Robotam's guideline to good maps - PART 2

[Robotam]

How important is maps?

To make a game look good you have to make the maps look good first. Everyone wants the places you go to in your game to have lots of details, their eyes want explore another world in your game and therefore mapping skills are one of the most important things in a game. A person doesn’t like to play a game when you're just walking on a simple path when they've got nothing to focus on but this one path. I've seen such mapping in a couple of games and I tell you now, that IS terrible map making!
Today I'm going to teach you how to make villages look very fascinating and special.


 Part 2 - Villages

This time I will teach you in a little different way than last time.
Personally I think that Villages might be the hardest maps there is to make. It's easy done by everyone that you make a village look very simple and you're just stuck there because you don't now how to make it look the way you want it to.
My favourite villages is the peaceful ones that usually lies on a mountain, an example for that is the village you start in, in Golden Sun. A mountain village should have a lot of secrets to find and there must ALWAYS be a river in a peaceful village on a mountain like that one.
But of course, in every map there lies a trick how to make it look really good, and therefore you must get to know the chipset and test as much as you can with it.
But let's get to the point!

I'm going to show you Legend of Lea's peaceful mountain village Vile. I think that one's a really good example on how a mountain village should look like.
Here it is:





As you can see the two last ones are both connected to the first one. And I think that's the way it should be.
A village should be separated into a lot of maps rather than just to have one huge map for the whole village. Because if you only have one map with the whole village in it it's feels almost like it's never going to end, the screen just keep scrolling and soon you end up like this --> ":x".
And therefore I like villages best in many maps.

However, I think the amount of houses in one "20x15" map should be three. If you have more it looks so over-loaded with houses, and that isn't good, is it?
And another important thing is that you don't have to show the whole houses in a map, a map looks much better if some houses may be a little hidden, at least that's what I think.
So please make some houses hidden, behind a little mountain or that it goes into the next map like I did in these ones.

Alright, before laying out all the details in a map you must focus on the "lower layer".
The ground should NEVER be just green and completely clean. And therefore you must make the ground different in different places, put weeds there and put stone grounds there. The shape of an outside map must vary as much as it can, it can't have the same simple green ground all the time.
The player always wants to have much to focus on and that's why the ground is so important.
And when you've finished putting out different types of grounds, small mountains and the river itself… Then you can move on to the detailing.

Decide which houses that should be Inns, which ones should be shops and which ones that should be people's houses.
Then put a sign on the Inns and shops that tells you what kind of house it is.
People's houses shouldn't have any sign, unless you want to add "Here lives the Pupanetti-family!" or something like that... but I doubt that.
Now place out windows and doors on the houses and all other small details you can find. When you're done with the houses, design the ground with flowers and stones whatever there is. Just like you did in the "Inner houses tutorial".
There aren’t any rules or tricks for the detailing only your fantasy can judge whether it's right or not.
All you need to think about when you put in the details is to make the map look better with it.

That's all for the villages.
I might have explained bad sometimes, but the best way of learning how to do maps is also to watch how others makes them.

 Up comming Tutorials

Robotam's guideline to good maps - PART 3: Dungeons
Robotam's guideline to good maps - PART 4: Forests

  A note to CoolZidane
I was thinking of accepting your offer to do the pair-up thing, but by then I already had this one ready and I didn't want to scrap it. So I think it would be best if I made the other ones myself too, but please do not let this prevent you from posting your own tutorials. ^_^

[Ian'sRPGstuff]

*claps*

[Robotam]

Damn, I forgot to put up door in the second map. `XD
And it looks like the first and the third maps aren't perfectly connected like the second and the first.
Ah well.. Everyone makes mistakes.

[InsaneJP]

hey i like this one too....its very good robotam :p

[GhostClown]

Something tells me I have something to do with this one.. I remember that old map I built for you back in the day.

Well, it's good none the less. Another one in the bag.

[BlackIceAdept]

mapping could be better...

otherwise a good tut

[Grandy]

 The maps look great.
 What chipset did you use?

[BlackIceAdept]

its most likely a custom chipset made by mack and blue raw material...

[Robotam]

 

Something tells me I have something to do with this one.. I remember that old map I built for you back in the day.

Yes, I remember that. `XD
But I'm not sure if this does have so much to do with it since it's a different type of village but I remember that map taught me quite a lot about villages.


 

mapping could be better...

If there's anything I really dislike getting critism for it's bad map making, so I took your words seriously and corrected what you might have disliked. *points to the new updated screenshots*
For further critism please tell me WHAT is bad about it.

Anyway, thanks everyone. ^_^

[DragonBlaze]

Very Nice, I wish I would've had this two years ago :p

Great map, but the town looks lonely without any people

[PyroAlchemist]

* claps and whistles * Great job Robotam.

[Robotam]

Thank you, thank you.

 

Great map, but the town looks lonely without any people

Yeah, peoples are also important but everyone should know that already.

[Sephiroth rocks]

 

Yeah, peoples are also important but everyone should know that already.

Actually you should be careful with that since I often see like 30 ppl wandering around in a village with 4 houses. That's a very common error. Unless 80% of the citizens are meant to be homeless

[Robotam]

Yes, that's true. But it's also the people's own decision if they want their village to have tourists or not.

[GhostClown]

Originally posted by BlackIceAdept
mapping could be better...

BlackIceAdept, I've seen your maps and they are not as good as Robotams.