time they're getting this act so they know in the future they might be able to cut down things like this in other levels so it's teaching them a new mechanic they're also learning the new mechanics of macy's healing abilities and curing abilities then finally when they get to this scene where there's a boss they test out the new healing mechanics with a hard version of some of the more basic enemies so that's essentially how the level is set up it's less about making the forest look good and i can do a video about making a forest look good in the future but you know when designing a level it's more about the flow of the level than it is about how good the level looks the look is still important but if you've got a really good looking level and it's got absolutely no flow and the level doesn't need to be there then it's going to be a bad level if you guys want to see me do a small playthrough of the level that we've just created then there's going to be a card appearing in the corner right here so you can click on that link and go check out that level just one more thing though this video is sponsored by myself i have an itch io page where i upload some super special awesome rpg maker resources like ye olde bedroom pirate bedroom fully animated modern and sci-fi doors this sweet quest board and this modern stove and stuff now i am constantly making more and more rpg maker assets so this list is set to grow and if you really want to support the work i do here on youtube consider signing up to my patreon you get behind the scenes updates a personalized thank you message from myself level 2 subscription can get you free downloads of all of those hio products i have online and level 3 gets you early access to the videos that i make as well as the ability to vote on the video for the next week and if you love rpg maker tips tricks tutorials and just general discussion about rpg maker then scroll down and hit subscribe and the bell icon so you get notified whenever i upload a new video

Channel: LvL Up Design

Views: 18,600

Keywords: rpg, rpg maker, rpg maker mz, games design, tutorials, rpg maker tutorials, game development for beginners, game design for beginners, game design, game development tutorial, rpg maker mz vs mv, RPG Maker MV, RPG Maker Mistakes

Id: Z0ds_jhnYhY

Length: 28min 15sec (1695 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020