By now some of you may be saying "You know, Inquisitor, this tileset is an absolute nightmare! I can't do anything with it!” well, do not fret! Here is some help on how to get the most out of my world map tileset that I'd consider to be harder than usual. Some of these may come naturally to those of you who use RMXP often, as it is mostly just extras that can be done with the third layer, but I'll go through them anyway.

A lot of mapping tutorials on the net suggest adopting a layer by layer approach to making their maps, or at least to showing people how to make maps. This often ends up with fairly uninspired but busy looking result. With this method, you can't really expand your imagination into your map as once you start adding the second layer, you've already been restricted by what you've made in the first layer. However, for this chipset, I probably would recommend working in layers for parts of it, as it can become quite confusing. Also, you want to have the design of your world map pretty much already in your head instead of just blundering through it before actually thinking where each location should be and how you should be able to reach it.

The areas that will be covered are:
* Coastlines
* Grass Changes
* Trees and Mountains
* Snow covered areas
* Lore of World Map Design

Coastlines

As the list indicates, we'll start with the coastlines. These are quite important if you want to have vehicles like rowboats that can only navigate the shallows, going around your maps to create tediously difficult paths. They can, however, be quite a pain to make, which is why I didn't use too much of them on my example map, since I wanted to work rather quickly. The coastline option is usable in all areas except for the snow, where it becomes ice instead, but the tundra can also descend into banks that go underwater. So...how do we make them? Well, I think that the best way is to use all three tiles for them, as you can then add more layers above the other when you want to make the map look pretty.

When I'm making a map, I like to have it purely random (Unless it's a man made structure), so I like to go around the edges first to get a fair idea of what the land mass would look like. The easiest way to start this off is to add the corner tiles onto the map. It doesn't look interesting and it shouldn't look interesting, but it's a nice place to start (The same applies to the cliffs, the corners in a pattern is the place to start). You could do this all at once if you want, but I don't recommend it. Just a small area of where the coast would be is what I generally prefer. If you want to have the best results for your map, I suggest you use these tiles on the first layer, so that you can add plenty of trees and such over the top of it with no hassle and then still have room to place another obstacle over those without using an event.

Here the corners of the coastline are forming a line that almosts joins each of them. Now all you have to do is connect the dots by using the appropriate tiles. Try to have as few straight lines as possible (This includes straight diagonal lines), as this generally has a very poor result on all chipsets, let alone on these coastlines. It's also another reason why starting with the corners is handy; it discourages you from copying and pasting corners to give a map a quick finish.

The land currently isn't important, but the way that the coast blends into the shallow water is. So, let's add the shallows. This will require both the second and third layers, but the third layer will not be used too much, so you will still be able to add sea rocks next to the land as well. The straight edged parts of the coast are obvious enough, I hope. You can see them clearly on the chipset as to where they would go and why, but for the corners, you will have to use two pieces. Each corner has shallows coming off it horizontally and vertically, so if you have two corners next to each other, or a straight edge that overlaps, you'd need to first place most of them down in the second layer mode giving each corner two edges where possible. For some corners I'd expect that you'd need to do some overlapping to give them the two shallow edges they needs, so for that you'd switch to the 3rd layer so that you can place one over the other. Choose which ones you use for the 3rd layer wisely, as a couple of them do not overlap as well as I had hoped for.

And then after this, you add all of the extras you want to make the sea look a bit more interesting, well, as interesting as it can possibly be. Here is my final example for a simple coastline.

That's all there is to it for making land that is almost at sea level.

Grass Changes

After doing the coastlines, there comes the grass and how it changes from being perfectly green into mud, wasteland or tundra. Well, it's all very simple, but sometimes you may find it hard to spot the difference between some of the shades, as a few of them are very difficult to spot. Well, here's the simple way to see it's done.

First, let's start by creating a land mass. You should obviously put it on the inside of your cliff edges and coastlines. Here, I will have the land as mud for the time being, like so:

Of course, you don't need to choose mud, as all of these changes work in the same way. The areas that can be affected by grass changes are the main ground, the cliff edges and the coastlines, as they all contain parts of the land you are using on them. So when you are changing, for example, dirt to the next shade of grass, any cliff edges and coastlines would have to be changed as well. As there should now be some sort of land on what you have so far, we can begin turning it into something else (Ideally dirt to the greenest grass). Once again, I start in my favourite place; the corners. In the same style as the coastlines, place them so that they will join up in the next step. Hopefully you will be able to see how the line will work when you are putting them down.

After doing the corners, join up the line by adding the horizontal and vertical equivalents so that you have clearly defined where one land type ends and the next starts. Following this, fill in the other areas with the next land type, which is the yellowish grass tile in this case. You should end up with something like the following:

We're almost there now. It's the coastlines/cliffs that would need to be done next. All you need to do is replace the ones you are currently using with the ones that match the new grass style. On this example, the place to start changing is where the mud runs almost into the banks. For coastlines, you can do this all in the lower layer, however, for cliffs you will have to the second layer for some areas and, if you like, in others for simplicity.

And just in case you think that some of the differences are a little too hard to see as I do, here's a little tip: to set out where you want the new shade to be, you can use the transparent background colour to lay out where you'd like the next grass section to be. This just helps clear up where the land type starts/ends if you can't spot the difference easily without squinting, tilting your head and squashing your nose upon the monitor.

Then in a similar fashion to that of a few steps ago, you work with the corners of the next style so that we have about four different colours and then as many different climates as you like. They are all done in the same way, so you shouldn't have any difficulty from here onwards, but for final touches, you can have little patches of one style onto another, so that it doesn't look like one there is an instant change from one to the next. This just gives your world a greater look of detail on it that won't have any affect on the amount of free space the hero has to roam, so ideally the best kind of detail there is!

And that's the climate changes tutorial now finished. I hope your land is starting to improve now.