Since a poster on www.rpgmaker.net asked about mapping, I decided to put up this mapping tutorial. This is a basic schoolhouse. I did grab some roof tiles from www.rpgrevolution.com to make this map.  Sadly, the default roofing tiles that come with RPG Maker VX are somewhat lacking, so to get the visual effect I wanted, I didn’t have much choice, I felt. It’s possible to build a decent-looking building with the default tiles, it’s just going to be kinda square. For rounded edges and different perspectives, you really need to either make your own custom tiles or download some resources from a site that features tilesets. So, without further ado, here’s how to design a schoolhouse in 7 easy steps (with pics):

1-Build the outside walls. Pick a wall tile that goes well, color-wise, with your roof tile. I chose a basic, white-brick-like tile for this building. If I had chosen a different wall material (say, brick, for example), I would recolor the roof using Photoshop or GIMP (I use GIMP 2.4; it’s an open-source image editing program like Photoshop, except it’s free) to make it contrast with the walls better.

2-Next, we’re going to add the roof tiles. When you add a roof, you want it to be shorter than the wall tiles to give the illusion that it’s sloping. 

 

3-For a fantasy-ish, or at least early-American-style, schoolhouse, you need a belltower. At least I think so. Anyway, in my example I’m adding one. You want to add the belltower using your wall tiles. Have it coming out of the roof at least a few tiles back. I actually started the tower 4 tiles up from the front edge of my roof tiles.

 

4-Next, we use the special tiles that I downloaded and imported into my TileE slot using the Resource Manager (which is located in  tools). When you import your own custom TileE, you actually have to name the file you’re importing TileE.png. The TileE you create MUST have either a single-color or a transparent background, and MUST be 512 x 512 pixels in size. If it doesn’t meet these specs, it won’t be accessible in your TileE slot in the tile editor. Anyway, I used the special tiles to add detail to the roof, specifically a forward-facing, steepled section that sits in front of the belltower. In the screen cap you can see the custom tiles I used and can probably figure out which ones I selected to add the roof detail.

5-In step 5, I just added the roof for the belltower using the special tiles I downloaded.

6-For step six, I added windows, evenly spaced (from TileB) to my building. I did do one kinda tricky thing to get the window on the belltower to be evenly spaced between the two tiles. I exported my TileB (again, in the Resource Manager) to a file I made for tilesets. From there, I opened the file using GIMP. Next, I opened my TileE, which had plenty of space on it for me to add new tiles to it. I then turned on the “Show Grid” option, which just about every decent image editor has. From there, I turned on the ”Show Grid” and “Snap to Grid” options in TileB. By the way, I had TileE and TileB open at the same time because I want to copy my window from TileB and move it to TileE. So, I used Rectangle Select to select my window in TileB. From there, I copied it and pasted it into TileE. In TileE, I left the “Snap to Grid” option turned off. Then, using the move tool, I moved my window over between where the spaces for 2 tiles would be, right in the middle, and used the Anchor Layer option. After that, I saved the file and then re-imported my TileE file into RPG Maker VX (from here on out, RMVX). Now, I had two halves of a window that I could place evenly between the two tiles on the belltower.

7-For the last step, I went back to TileA and selected some wood flooring to put in the door opening so it looks like the school has a floor when someone goes inside. If I were going to use the school in a real map, I would use the Door Event that’s two tiles wide and two tiles high.

So, that’s a basic mapping tutorial. I hope it was useful. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section.