Valid for: RPG Maker 2000, 2003, XP and VX.
Without a doubt, one of the pillars of a game is a good ambientation. In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to focus it based on the type of game we're making. The ambientation is a basic factor to making a game impressing. If there's no ambientation related to the story and the game style, the final result, even the good music or/and graphics we use will be not the same.
General advice
Visual harmony
The visual impact depends more on the correct use of the graphic elements at your disposition rather than the graphics quality. Is important that those graphic elements are in concordance with the time and type of game. For example, isn't advisable to introduce graphics elements of medieval character inside a futurist ambiented game.
Is also important the homogeneity of the graphics resources used. It isn't convenient to mix characters, chipset or faceset very different between them, For example, if we use chipsets of Suikoden we will be conditioning the ambient in excess and it stoical, so it's about graphics with a very highlighted style or difficult to ampliate or combinate. Then if we chose that option, we should try to not get out of that style and preserve it until the end.
The mix of the visual resources breaks all the visual harmony radically, and could even denote a lack of interest from the authors of the game. For example, mixing character sprites from Final Fantasy VI with character sprites from Chrono Trigger doesn't look well due to a clash of art styles. Is obvious that to achieve homogeneity requires blood, sweat, and tears, but it will be a sign that you appreciate it and you take it seriously, for not even saying that will be gratifying for you and for the players.
Music and sound effects
The music and the sounds complement the visual harmony.
The music makes us feel emotions and live the scene we are viewing, a romantic scene, a happy talk or the final boss combat. The key is, like at all, the common sense. We can't use a piece of music that doesn't attach with the situation, because this would cause confusion in the player and, of course, ruin all the work dedicated to the graphics and the scene.
The soundtrack's homogeneity will be minus important than the graphics aspect but welcomed by the player too. But compose isn't reachable for all(composing quality music), because what we usually use normally commercial or professional music.
We can also mix some tracks of our like, thinking that the music should Concorde with the situation. Sometimes you have to self restrain yourself from using your favorites track(hip hop doesn't paste with a princess RPG).
Getting back to the start of this section, compassed with the music, places, and scenarios, a big hand of ambient sounds should exist. The sounds depend exclusively on the site you try to recreate. If we are in a forest we will add bird sounds, and if we are in a factory sounds of machine, metal, etc.
Depending on the game type, you will need more or less sound effects, for example, an Action-Rog will need more sounds than a classic. Even, a good variety of soundtracks in a classic RPG is better than a monotone one.
The language
Even if it wouldn't be obvious, the language used by a character also affects the ambientation of our game. The language of our characters can denote clearly their social position or the cultural level. We can take benefit of this to introduce different talking and expressing ways of our characters, also that will help us to differ animation states or the character. If in some scene the sadness is notable, we should ambient it, not only with the graphics and music, even with the language. Also, the language serve us to talk by legions