MAP MAKING 101

Mapping is all about proportions. Study maps from other NES and SNES games to get a sense of scale. The houses don't need to be in realistic proportions to the characters or even each other. What is important is a sense of scale, that things are an appropriate distance away from each other. You judge this by the size of your character sprites and the nature of your tilesets.


Tileset from FF2, FF:Origins Edition.

Take a look at this map I did a while ago. Because I have 16x16 pixel characters, smaller houses are acceptable. They will still retain thier sense of scale compared to the little characters. Also, the little characters look like they need less room to move around, so you can have narrower (1 or 2 tile) passages and not have it look claustrophobic. You have to imagine (or test) what the map will look like on screen, and considering you will see up to 20x15 tiles, you want the screen to look full but not crowded in each view. The three tile rule is a load of hogswallow, as you can see here. With not a whole lot for town accessories, I put the trees out in what seems like good proportions, not crowding paths but adding to the look of the map.

Considering what you're going to be seeing on screen at any given point in time is crucial to map design. If your map is sparse, the player will get a feeling of desolation or perhaps feel lost without landmarks. If its too heavily populated, it will look like EVENT OVERLOAD and be generally cluttered, and it may be hard for the player to find the paths.


Tileset is custom made.

Here is what I feel is another well done map. Take a look at the layout of the town: it would be easy to remember where each of the buildings is and know how to reach them within a couple minutes of exploration. Building functions are clearly marked and generally well distributed. In case you couldn't tell, I am a fan of the "walled in town" approach, seeing as how it is both minimalist and rather nostalgic.

I like how hating on the 3-tile rule is the "in" thing to do these days.

For a large scale world map, the 3-tile rule works great!

Didn't we have another topic like this before here??

Three what huh rule?

author=kentona link=topic=2412.msg42906#msg42906 date=1226375751
I like how hating on the 3-tile rule is the "in" thing to do these days.

For a large scale world map, the 3-tile rule works great!

No, you don't understand. It's not the "in" thing to do. It is stupid.

Yes, you should have variety in your maps and they shouldn't have straight walls that are 20 tiles long. But it has nothing to do with the design of a map. It certainly does not apply to indoor maps. In fact, the only thing it can somewhat apply to are WALLS. If I followed the 3-tile rule, then that means I can't have roads that are more than 3 tiles, grass that is more than 3 tiles, or water that is more than 3 tiles.
It is stupid.

Do you guys want an example or not? Tell me what it is (wilderness, town, inner) and I'll help you out.

author=Neophyte link=topic=2412.msg42946#msg42946 date=1226380865
Do you guys want an example or not? Tell me what it is (wilderness, town, inner) and I'll help you out.

I'll bite! What would you do for a snowy forest dungeon?

I've never used the three tile rule or anything but isn't it actually pretty good? It's intent is not to disallow huge walls. But to make those walls have a crack or discolouring or something every now again (where three is probably a good number)

For example if you look at the walls in Blitzen's maps they clearly follow the "three tile rule" every now and again there's a bit of difference, in the coloured map there are the different tiles that stick out with a bit more snow and in the black and white map there are trees sticking out making the wall less repetitive.

Any map where form a single tile you can go three tiles in any direction and there's the same tile in all 8 directions for all those steps. That's a sucky map. There's probably exceptions depending on resolution and style and things but generally in rm2k's resolution that's a sucky map.

Other than that I don't have tile-based mapmaking advice, since I don't generally use tiles a lot anymore.

(edit: look at this map for instance:

There's a lot of... wasteland there but it still adheres to the "3-tile rule" since the textures don't repeat for every tile. Instead they repeat every now and then. You can clearly see it's the same tiles but they're put in different orders to create a pattern on the ground that isn't entirely repetitive)

halibabica, I was thinking more of a guide. If you're asking me to design a whole dungeon, I don't have the motivation for that. There's many things I could DO, but those choices are up to the creator. I don't want the guide to be something you copy exactly. That helps nobody. A good question would be How do you start? What steps do you take to give the place an atmosphere? And how can you designate where the player should go? If that's what you wanted, I can definitely help.
Let me whip something up, since I saw somebody here asking how his maps were and he just so happened to use a tileset I have been using. I will start there.