edit: ye thats totally a city, used the wrong word, english hard
working on a Cave guide that’ll be bad
This looks like a whole city, nevermind village, smh.
I agree with Zmr, that’s definitely a city sized village
Who cares, the map looks dope
CAVE GUIDE
Apparently now I’m the guide man. Cool.
I personally hate this tileset and by god if you make a map using this at least make it an interesting one. If you want a cool cave tileset that might not perfectly fit with GBA aesthetics but looks way better, look at WaVE’s project. It’s fantastic.
Now then.
Cave Walls suck specifically because nobody knows how to build them. They need to be organic enough that they look naturally formed (unless you’re in a project with a man made cave in which case good on you) but also make good playing. And nobody realizes how to do it.
Here’s generic Cave #3193207531 that I made and will be showing the process of later. It’s got a few 1 tile chokes, sure, but most of the map is a bit more wide open and leaves you able to fill in gaps with maybe a lake, a some rocks or even some chests thrown everywhere because the fe6/7 devs had no idea how to balance a cave
Looks hard right? No. Just think of it as building islands over water.
It’s even possible to just make a comparison gif as I always do to show what I mean here.
Of course, certain aspects will be different no matter how I tried to make it look as close to each other but you take what you can get aight
If we have that visual, it becomes significantly easier to understand how to make these work.
We also need to understand how each tile functions.
A generic guide for making caves is above the tiles but we can ignore that; use that as reference when following along if you want.
On the far left are the standard wall tiles - think of them as the cliff to water tiles along the edge of an island. It’s fairly easy to tell which section is which, but the furthest right of this bunch is the top line surrounding each island, the lower left tiles are used for the left and right walls in case a cave is vertical, and the bottom right section of here is the lower rim.
The central tiles are what I call ‘hubcap’ tiles. They’re used for when you want to add details along the edge.
Far right section are the M O S T I M P O R T A N T. These are the bottom half of the walls. Left section are the ones that turn left, the right section turns right. Top row in both is the corner pieces, used at edges when moving upwards to signify the wall is moving upwards (in terms of our view of the map). Bottom section is when there’s a straight horizontal line in the cave, but they slightly angle to the left or the right. The bottom pieces are incredibly niche because I made them and honestly dont bother lmao not worth your time
PROPER TUTORIAL GUIDE
Start with a giant canvas filled with generic floor tile - I do this with every map I do, as you might see through my other gifs, and I draw in details after making a blank canvas. Stating with too many details can ruin creativity, but if you have a primary building in the center draw its outline FIRST before starting the cave system around it.
Then, draw various blobs of brown wall tile (in my tileset, they’re directly above the stairs.) Make sure all sections are at least 2 tall, as all cave pieces are intended to be a top piece and the wall itself.
When you’ve got the blobs figured out, at all vertices place corner pieces as one would when making the edges of an island. If you aren’t certain on sections, like on the center left section hanging off the side on my map, don’t place any for now.
Here, on all of the ‘overhangs’ that are 2 tall on the left and right of each island, I place pieces that are 3/4ths the edge which hang off.
Here, add the straight lines that connect each piece, like the vertical and horizontal lines. There’s a few spots I missed because I’m not gamer, but ignore that and assume the lines will appear in like 2 slides
Now we add cornerpieces of the lower sect of the walls, aka the ones that shift vertically. Use left ones on the left, and right ones on the right.
Then add the horizontal wall tiles. I just one tiled bc lazy
Here, I’ve started to add extra details onto the edges, such as more top hubcaps, varying up the top facing walls, and added a few more walls onto the map. Variety makes it feel more organic.
Here, at the end, I’ve varied up a few of the one-tiled walls, and changed the bottom-facing sects of the walls to make them much more organic.
It’s very important to do these last 2 steps, even if you screw up, because otherwise the cave looks lifeless and not very realistic.
Take it from me from these images that you can add a lot of life into a map simply by doing fringe details.
And that’s it! Cave guide complete, now never touch this tileset because it’s godawful lmao
And, for those of you that love my animation gifs, I created a handy guide to show just how I make them.
Recreation of a map from a very old project of mine (this map was made ~1.5 years ago, right around when I started getting more active on feu). Quite happy with the end result. You might actually recognize this map from above, since this was one of the two maps included in my sort of reality check where I showed some of my worst maps.
Not sure if I’ll do too many of these in the future, but I intend to do at least two more recreations of my older, shittier works.
I’m getting mad FE5CH22 vibes from that map.
