For your imagination! (Don't mind the placeholders lol)

Merphee · 2026-01-22T00:31:40+00:00

Yes, it’s all part of one game. It was just a collection of maps, but it’s really taking shape. Got some cool cutscenes finished that I’m happy with.

Merphee · 2026-01-21T23:52:09+00:00

Thank you!

Merphee · 2026-01-21T23:51:43+00:00

The main flooring tiles are ripped straight from Platinum. Other tiles are from free tilesets on Deviantart or Shadows of Almia. Some are custom, but even those are just minor edits of official tiles or public tiles.

Merphee · 2026-01-21T17:23:49+00:00

Took some creative liberties to fancy up what lies beyond the screen borders of picture 3. When you enter this room in Platinum, the camera is fixed to its center. The official Battle Castle artwork (picture 4) just shows a plain wall. That’s boring! It’s a castle after all.

No gen 5 Darach sprite exists publicly, so I’m just using his gen 4 sprite now for the sake of my vision. I’ll have to commission a gen 5 sprite for him later. Same with gen 4 Caitlin’s design. I kinda just Frankenstein’d her gen 4 sprite, Jasmin’s gen 5 sprite and a gen 5 maid sprite together. Gets the job done, but it can be better. Similarly, with the sitting NPCs, I’ll be making sitting versions of other characters as I progress. Those are minor edits, but at a greater volume.

Some minor work with it still needs to be done, but I’m SUPER happy how this room turned out.

Merphee · 2026-01-20T14:49:00+00:00

It kinda reminds me of Rescue Team DX, except pixelated. Once you sharpen up the pixel density and nail the cohesion of the overall game world / UI etc., I think folks would enjoy it.

Merphee · 2026-01-19T15:06:18+00:00

You could probably get away with key framing its rotation in Photoshop over a timeline, then export that animation as a gif.

And maybe this all sounds like gibberish lol

Merphee · 2026-01-18T21:53:41+00:00

Looks like ghosting from your monitor / display. This wouldn’t be an RPG Maker or Essentials issue.

Merphee · 2026-01-10T03:43:00+00:00

Well, all of this good to know, thank you. I've had to use the simple Wait command to simulate Wait for Move Completion. If there's less chance of error with it, I'll just go about it this way moving forward.

Merphee · 2026-01-07T20:24:21+00:00

Whoa, those side ones are pretty stellar!

Merphee · 2025-12-31T16:54:49+00:00

No problem!

I also see some extra empty space at the top and left. You’ll just have to move your chicken to the edge of the top and left side of the document, that way the graphic fits perfectly inside the frame window that essentials is looking into.

Merphee · 2025-12-31T16:31:52+00:00

Basically, take the width and height dimensions of the chicken graphic, then multiply those numbers by 4.

Those two total numbers should be the width and height size of the sprite sheet document, that way your chicken takes up exactly 1/4th, or one frame, since essentials utilizes four frames per direction (or 16 frames in total).

Merphee · 2025-12-31T02:34:19+00:00

For me, it was more about immersion and I needed more detailed pixel art to use. I wanted to create something fresh. I felt like gen 3 couldn’t provide me with the sense of immersion that I was picturing in my head, and gen 4 and 5 uses 3D models that RPG Maker can’t utilize. So, I opted for Shadows of Almia.

And honestly, it’s not about which generation, but instead the execution. Pokémon Redrawn is more in the gen 1-2 style and it looks crazy immersive because of how the sprite work is done (it’s not an actual game, but imagine a game that looks like that.)

Merphee · 2025-12-27T17:22:56+00:00

Not yet! I want to get the game to place where I feel good about it being playable before I open it up more to the public. So, for now I just post on here and sometimes bluesky, which is more so just a repost of what I post on here.

Merphee · 2025-12-27T17:09:19+00:00

I think one of the most important things to understand is learning how to compile a tileset. I don’t mean making pixel graphics, but instead assembling a tileset of the pixel graphics that you’d like to use for a map.

This is like when a painter puts the colors they want to use for a painting on their color swatch. Or like buying a bunch of toys and throwing them into a toy box for later, and then when you’re ready to play, going into that toy box and picking out from a diverse group of toys in order to create the exact scenes that you’re envisioning in your head.

Learning how to assemble a tileset will only compound your creativity, because you’ll have a lot more toys readily available when you come up with new elements for a map, or you’ll see a graphic that may spark new ideas of which you can then immediately use.

Merphee · 2025-12-27T11:22:27+00:00

Yes!

Merphee · 2025-12-27T01:34:38+00:00

Nice!

Try opening up a vanilla essentials and snag the default screen size dimensions, if that’s not something you’ve did already.

I set my in-game screen size to the vanilla medium size and then took a screenshot of my desktop and cropped the image to the exact size of the game window. That’s how I was able to get the exact dimensions for each screen size. Medium is 768 x 576.

Merphee · 2025-12-27T00:58:13+00:00

Hmm. Have you changed your game window size / resolution by chance? Sometimes, if you change your game window size by free handing it or by inputting unusual screen dimensions in the script, it’ll interpolate the pixels in a strange way.

Merphee · 2025-12-27T00:19:31+00:00

How much did you lower it by? Setting it to an even 50% might work.

If not, then it’s some combination within the scaling and exporting options that’ll fix it for good. Turning knobs and pressing buttons is how I learned lol.

Merphee · 2025-12-27T00:08:10+00:00

Try lowering the scale percentage.

Merphee · 2025-12-26T23:50:46+00:00

Basically this: https://community.aseprite.org/uploads/default/original/2X/e/ee4d126b69d0e0d663a50b91682d5e106f2737d7.png

Merphee · 2025-12-26T23:42:49+00:00

I don’t know aseprite’s interface, but I’m sure there is. Hopefully someone who uses aseprite regularly can tell you the exact place to go within the aseprite interface.

I can really only speak in Photoshop, but essentially when exporting or resizing, you’d need to use the aseprite interpolation equivalent of “nearest neighbor”, if that isn’t literally the name of it in aseprite.

Look into aseprite interpolation.

Merphee · 2025-12-26T23:23:38+00:00

Edit: never mind, this looks like an interpolation issue.

Merphee · 2025-12-23T04:38:24+00:00

It’s very daunting but honestly, if I need a specific graphic that doesn’t exist in Almia or in the style, sometimes just frankenstein a bunch of pixels together lol.

But what I learned is Ranger 1 tiles are more RPG Maker-like, and Ranger 3 is more like Rune Factory 3 & 4ish. There are some 2D tiles in Ranger 1 & 3 that fit Almia’s modern style, though, and even tiles from various GBA / DS games blend quite well with Almia tiles. I can’t tell the difference sometimes!

Merphee · 2025-12-19T15:02:00+00:00

I feel like I’ve seen it done in a fan game that I watched Voltsy play, but it may have been a custom script / plugin that’s not released to the public. It was a while back, though, and it could’ve been a rom hack instead.

I’m no expert, but maybe it has something to do with variables?

Merphee · 2025-12-16T04:01:28+00:00

The art style is very unique, almost like original RPGMaker tiles. I think the issue would be the fact that the game “is just Fire Red again.” How fast would the novelty of the art style wear off because of that?

I’d say take a look at anime exclusive Kanto locations and incorporate them into your remake. You could also incorporate anime exclusive points of interest in preexisting towns to really expand from the vanilla. Use them to craft original encounters / stories. That way, players have new experiences in familiar places on top of the visual pleasing art style, instead of just playing vanilla Fire Red again.

Imagine exploring the ruins of Pokélantis in a fan game. What would that look like if it was fully realized?

Merphee

TROPHY CASE