Map Showcase and Review Thread

So I tried making a forest, and this is apparently what I think a forest looks like...please help, I almost didn't show it because it was just so bad...

Red lines are paths(dirt or grass, it doesn't matter), black is tree lines, blue is ponds, and green is for a house/forest shrine/event npcs.

lauerolus said:

Red lines are paths(dirt or grass, it doesn't matter), black is tree lines, blue is ponds, and green is for a house/forest shrine/event npcs.

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that's just fantastic, thank you, I really appreciate it as I realize it must have been a hassle to come up with an idea, I know that was the problem I had at least...

anyway, with that I could probably actually make something decent instead of what I made before, I also like how it looks like a charmander

lauerolus said:

Red lines are paths(dirt or grass, it doesn't matter), black is tree lines, blue is ponds, and green is for a house/forest shrine/event npcs.

Click to expand...

why would you draw on someone's map, I personally think that is kinda disrespectful. You also Told him what to do, not suggested ways to fix it in my opinion..

Anyways, to the map creator the map is too big and its bad, try using a smaller canvas and make it feel more natural, remember the map doesn't have to be huge to be amazing. Try looking at others maps and give it another shot.

KingCharizard said:

why would you draw on someone's map, I personally think that is kinda disrespectful. You also Told him what to do, not suggested ways to fix it in my opinion..

Anyways, to the map creator the map is too big and its bad, try using a smaller canvas and make it feel more natural, remember the map doesn't have to be huge to be amazing. Try looking at others maps and give it another shot.

Click to expand...

It's a good way of diagramming ways of fixing or improving a map. It's not disrespectful at all, especially since he didn't ruin the original copy...

Atomic Reactor said:

It's a good way of diagramming ways of fixing or improving a map. It's not disrespectful at all, especially since he didn't ruin the original copy...

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It is telling him what to do, though.

My advice, which comes from practically no experience at all of map-making, is to halve the size of the map and try again. Imagine how tiring it would be for the player to have to walk through your map as it currently is.

Forests are known for having trees in them, not wide open areas, so restrict any "open" area to maybe a maximum of 8 tiles across and make sure you fill it with interesting details (a lone tree, tall grass, a pond, trainers, whatever). Keep marked paths to a minimum (the ground should be mostly grass and tall grass). Have multiple paths branching off from the "main" one, which itself can do quite a lot of winding around to make the forest seems larger than it really is.

It's good to study other forest maps to see how they work. Viridian Forest, Ilex Forest and so forth.

Drawing on someones map is a good way to give them a bit of representation of what you think they should do. It may come off as "telling them" what to do, but there is such a thing as free will. Just because someone drew on your map does not mean you have to do what they say you should do in order to fix a map. In fact, it is one of the clearest ways to describe how to fix a map, and it still leaves the options open ended.

Take the blue highlights for example. There are so many things you could do in that spot with water that drawing on the map does not outline. There is plenty of design space, even with suggestive doodles on a map.

That being said, Maruno is right.

Start off by shrinking the map down. The smaller the map, the easier it is to cover in detail, as strange as that may sound. A lot of people think you need a natural feel for a map through vast landscaping, which is not entirely true, it is actually often times the opposite.

1. Shrink the map size.
2. Tighten your paths up.
3. Grid your map off and work cell by cell. Make each cell the size of game screen.

1 is going to let you condense everything down and ultimately give you less space to focus on which will pain a more concise idea of a forest with a more natural feel.

2 is going to allow you to provide flow through designating a movement path without allowing the player to stray necessarily. You want the player to be able to see a clear path with borders or restricted space at all times. If you are looking at a game screen of a player on a map and it is empty without any restricted space, you have done something wrong.

3 is going to allow you to add intricate detail that the player will see at all times. When you provide a natural feel to each individual cell, it will ultimately give the overall map the same natural feel to it and when you zoom out to the big picture, your overall map will reflect such detail on a larger scale.

KingCharizard said:

why would you draw on someone's map, I personally think that is kinda disrespectful. You also Told him what to do, not suggested ways to fix it in my opinion..

Anyways, to the map creator the map is too big and its bad, try using a smaller canvas and make it feel more natural, remember the map doesn't have to be huge to be amazing. Try looking at others maps and give it another shot.

Click to expand...

