Map Name: Soapstone Falls
ROM: Fire Red BPRE
Hack: Pokémon Enigma
Credits: Nintendo
Mapshot: (Large map warning)
Looks like I was skipped.
Damn, how the hell did I skip this?
This. Is. Awesome. Truly, it is an excellent map. It makes me hearken back to the days when I posted my first map in the MRT. This map really reminds me of that map. Although, now that I think about it, it actually reminds me more of
this map. That river looked awfully familiar...
Anyways, back to YOUR map. Man, where to start... Let's start with the trees. First of all, I see you have improved dramatically on your tree shadow....ing since I last took at one of your maps. I spotted on, though, directly west of the southern entrance. There are also a few questionable places like when you use small trees next to big ones and where a tree wasn't aligned with the other trees but those are more difficult and, to be honest, open for interpretation. On the topic of tree shape, a good friend of mine pointed out that your trees look square in some parts. For instance, if you enter the map from the north-western entrance, the trees to your left are really straight. There are some other block-like groups but it could be a lot worse. I'm also afraid that if you do, you'll be compromising playability for naturalness. Just stick with what you know :) There are also some other parts that are just too straight like in the southwestern corner. That row seems to straight although there's not really much you can do about that. Another instance of that is along the ridge at the far left side of the map, there's a long row of trees without any curvature.
Onto the mountains:
Well I noticed one simple block edit that you made that is kinda hard to describe. Basically, when a mountain has a grass top, at the northern edge of the hill, you used the same block (but flipped horizontally) for the edges. I'm not in a position to show you a picture so I'll just point out that I made the same block edit in the map I linked above. Our maps appear more and more alike the more I write about yours. Anyways, the mountain shape is pretty good. A lot of it won't be seen in-game unless the player is surfing, though. One very blatant tile error in the mountains, however, would be south of the bridge where you used the bottom-left corner tiles of the mountain tileset incorrectly (they have the mountain tile as their background instead of the grass tile).
Speaking of the bridge, it is nicely done although I have some suggestions. First of all, and this is merely a suggestion, I prefer the brown bridge tiles that are used in R/S/E. That's just my opinion and if you like those ones better, then you should stick with them but from their usage in FR/LG, they seem to be used as lower bridge tiles. Your bridge is several mountain layers above the water while in FR/LG, they appear to be more of a dock tile. Anyways, the only tile error I could find in the bridge is three tiles in from the western edge. You simply used the bridge-over-water tile instead of the bridge-over-water-with-ledge-on-the-left-side tile.
Oh I almost forgot: I like the way you used the shadow of the bridge in the water. Although, again, I did the exact same thing in my map...
Vegetation:
Well everything seems to be done decently. Nothing is terrible but it's not extraordinary either. The flowers almost always seem to be clumped in those little arrow-shaped groups. Having them in a close proximity isn't such a big deal but a little variation in the shape of them couldn't hurt. Another thing I would recommend is not using the bush tiles in the middle of a patch of grass (I'll comment on the tall grass placement later). You can use flower tiles in the middle of grass clumps but bushes are actual physical barriers, thus creating bottlenecks here and there which hurts the playability and, given the style of this map, that seems like an awfully important aspect of mapping to you.
Tall grass placement is also decent although there's definitely room for improvement. Like I mentioned earlier, those bushes created obstacles in the grass which could prove annoying in-game. I really like that patch on the central hill that isn't required to pass through. I don't know what it is but it just seems very Nintendo-ish. One thing I wouldn't recommend is using tall grass in areas that aren't accessible. It makes the player believe that they should be able to access that area (or at least it does for me :)). The shape of your patches is great; they look natural but not too natural, if you know what I mean.
Assorted other stuff:
GAH! You messed up the waterfall! I expected more from a mapper of your caliber. I would suggest taking a look at some Nintendo® maps with waterfalls, such as Cape Brink, to see how they should be done correctly. It appears that you have the correct usage of the water edge tiles but you need to work on the actual waterfall (which is surprising as usually it's the other way around).
I only spotted one use of the hidden berry tile which was disappointing. This map seems like the perfect map to hide goodies and I expected more little secrets to be found scattered around the map. Hopefully by the time this goes into a map, you will have improved in that area ;)
As for border errors, this map is possibly exempt from that restriction as it has connections on all sides. However, judging by the fact that you have two different entrances/exits on the northern side, I'm assuming you will be connecting it to two different maps and probably offsetting them. If that is the case, you might end up having border problems at the place where the river is closest to the northern border in the center of the map. Other than that, you seem to have handled that issue very well.
Well, I'm running out of things to say here. I could write a whole lot more if I really wanted but I'd probably end up repeating myself and that's just boring to read (as if this isn't boring enough as is). Well, hopefully you'll take all the things I mentioned into consideration and incorporate them into your hack. I'll be keeping an eye out for more work from you ;)
Yours truly,
Colcolstyles
