LOOKING FOR TIPS AND FEEDBACK FROM EXPERIENCED MAP DESIGNERS

I'm working on a RPG that is made with a custom engine and editor. At the moment I'm working on producing a rather large city/castle map, and I was hoping to get some feedback on the early designs. If there are any resources you can point me to as far as tutorials, etc. that can teach the fundamentals of map design, I'd appreciate it if you could point me in that direction.

Below is a link to the screenshots of the current draft of this map. It is still largely incomplete but has all of the major structures there except for the castle which will be built atop the cliffs. Please ignore the obvious graphical glitches like some of the shadows are wrong and the roof tiles are not repeatable. That's not what I'm looking for feedback on.

http://imgur.com/a/ttfGE

Some important features to note about this map and our game in general:

• The interiors of the homes must roughly the same size as the exteriors. This is because we don't contain our interiors on separate maps like most RPGs do. Thus, the structures have to be large.
  
• I tried to vary the size/orientation of the structures so that the town doesn't feel like a maze of nearly identical houses.
  
• I'm planning for only about half of these structures to be able to be entered by the player. I feel like having them all have an interior would make the map too complex, and removing houses would make the map feel too small (this is supposed to be a rather large city).
  
• I tried to make each area of the map somewhat unique so the player has "landmarks" as they explore the city the first time and understand what's in it and where things are. Also makes it a more interesting environment.
  
• The sprites are roughly as tall and half as wide as the entrances you see to the buildings, if that gives you a reference point.
  
• It should be obvious, but the in-game the view will be zoomed in quite a bit. I doubt you would be able to see the entire view of most of these structures if you place the player sprite directly in front of it.
  

We've put together some release demos in the past and the maps were less than stellar. I really don't want to feel the same disappointment with our maps again. Here's a video of what I mean (the first minute or so is all you need to watch). The maps were massively large and very empty. They just weren't that interesting.




So am I on the right track with this map so far? What do you feel would improve it the most? Here's a link to the project website if you're interested in learning more about what we're seeking to create.

Hero of Allacrost - Website

I thought about posting in that thread, but it's for screenshots and that's not what these are. Plus as I said, I was hoping to get both general pointers on map design in addition to feedback on what I've got so far.

You're right about the roads being empty. The ground in general does not have much variety simply because I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm trying to get the most important parts of the map built up and looking right before I add all the fine details. The same applies for the interiors. They are not finished yet, as you suspected.

As for the town wall, you're right. The top of the wall is not a wall, it's the face of a cliff. This location is a rocky outcrop in the middle of a desert, and a castle is built on top of the largest of the two rocks. I hadn't added the castle yet when I made the first post. I worked on it some more last night and created a first draft of the part of the castle that sits on the left rock.



Again, not finished, missing details, etc. But hopefully you can get an idea of what I'm trying to do here.