I don't find it disrespectful to me, I pretty much said iunno what a forest looks like, how can i make this better, and he gave me a suggestion - it was helpful since I had no real idea of what i wanted it to look like, but seeing what he was going for gave me some ideas

I agree it was probably too large of a map, it started off ambitious, but it was too big to tackle :x

Maruno said:

My advice, which comes from practically no experience at all of map-making, is to halve the size of the map and try again. Imagine how tiring it would be for the player to have to walk through your map as it currently is.

Forests are known for having trees in them, not wide open areas, so restrict any "open" area to maybe a maximum of 8 tiles across and make sure you fill it with interesting details (a lone tree, tall grass, a pond, trainers, whatever). Keep marked paths to a minimum (the ground should be mostly grass and tall grass). Have multiple paths branching off from the "main" one, which itself can do quite a lot of winding around to make the forest seems larger than it really is.

It's good to study other forest maps to see how they work. Viridian Forest, Ilex Forest and so forth.

Click to expand...

yes, it is very obnoxiously large, and the space I have isnt used to its full potential, making a maze of sorts with dozens of possible paths to explore would be the best choice to make the make feel like a big forest, while remaining very small and manageable in actual size

That was exactly what I was planning on doing, thank you for your straight-forward advice

Thank you all for your suggestions, I think I can actually make a decent forest now!

KingCharizard said:

why would you draw on someone's map, I personally think that is kinda disrespectful. You also Told him what to do, not suggested ways to fix it in my opinion..

Anyways, to the map creator the map is too big and its bad, try using a smaller canvas and make it feel more natural, remember the map doesn't have to be huge to be amazing. Try looking at others maps and give it another shot.

Click to expand...

While I kind of agree with you, as a matter of fact, this is a Map REVIEW thread, and while gently nudging people in the right direction is a good idea, actually slapping them in the face with something real, they are able to get an understanding of what others find good-looking, is a better way of going about it.

We aren't here to be nice to each other (even if we do give positive feedback!).
We ARE here to teach each other, and sometimes, being super respectful and non-confrontative is just a waste of time.

I agree that just "giving the answer away" isn't the best way to be educated, the message board way of communicating is too slowpaced and limited to actually push him into learning stuff by himself. So instead of gently nudging him towards something good (which might take 25~ something replies), giving him an answer straight away, and letting him analyze it, makes it possible to help as much as possible in a short reply.

EDIT: I got Snip'd by Maruno and ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™. Dammit. XD

I took everyone's great advice, and I think I actually made a decent forest map - its far better than my last one, and I like all the little things I've done


One thing I'm working on is trying to make the light not appear on the trees, but appear everywhere else it's placed - its an aesthetic choice that I want to do but as it is now I feel it's not that big a deal - that being said it might be better as a fog, but w/e
I have yet to add some actual events on the map, but you wouldnt be able to see them even if I had anyway :P

Also, I havent added grass patches because I wanted the layout to be solid before I bothered adding patches, but there will be some

Saving Raven said:

I took everyone's great advice, and I think I actually made a decent forest map - its far better than my last one, and I like all the little things I've done

One thing I'm working on is trying to make the light not appear on the trees, but appear everywhere else it's placed - its an aesthetic choice that I want to do but as it is now I feel it's not that big a deal - that being said it might be better as a fog, but w/e
I have yet to add some actual events on the map, but you wouldnt be able to see them even if I had anyway :P

Also, I havent added grass patches because I wanted the layout to be solid before I bothered adding patches, but there will be some

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is a fantastic improvement to your last map.
You have a clearly defined area which is the actual map, you have made nice use of displaced treelines to create a labyrinth and I really love the fact that it is round in shape. It is quite rare.

The lake and the little dirt hole to in the bottom areas look very out of place though.
If you want a lake, I recommend you use the "still water" tiles instead of "ocean tiles" and you shouldn't be using a sand shore either. Forest lakes doesn't have sand. They have mud, or simply land as shore.

Next, you should add ledges and wild grass to improve the labyrinth. Make the player have to choose between wild grass or trainer battles at a Y-crossing, and add ledges to try and make the trip from the entrance to the exit as long as possible, without taking away the freedom of exploring. Dont make just one long corridor, but make it so you can't roam absolutely free.

You should allso make the map 4 or so tiles bigger, in every direction, so you can fix the really straight edges of the the forest. The north-, east- and west-most treelines are super straight and doesn't look good. Just make the map slightly bigger and make them rounder, or just less straight.