Honestly I dont know what the original was intended to be, but when creating it just turned into FE5 Chapter 22. The design process is a funky thing.
Turned the cave into a more polished cave with the limited tools it has.
Long post ahead. Spacers are being placed if you just wanna check one at a time.
Thracia chapter. Was a lot of fun to make even if the map is complete dogshit and can’t be shown properly in GBA tilesets thanks to limited resources. Used this because tall cliffs that didn’t too heavily clash with the normal artstyle.
Thracian-inspired palette for my Fields replicated utilizing Piskelapp to keep track of colors and febuilder to actually change crap. As ever. I never really use other programs. Also comes with Nighttime-fog.
Two New Mystery (iirc) maps, made at request.
Another New Mystery map made at request of same guy I forgot to upload.
Work in progress huge canyon/ravine/river canyon map. Wanted to experiment with adding extra water tiles listed as Deeps, and some basic ground options as Valley tiles to create maps like this. Because honestly, why not use them for their actual intended purpose instead of over ‘lava’ that got classified as valley why base fe why are you like this its lava ffs
Mapping and Palette dump coming soon. And by soon I hopefully mean today. so like maybe an hour ish
Mapping Dump #5 and Palette dump #2 are h e r e. Took ages to get these compiled because I needed access to my missing (and partially broken) flashdrive which I only got access to about a week ago. These should, once again, be up to date with all of the creations I’ve made the past few months.
In addition, all of my currently in-use tilesets are included not because I’m releasing them, but because its easier to import if you have the incomplete versions amirite or amirite
In other words, you get virtually everything seen above.
If something’s missing on this page that isn’t in any of my repos, let me know ASAP and I’ll get it added into this one. All future things will go into the sixth mapping dump and my third palette dump.
dump
And to credit (most) of the people who I’ve made maps for in this:
Memestaralbert had several maps in need of aesthetic improvement and I offered to do that myself without prompting, which is what the ‘Requested Aesthetic Improvement’ or whatever maps in the Fields sect are.
Wan’s the reason that I keep doing maps, but they also liked seeing a desert oasis.
WaVE I believe was the one who showed the Final Fantasy map in the Mountainous Temple, but I can’t remember who.
Baron HDL requested a ton of New Mystery maps, namely Wyvern’s Dale, Camus the Sable, Sanctuary of Sorcery, The Dragon’s Table, The Dark Pontifex Lives and Light and Shadow.
Lagspike776 is why I made the Path of Radiance ship map at request, still hate that map tho, lack of cool terrain succ
Pik I made Snow Cliffs for in the snowy fields one.
Fatih requested aesthetics for one of the Black Temple maps. Made the other just for preparation.
Nickt inspires practically everything
Giant ravine-style map which makes use of my vertical doors, more wall placements, bridge to stair combos, half stairs and my valley/deeps tiles for the water part of the ravine. Took a few days to figure out the logistics of and just decided to cut ~8 tiles from the right because it wasn’t worth the effort.
Speaking of which…
every time i’ve used that desert tileset I’ve tried to figure out the thing it was missing
and you found it; it was a secondary floor tile
From the Grand Canyon to the Sahara Desert. Stunning stuff!
Forgot to post this a week ago when I’d actually finished it. A bit of shading is off here and there but there’s not too much to do about it, all of its already been fixed since I took this pic.
I’ve also had my tilesets taken off the universal repo bc the proper crediting wasn’t done and none had been edited in months. Besides, this place’s already the best resource for all muh stuff.
probs gonna have a few smaller maps next, unsure. that or the desert tileset actually getting released.
minutes later edit: I’ve also got a few spare palettes lying around of some FE4/5 characters for classes that best fit them, I might make a collection of those? maybe?
[[EDIT: Please scroll to post 122, Vennobennu’s post has an updated vers which deletes copy images.]]
i still have no idea how to properly start posts
Updated version of Desert Bastion - Gamma’s Desert temple tileset - is out now, since N426 got back to me. Gamma was the original creator, I added a few custom pillar-related tiles, sand shading and several halfstair variations and tile to cobble + tile to sand transitions to make ruins look more ruiny, and N426 went overkill in the only way he knows how and added a ton from the Gers, a few cliff transitions in sand, a funny x marks the spot sand tile in the bottom right, carpet, more sand transitions, snags, a LOT more trees, lake tiles, etcetcetcetc
enjoy i guess??
Wow these look amazing!
A series of 6 smaller maps than normal. Smaller sometimes is better.
sometimes
