Testing chipsets in RPG Maker

First, let's get a game file set up.  You'll only have to do this once, and then you can test chipsets to your hearts content.
-Download RPG Maker here.
-Once in the program, the top left of the toolbar will have a "New" button.  You can name the thing whatever you want.
-Now you'll have a water-covered map, with a pre-installed chipset to the left.  Think of it like a really weird MS Paint, and the tiles are the colors.  Click the one you want and click on the map.  There's a small toolbar across the top of the chipset with drawing options.
-The tiles are divided onto two seperate layers on the map, with the ground cover on the lower layer, and the objects (the ones on transparent backgrounds) on an upper layer.  On the toolbar, you'll see three icons in a row that show a cursor on three different colors.  The first of those icons is the lower layer, the second is the upper layer, and the third is the event layer.  The event layer is where the coding goes, so don't worry about that one.

To bring your chipset into the program:
-There are two ways.  One is to find the folders that were made when you made a new file.  Inside, there's a folder called "chipsets."  Just copy and paste your own chipset into that folder.
-The second way is to find this icon:

In the window that opens, make sure the "chipsets" is selected on the left, and then click import.  Find the file, and then hit "OK" to import it.
-Now we need to make that file available as an option for our map.  Hit this button this time:

Then find the tab labeled "Tileset."
-This isn't as scary as it looks.  You can ignore most of the info on the page.  On the left is a list of chipsets available.  You'll need to add a new number to the list, so hit the array button at the bottom and add a new one.
-Select your new, empty slot.  Go up to "Name" and  "Tileset File."  You can name it whatever you like.  Then select the "..." beside the tileset file and choose your chipset.  Hit "OK" to get out of the window.

To apply the chipset to your map (last step!):
-On the bottom left is a file directory.  Right click on the map and choose "Map Properties."
-Find "Tileset" and choose your chipset from the drop down menu.

You're done!  Now you should be able to draw on your map using your chipset.

Chipsets (aka background tiles)

Each background tile is 16x16 pixels.  These tiles are arranged in a larger file called a chipset, which is a .png file at 480x256 pixels that gets imported into RPG Maker.

These tiles generally fall into three types: your average joe tile, such as grass and dirt; animated tiles, such as water; and objects on a transparent background.  These have to be arranged into a chipset in a certain way so that the program can find what it needs.  (You wouldn't want a random grass tile in the middle of your water animation.)

Here's an example of what a chipset looks like from RPG Maker's freebie files:

Here's a template by a very helpful person (jojogape.deviantart.com), and then I'll explain the color coding.

Blue - Animated tiles.  Each animation gets three frames which run left to right.  The dark blue tiles are for animations with four frames each, running top to bottom.
Green/Grey - Ground textures (flooring, dirt, trees, hills, etc.) that are arranged a certain way in 3x4 blocks.  More on this in a minute.
Yellow Green - Anything you want.  They will lay down exactly as they appear and can be arranged into that area of the chipset any way you want.
Yellow - These are the objects on a transparent background.  Some objects may take up more than one tile.
Black - Leave these completely blank.  A blank tile can be used as an eraser to cover up a tile that isn't wanted.

Tiles in 3x4 blocks:

These tiles are for gound cover that have a background/boarder of a different ground cover, such as the one above which shows sand surrounded by grass.  The program uses all of these tiles together so that, no matter where you lay down that particular ground cover, it can round out the corners and make everything look smooth.  The first tile should show what the ground cover would look like if only a single tile were colored with it (it should have a complete boarder of the second ground cover).  The second should be entirely the secondary ground cover.  The third is entirely the main ground cover, but with the corners rounded off.  The rest of the tiles are laid out to create a 3x3 square with a boarder around the outside.

When a map is created in RPG Maker, it is assigned a certain chipset to use and cannot access tiles from any other chipsets, so each chipset should contain all the tiles needed for that particular area.  Don't worry about what tiles can be walked on and what can't.  That isn't determined by the layout, but is adjusted inside RPG Maker.

I'm going to dump all of RPG Maker's chipsets on here as a reference, since it may be easier to alter some pre-existing tiles than to make them from scratch.

I'm going to explain how to import these into RPG Maker so you can test out your handiwork, but it's a bit of a long explanation (not difficult, just a lot of steps), so that'll be in a different post.