THE DO'S AND DON'TS OF MAPPING PART 2

Even when the Engine is Rm2003 it can still be applied to every level design related.

Table of contents:

1 The basics
a the 'yeses'
b the 'noes'

2 The specific Basics:
a Mountains (you are here)
b Forests
c Towns
d Deserts
e Plains
f World Map Tips

3 Adding to a map
a Eventing
b Overlapping
c Effects
d Overlays

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Specific Basics
This is the place to learn about how to map certain places.

Mountains : Mountains can be the most beautiful place in a game, and can also be the most dull. You have to decide. Making your cliff edges straight is not the good way to make a mountainous place. Mountains need to be varied, they need to twist and turn. Also, another common flaw with mountains is the lack of elevation. They make one small, high up path, and then no other paths.

Mountains have many elevations, and many cliffs at different heights. Example:

Picture A:


Picture B:


As you can probably guess, the map I actually use is picture A.

Other things that mountains should, and shouldn't have, is water, backgrounds, and clouds. Waterfalls and other things are a must in most cases, but having a little pool here and a little pool there isn't good, as well as having a small pool that some how turns into a waterfall, or having the end of a water fall flow into a small pool that doesn't go anywhere. Examples:

Good waterfall.


Bad Upper waterfall.


Bad Lower waterfall.


Hopefully, you’ll see what I mean when I say ‘bad’ and ‘good’ water falls.

Backgrounds. Almost any background can be used (meaning if it’s something like clouds and etc, nothing like warped space and etc.), but in my personal opinion, clouds don’t work well. If you have something with clouds AND land, it’s ok, but your mountain would have to be REALLY high to not see any land from where you would be standing at.

Clouds. Only use clouds for places that you want to be windy, or high up places. A more canyon type mountain (such as the one I use in my pictures) won’t be very suitable for clouds, but higher up ones (such as the ones from Ace’s game the Omega Seal) would be a better place to put clouds at.

Also, a last touch to a mountain is snow. The higher up you go, the colder it gets. Put something in there to belay that effect, such as random snow patches, snow weather effect, etc.