Finally, you need some more decoration, like flowers, fallen branches, mushrooms or grass patches to make it more interesting.

As a final map, I give this 5/10.

But, it has the potential to become a 9/10.

Saving Raven said:

Spoiler:

I took everyone's great advice, and I think I actually made a decent forest map - its far better than my last one, and I like all the little things I've done

One thing I'm working on is trying to make the light not appear on the trees, but appear everywhere else it's placed - its an aesthetic choice that I want to do but as it is now I feel it's not that big a deal - that being said it might be better as a fog, but w/e
I have yet to add some actual events on the map, but you wouldnt be able to see them even if I had anyway :P

Also, I havent added grass patches because I wanted the layout to be solid before I bothered adding patches, but there will be some

Click to expand...

I would like to state that this is only your second map using my grid technique... and the level of improvement from the last one you posted which did not use it, for both this map and the other one you have shown me have improved drastically just from using the grid technique. It is pretty sweet to see the disparity between not using it and using it.

As I told you over Skype, I think the map is looking really good. I like what you have going on with the water and even the pit. I would probably skip the dirt in the pit though, and just do grass with tall grass filling it in.

As for the water, I was pretty distracted last night whilst stuffing my face with pizza, and I did not notice that you used a sea tile for the water. It should be still water, there is no reason a breeze would be strong enough to create waves in a forest like this. As tImE said, you could skip the sand. While I personally like it, I would probably just use a ledge with the sand path tile leading up to it over the ocean beach sand.

In the top right of the map, where the ground indents and goes down, pull that up and have a cliff going up that you cannot walk on. That pit looks funky. Adding more of a mountainous terrain going up mixes it up a bit and will just look better I think.

tImE's advice about the sides being too straight is also pretty spot on. I did not notice how long it was last night, once again because I was distracted, and you want to try and reduce those long straight edges of trees. believe I talked about that with you on Skype. Try to reduce these straight lines to no more than a single grid length in the respective direction. When I was showing you my map on Skype's screen share, it went 2 grid lengths in, but one of the grid lengths was broken up with a fence and flowers... you just didn't see it because I "accidentally" deleted the map ;)

When you start filling in the detail tiles I want you to apply the grid technique again. It will make your detail uniform throughout the map when you zoom out to look at the big picture, giving you both a natural feel as well as a high level of detail that does not look like complete ****.

Also, while you are widening the map, try and kill the number of times the player has to hit the up/down and left/right arrow keys to navigate some of the roundness of the forest. If you break the map into four quadrants you will see that some areas are really going to cause the player to zig zag which means repeatedly tapping the arrows in one direction and then the other. I would try to reduce that a bit. It looks like they kind of have to do it 4, 5, or even 6 times in some places. I would try to keep it to 3 or 4 and sometimes 5 if absolutely needed. This can be reduced by simply widening some, not all, areas of the path.

As a final note, I would try to half the number of light spaces. They are abundant, and they look great and all, but they are close together which can desensitize the player to them, which will lead to a lack of appreciation.

That all being said, man what an improvement your maps have made. I know I keep saying that, but most people do not make such quick improvements with their maps. Good work man.

tImE said:

Yeah, this is a fantastic improvement to your last map.
You have a clearly defined area which is the actual map, you have made nice use of displaced treelines to create a labyrinth and I really love the fact that it is round in shape. It is quite rare.

The lake and the little dirt hole to in the bottom areas look very out of place though.
If you want a lake, I recommend you use the "still water" tiles instead of "ocean tiles" and you shouldn't be using a sand shore either. Forest lakes doesn't have sand. They have mud, or simply land as shore.

Next, you should add ledges and wild grass to improve the labyrinth. Make the player have to choose between wild grass or trainer battles at a Y-crossing, and add ledges to try and make the trip from the entrance to the exit as long as possible, without taking away the freedom of exploring. Dont make just one long corridor, but make it so you can't roam absolutely free.

You should allso make the map 4 or so tiles bigger, in every direction, so you can fix the really straight edges of the the forest. The north-, east- and west-most treelines are super straight and doesn't look good. Just make the map slightly bigger and make them rounder, or just less straight.

Finally, you need some more decoration, like flowers, fallen branches, mushrooms or grass patches to make it more interesting.

