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MAPPING WOES (AND FRUSTRATIONS). TIPS FOR A POOR SOUL?
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rikguenther
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CloseLong time lurker, first time poster.
I love mapping. It's one of my favorite things to do when working on games or just dicking around. I love making canyons, ravines, caves, forests, jungles, highlands, volcanoes, islands, etc.
If you notice, however, one thing I left out was towns/cities. I. Absolutely. HATE. Mapping towns.
It's easy for me to create a decent looking landscape. Everything gets really complicated and frustrating when I have to create towns. I just don't know where to put anything. I don't know how to assemble the buildings in an interesting manner. I don't know how to set the layout and flow of the town. Not being able to do something as trivial as making a map with buildings is really upsetting.
Does anyone have any tips/tutorials for mapping a town? What I'm looking for is kind of broad and difficult to articulate properly. I want to know not just HOW to place buildings but WHY they should go that way. I play other games and even in mediocre games I've noticed that the towns are either mundane yet not awful or absolutely awesome. I just don't seem to be able to absorb WHY they look nice.
Most of my towns end up being really boxy and rigid. When I try to move buildings around I usually end up with a town that has no coherence. Nothing seems to work that well.
tl;dr - I suck at making town maps, help?
I love mapping. It's one of my favorite things to do when working on games or just dicking around. I love making canyons, ravines, caves, forests, jungles, highlands, volcanoes, islands, etc.
If you notice, however, one thing I left out was towns/cities. I. Absolutely. HATE. Mapping towns.
It's easy for me to create a decent looking landscape. Everything gets really complicated and frustrating when I have to create towns. I just don't know where to put anything. I don't know how to assemble the buildings in an interesting manner. I don't know how to set the layout and flow of the town. Not being able to do something as trivial as making a map with buildings is really upsetting.
Does anyone have any tips/tutorials for mapping a town? What I'm looking for is kind of broad and difficult to articulate properly. I want to know not just HOW to place buildings but WHY they should go that way. I play other games and even in mediocre games I've noticed that the towns are either mundane yet not awful or absolutely awesome. I just don't seem to be able to absorb WHY they look nice.
Most of my towns end up being really boxy and rigid. When I try to move buildings around I usually end up with a town that has no coherence. Nothing seems to work that well.
tl;dr - I suck at making town maps, help?
Don't try to overdo the towns, man. Trying to add a bunch of flair to them will indeed make them look choppy. I'm not an expert mapper, but I suggest this. Pick a town's center, like where an there is a market is for example, and build outward from there. If you want to make it seem logically life-like, a town will be built around or near something resourceful, or perhaps it caters to travelers. Take into consideration the terrain your placing it in as well. If you don't get help (because I don't mine did much), check around for a tutorial or something.
TheNecromancer
3160
That avatar is so creepy..and funny o.O
Um, for towns it's good to determine their purpose.
Is it a small forest village? Usually that means a small number of houses, maybe 1 or 2 stores. If you usually end up with boxy grids; lay down a winding road first, perhaps make it a loop, then put houses at different spots. Putting a small amount of elevation can instantly spice up the map. I used to play a lot of Sim City and after a while you understand a few things about what makes a functioning city. RPG towns aren't quite as big, but some of that knowledge is applicable. Create the terrain and pretend your the pioneer's that developed the land.
Perhaps it's a populated urban city. In which case you need to organize the buildings well to maximize space. However, buildings usually need a small amount of space between them(1 or 2 tiles). Roads need to be wide enough for travel. Typically in busy cities things are grouped together; all the residential areas in one part of town, businesses in another part. Shop's aren't usually hidden way in the back, they are up front where the most traffic is. Maybe some sort of park near the houses. A port/dock near the businesses. It helps to think of the logistics of a city's operation and mimic stuff in real life, typically from the middle ages as most RPG's are fantasy and most tiles are low tech. High tech, massive cities are pretty hard to make.
Sometimes a town is a rest stop between 2 major places, in which case it might be developed with 1 major road going from one side to the other. All the important business and services would line that main road with maybe a side road leading off to other areas including residential areas.
Depending on the area, the space between building will vary. But almost always you don't want too much space between them. If you find your towns are too open and empty, make the map smaller and squeeze the buildings together. Add rivers or a body of water to make the map interesting. People usually build their houses near water for the benefits it provides. An example of using the terrain to determine the placement of a house.
There's a few games/users that produce good maps. Maybe some people will suggest them or you could search them out. Click the Articles link at the top of the page, that's where all the tutorials are. I don't know what's in there for mapping as I've never searched them out. If you find someone who does good maps, click their username, and look at their other games. Maybe you'll find more good examples. But seriously, get into Sim City for some first hand lessons in city planning :P
Um, for towns it's good to determine their purpose.
Is it a small forest village? Usually that means a small number of houses, maybe 1 or 2 stores. If you usually end up with boxy grids; lay down a winding road first, perhaps make it a loop, then put houses at different spots. Putting a small amount of elevation can instantly spice up the map. I used to play a lot of Sim City and after a while you understand a few things about what makes a functioning city. RPG towns aren't quite as big, but some of that knowledge is applicable. Create the terrain and pretend your the pioneer's that developed the land.
