Diorama Water

In a Diorama project, water has height. It comes from four places:

• Water tiles you paint on the Floor layer: RPG Maker A1 water (Water A to D, Deep Water, Canal, Poison Swamp) or any animated water tileset. They lie where you paint them, at the height of the ground under them.
• Waterfalls: A1 water on the side of raised ground falls down it as that water's waterfall. Build mode has parts that build a waterfall in one drag.
• Water planes: a flat water surface at a height you choose, over a box of the map. Every cell in the box whose ground is lower than the surface is drawn as water at that height: a dip becomes a pond, a valley a lake, a whole map can be flooded.
• Water boxes: a water plane with an exact surface, floor and waterfall sheet. Your RPG Maker U2U maps bring theirs with them when you import them.

Where to Author It#

Placing, stretching and shrinking a water box by hand in Build mode is not in the editor yet; it comes in a later update. Until then, water planes and boxes come from the Copilot or from an import.

How Water Looks#

By default, water shows your water tiles as you painted them: the RPG Maker water art, its shore pieces and its own animation, under a light tint that deepens a little away from the shore, with light foam along low banks and a white crest where a waterfall lands. This is how RPG Maker U2U's editor shows water. If you prefer a smooth coloured surface with ripples and a sky sheen over the tiles, use Use the glassy water.

1. Open the map, then Map Properties → Atmosphere, and scroll to Water. (The section is greyed out until Diorama is on.)
2. Keep the defaults to show your water tiles, or press Use the glassy water for the smooth surface.
3. To fine-tune, move Colour strength (how much colour lies over the tiles) and Strength at the shore (how much of it is kept at the shore).
4. Set Shore foam, Foam reach and Waterfall foam spread; set Ripple to 0 for still water.
5. Save the map. The Diorama view shows the change; players see it after you publish.

Use the default water removes the map's own values, so the map shows its tiles with the light tint again. Use the glassy water fills in the smooth look (strong colour, more foam and ripple, colour over falls and sides); you can change any field after it.

Waterfalls#

• Build a waterfall. In Build mode, pick a part in the Water section (Waterfall, Canal fall, Cliff waterfall, Boulder fall: one for each A1 water your project has), set the Height stepper and drag where the water falls. You get a block of water whose top is the water and whose sides are its waterfall.
• Paint a waterfall. A1 water painted on the side of raised ground or a block falls down it as the waterfall that pairs with it in the A1 sheet, with the waterfall's own animation. Water painted on a top stays water.
• A fall several cells wide is one sheet of water, with rock only at its two ends.
• Foam. A river that falls a block or more off raised ground gets a foam foot and a white crest on its pool. A fall you painted or built, and a step of water lower than one block, get none: a half-block step is a ripple, not a fall.

Water Planes and Water Boxes#

A water plane is a flat water surface over a box of the map. Every cell in the box whose ground is lower than the surface is drawn as water at that height; ground at or above it stays dry. Where planes overlap, the higher surface wins. Blocks whose top is under the surface are hidden under the water; a bridge deck or a house standing above it stays.

A water box is a plane with an exact box: a surface at any height (not only in half blocks), a floor, a fine-tune shift, and a waterfall picture for its sides. Where a side of the box stands over lower ground (in front of a waterfall, at the lip of a terrace), that face takes a see-through sheet of the waterfall's art, which is why an RPG Maker U2U fall behind a water box looks lighter than a bare fall.

Planes and boxes are only a picture, as in RPG Maker U2U: players still walk on the ground under them. In the flat view of the map editor each plane shows as a light fill with an outline round its box; the Diorama view and the game draw the water.

Make a Pond With the Copilot#

1. Lower the ground where the pond goes: Build → Terrain → Lower, or ask the Copilot to carve a pond (below).
2. Ask the Copilot for a water plane over it, half a block under the meadow round it, for example: "Add a lake water plane over x 10–18, y 6–12 at level 1 in Meadow." Ask for a dry run first: it tells you how many cells it would flood and how deep.
3. Turn the view to check it from every side.

To flood a whole map, ask for one plane over the whole map at the level you want: every terrace below it is under water, every terrace above it stays dry.

Carve a Pond#

The Copilot's pond-carve tool lowers a shape half a block to two blocks under its bank and paints it with your project's RPG Maker A1 water (water, deep, canal, swamp or poison), up to 1,024 cells at a time. Unlike a plane, this changes the map: the ground really is lower, and the water tile decides where people can walk. It refuses when the shape has no bank round it, when blocks stand in it, when it would go too deep, or when the project has no A1 water art.

Phones and Tablets#

Phones and tablets draw every plane with the map's own water look and no sky sheen, and show waterfalls and water on cliff sides still, on their first frame. Players who ask for reduced motion see still ripples.

Things That Catch People Out#

Studio Copilot#

Both answer "Heights in blocks need Diorama (World → Rendering)" in a project without Diorama, and change nothing.

Feature Flag#

None. Water planes, boxes and the water look follow the per-project Diorama setting under World → Rendering.