RPG Maker VX Tutorial: Custom Tile

RPG Maker VX Tutorial: Custom Tile
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The Right Tools

In this tutorial, we’ll go a bit farther and create our very own custom tile using software specifically designed for pixel art.

I recommend purchasing Graphic Gale available here.

Rpg Maker VX Tutorial Custom Tile Step 1: Selecting the Right Tile

As usual, go ahead and open the resource section. Select “Graphic/System”, “TileA5” and “Export”. Having done that, select the identified tile in the tileset as shown in the picture below.

Using the graphic software of your choice, select the tile and copy/paste as a different file.

You should have something like this:

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Rpg Maker VX Tutorial Custom Tile Step 2: Cleaning Up the Tile

In order to make this tile more useful, we’ll get rid of the stone frame surrounding it.

Zoom in on your tile and using the lasso tool (or the selection tool of your choice), select the stone frame surrounding the dirt. You should get something like this:

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Now, go ahead and select the eraser tool and erase the border. Once you’re done you should have something like this:

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Now, here comes the tricky part (well, not that tricky…). Each tile in RPG Maker VX has to be 32 x 32 pixels which mean you can’t leave the tile as it is right now (since it is tool small at the moment).

You’ll once again need to use the lasso and separate the dirt square in four “corners” which you’ll then move to the four corners of your canvas like so:

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Ok, now that we have gotten rid of the frame and rearrange the tile, it’s time to fill in the cross shaped blank.

Rpg Maker VX Tutorial Custom Tile Step 3: Graphic Gale to the Rescue!

I like to use Graphic Gale to take care of my pixel art needs.

Launch graphic gale and open up your file. Select the magnifying glass and zoom in until you have a good idea of what the tile looks like in greater detail.

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I like to zoom to 2000% for this task as you can really see each one of the pixels.

Now what you need to do is to select an area of dirt which isn’t near the border with the rectangle selection tool (it’s the tool right next to the “hand” tool). Once it’s done, press CTRL+C followed by right click to deselect and finally press CTRL+V and you’ll see your previous selection appear on screen.

Move your selection where the blank is and repeat the process until you get something like this:

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Rpg Maker VX Tutorial Custom Tile Step Four: Fixing the Pattern

Your version might be different than mine and that’s because I’ve tinkered a bit with my version. The problem with copy/pasting the same pattern all over the blanks is that you might have something like this happening:

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Some things won’t be noticeable on a 100% scale (remember we are working at 2000%) but some things might show up anyway such what is displayed in the example above.

This is the result of having a drastic difference of contrast in nearby pixels and has the result of appearing as “lines” which you really don’t want in this case.

In order to take care of this, select the pen and change the color of the problematic zone with colors which do not clash with one another.

By spending some time messing around with the color, you’ll end up with something like this:

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Enjoy!