Perhaps it's a populated urban city. In which case you need to organize the buildings well to maximize space. However, buildings usually need a small amount of space between them(1 or 2 tiles). Roads need to be wide enough for travel. Typically in busy cities things are grouped together; all the residential areas in one part of town, businesses in another part. Shop's aren't usually hidden way in the back, they are up front where the most traffic is. Maybe some sort of park near the houses. A port/dock near the businesses. It helps to think of the logistics of a city's operation and mimic stuff in real life, typically from the middle ages as most RPG's are fantasy and most tiles are low tech. High tech, massive cities are pretty hard to make.
Sometimes a town is a rest stop between 2 major places, in which case it might be developed with 1 major road going from one side to the other. All the important business and services would line that main road with maybe a side road leading off to other areas including residential areas.
Depending on the area, the space between building will vary. But almost always you don't want too much space between them. If you find your towns are too open and empty, make the map smaller and squeeze the buildings together. Add rivers or a body of water to make the map interesting. People usually build their houses near water for the benefits it provides. An example of using the terrain to determine the placement of a house.
There's a few games/users that produce good maps. Maybe some people will suggest them or you could search them out. Click the Articles link at the top of the page, that's where all the tutorials are. I don't know what's in there for mapping as I've never searched them out. If you find someone who does good maps, click their username, and look at their other games. Maybe you'll find more good examples. But seriously, get into Sim City for some first hand lessons in city planning :P
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I find that it helps a lot if you come up with a mood you're trying to convey, and then go all out with it. This helps keep your town from looking generic and meaningless.
Also, you should feel free to take inspiration from good towns in other games. Copying them wholesale is lame, but if you use the same idea as they did, you can convey the same points. Try to figure out what it is that's unusual about the examples you like, and then try to figure out why the designers would have added those features.
For example, here's one of the towns I've made that I'm most proud of. A friend asked me to make the biggest town in his game. The catch: the game takes place in a hellish prison dimension that the protagonist has been banished to. So, a normal town was not appropriate. It was going to need to be a wasteland frontier town.
I started thinking of wasteland frontier towns that were cool. Pretty quickly I decided to model my town after Orgrimmar in World of Warcraft.
Orgrimmar is in an Arizona-type desert, full of rocks and dust, that's cool. Little shrubs, rough stone buildings, the whole city built into a canyon. A water source. I can copy that much, at least. What makes it unique, though?
That front gate is amazing. Giant stone walls, towers, smaller barriers around it too. It's there to protect the city. It makes perfect sense for my friend's game, where there are insanely strong monsters everywhere and almost no one survives.
The bridges overhead are really unusual. Some of the towers connect to them, they connect to the upper cliffs of the canyons. They add a second layer to the town, they make it seem vastly busier than it would otherwise. Vertical differences in general seem to do the same thing and are used in a lot in RPG towns, but the rickety sky bridges are the unique thing here.
There are little spiked walls and fences everywhere. Inside and outside the main gate. Throughout the roads of the city. Just freaking everywhere. Useful places to fall back to in an invasion, I guess.
Those tarps on the canyon walls are weird. I guess they're to create shade? I'm not a fan of them, and they'd look dumb in 2D anyway. Leave them out.
A lot of stuff is outdoors, even though it's the desert. That's interesting. Gives the feeling that there's not enough room for everyone who wants to take refuge here.
Okay, let's do this. Creating wasteland frontier town in hellish prison dimension. Name: Dustopia.
Spent about 15 hours on this place, a lot of which was spent assembling the chipset. I pretty much create a new chipset for almost every area these days, because I always want to make something unique. Towns are no exception.
Also, you should feel free to take inspiration from good towns in other games. Copying them wholesale is lame, but if you use the same idea as they did, you can convey the same points. Try to figure out what it is that's unusual about the examples you like, and then try to figure out why the designers would have added those features.
For example, here's one of the towns I've made that I'm most proud of. A friend asked me to make the biggest town in his game. The catch: the game takes place in a hellish prison dimension that the protagonist has been banished to. So, a normal town was not appropriate. It was going to need to be a wasteland frontier town.
I started thinking of wasteland frontier towns that were cool. Pretty quickly I decided to model my town after Orgrimmar in World of Warcraft.
Orgrimmar is in an Arizona-type desert, full of rocks and dust, that's cool. Little shrubs, rough stone buildings, the whole city built into a canyon. A water source. I can copy that much, at least. What makes it unique, though?
That front gate is amazing. Giant stone walls, towers, smaller barriers around it too. It's there to protect the city. It makes perfect sense for my friend's game, where there are insanely strong monsters everywhere and almost no one survives.
The bridges overhead are really unusual. Some of the towers connect to them, they connect to the upper cliffs of the canyons. They add a second layer to the town, they make it seem vastly busier than it would otherwise. Vertical differences in general seem to do the same thing and are used in a lot in RPG towns, but the rickety sky bridges are the unique thing here.
There are little spiked walls and fences everywhere. Inside and outside the main gate. Throughout the roads of the city. Just freaking everywhere. Useful places to fall back to in an invasion, I guess.
Those tarps on the canyon walls are weird. I guess they're to create shade? I'm not a fan of them, and they'd look dumb in 2D anyway. Leave them out.
A lot of stuff is outdoors, even though it's the desert. That's interesting. Gives the feeling that there's not enough room for everyone who wants to take refuge here.
Okay, let's do this. Creating wasteland frontier town in hellish prison dimension. Name: Dustopia.
Spent about 15 hours on this place, a lot of which was spent assembling the chipset. I pretty much create a new chipset for almost every area these days, because I always want to make something unique. Towns are no exception.
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