THEDJT'S PROFILE

A feel good article of the year!

I mentioned before a Polar Bear would of been cooler than a Bastard Child of Pule from Rave Masters. There was also a really good design someone made on Deviant for the grass type which I prefer tremendously compared to their design that they came up with.

Broke? Or Made it better?

*walks out comic store*

Direction and structure is certainly necessary at the beginning. A trick many free roaming games use is actually introducing side areas during your travels to an area you're told to go (note Craze's examples).

Therefore giving the player freedom to go where they want while at the same time knowing where they could go to advance and understanding the advantages in advancing the plot.

Well I was interested to see if i could pull off a world map like that of Legend of Denadel or Heros Realm. And half way through I had a brain cramp. To which I wondered if could pull off a map in the style of Oblivion, Dragon Age and the 100s of other RPGs that use the old paper map effect.

So I took the simple terrain template (300 x 300) I made in VX and imported it into Photoshop.



There we go! In all it's rectangular beauty. This is using just the water tile and the default grass tile. From here I simply imported another image, this time a high resolution paper texture.



Immediately you can see the style I'm going for. The water has been cropped out completely to leave just the islands and their outlines. However It looks very dull as a paper washout. I want to make it look like an actual map and I want to make it a little bit more obvious of the inland and surrounding sea.



Now you can clearly make out the two islands surrounded by the sea. The edges of colour clash have also been softened up. However, look at those jaggy edges from the VX tile set! Instead of blurring them which will take off the quality in the outline around the map I'm going to use a soft edged eraser and smooth-en out the edges that way. I also want to add in the roads which will connect each little village and town together...



Ahah! That looks a lot smarter. The roads are all drawn in with a 2pxl smooth pen and faded into the map to not look so obvious. You may of noticed I also added Snow Caps to the top of the West Island and a tiny bit to the North East of the Eastern Island. I've added some darker ground to add some variety as well. Look I even made a volcano island at the bottom Right corner. Using a tiny 1-2pxl eraser I was able to edit any unrealistic smooth edge to the island and make a few detailed worn edges.

Now for some finishing touches. I wanna add a compass to the corner and then add some general grunge effect to make the paper look worn and torn.



So here's the final result. I've added a few faded grunge brushes around the corner and over the Western Island. I found myself a map compass and placed it on the paper with a slight perspective edit to create a slight 3D effect. And to top it off I added in a faded map grid overlaying the entire image and popped the Island names onto the empty areas of land.

And there you have it! One world map, in the style of Oblivion and Dragon Age. Quick, Simple and easy.

No this isn't a tutorial. I was just showing off...