As a final map, I give this 5/10.

But, it has the potential to become a 9/10.

Click to expand...

It's far from finished because its strictly just the layout, I didnt bother with little details because I'm going to have to change it as you and ʂḽдƴƹƦ just said, widening paths and added 4 tiles on each side, but yes I'll be sure to add that, and I may change how the hole looks, its supposed to be something specific like that, so instead of just doing that I'll mix it up and do what I originally planned with it - It's going to be part of a secret/hidden area

I see what you mean with the little beach, I could make it look like dirt, or would that just look weird? as for the water I'll swap it for still water, I only chose it cuz it didnt have any border on it but that might not be a big deal

as for ledges I was planning on swapping some trees for the ledges but I was hesitant to do so because it's supposed to be a labyrinth kind of thing where you're supposed to wander around aimlessly and get lost in it, but is not soooo big that you wont literally get lost, adding ledges would look sort of out of place or defeat its purpose - but I was thinking of making the 2 possible paths at the fork in the road being one is thick grass, or a bunch of trainers

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

In the top right of the map, where the ground indents and goes down, pull that up and have a cliff going up that you cannot walk on. That pit looks funky. Adding more of a mountainous terrain going up mixes it up a bit and will just look better I think.

Click to expand...

I agree with everything else (as it is mostly agreeing with tImE) but what do you mean by that, hahaha

ЩѻƦḽᶑʂḽдƴƹƦ™ said:

As a final note, I would try to half the number of light spaces. They are abundant, and they look great and all, but they are close together which can desensitize the player to them, which will lead to a lack of appreciation.

Click to expand...

also, in-game it doesnt look as cluttered, but I'll see what I can do with it
=========================================================

I took a lot of tImE's advice and some ideas from ʂḽдƴƹƦ and came up with a pretty decent map, I fleshed out my idea for the hidden area, rounded out the map, and made new water just for the forest hahaha
Overall I like how it came out - the bare patches are designated for areas where there will be trainers, and it seems to be pretty balanced as far as |grass:trainer| ratio
I'm also making new light spots since the last one wasn't so good - other than that I think this map is a keeper, thanks for the help! :D
(as far as the squares with bright light, it is a layering issue I addressed with events for lack of enough layers, lol)

Hey guys. Here's my region remapped so far. (Warning kinda big) Let me know what you think! :) I give you, Zela:

Call me crazy, but in the old version of this map wasn't there a way to get from the South town to the West town without walking through tall grass? I thought that was a nice subtle touch, seeing as an NPC (the rival, if I recall) was able to travel that route in that direction without owning any pokemon. I'd suggest using one-way ledges to let one travel that route without stepping in grass.

Rayd12smitty said:

Hey guys. Here's my region remapped so far. (Warning kinda big) Let me know what you think! :) I give you, Zela:

Spoiler:

Click to expand...

It's all good, but it seems too bright to me, iunno maybe I'm crazy, good maps though

Saving Raven said:

It's all good, but it seems too bright to me, iunno maybe I'm crazy, good maps though

Click to expand...

This is the green and grassy part of the region. It's supposed to be :) Other parts will be darker toned. Thanks!

th3shark said:

Call me crazy, but in the old version of this map wasn't there a way to get from the South town to the West town without walking through tall grass? I thought that was a nice subtle touch, seeing as an NPC (the rival, if I recall) was able to travel that route in that direction without owning any pokemon. I'd suggest using one-way ledges to let one travel that route without stepping in grass.

Click to expand...

Nope. There was always a little tall grass right at the beginning of the route like there is now. The rival getting through without a pokemon might be a bit of a plothole but it's not anything I feel is worth fixing or changing.

@Ray: The only thing on the map that sticks out to me is how small that cave mountain looks. Love the House tiles and the skipping on rocks to cross the streams.

Route 5


More then likely you'll be able to go to Saffron City without fetching a drink for the guard.

Fix your tile set. Your buildings are a pixel off when it comes to placement, which makes them blurry. There are also parts of trees under the gatehouse that look terrible.

Map definitely needs some cleaning up.

Yeah, I have an idea what I want to do with those trees on the bottom. I'm probably going to replace one side with a path off to Hollywood or the Hidden Village.

But I can't see the blurriness, but I'll just blame that on the new meds. Wouldn't there be a gap in stuff if it was off by a pixel or two?