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Map Showcase and Review Thread

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Rayquaza. said:
Firstly I think the map has too many clashing styles; D/P/Pt, HG/SS and B/W. There are a couple of mapping errors also. The map itself is fine. Not too much empty space and a careful layout.

If you just stick to 1 style and fix the mapping errors it should look just fine.

I have some of my own mapshots of maps. These are small segments of different maps witht the purpose of showing off the tiles and mapping style. My thread may be inactive but my DeviantArt certainly isn't.

Enjoy!

Spoiler:

More info on my DeviantArt
Click to expand...

I like the fact that your maps change the colour of grass depending on the area - not enough games do this. Maybe the grass in the snowy area should be white? Doesn't matter if not, it still looks good!
 
Rayquaza. said:
Firstly I think the map has too many clashing styles; D/P/Pt, HG/SS and B/W. There are a couple of mapping errors also. The map itself is fine. Not too much empty space and a careful layout.

If you just stick to 1 style and fix the mapping errors it should look just fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your advice. I didn't actually played B/W (except watching Twitch Plays Pokémon playing it) so I don't know if the houses or center/mart/gym are from it or just some fan-making ones (I found them in various places, with the path tiles). Trees are from HG/SS if I'm right, and grass is probably from DPP. I'm thinking about recoloring the grass, I find it to lightly on the green color. But I want this place to be cold (not frozen though, something like 5-10°C) so no flashy grass. I may have to look at DPP trees...

I wonder what mapping errors did you see. I've fixed a bunch of trees (sometimes not easy to set the foliage edges correctly with multiple trees ^^) and I don't see anything else. Maybe you spotted something I missed ?

About your maps, each location has its own atmosphere, that's great. I always forget about the fog feature, it really adds some nice ambiance...
 
Rayquaza. said:
I have some of my own mapshots of maps. These are small segments of different maps witht the purpose of showing off the tiles and mapping style. My thread may be inactive but my DeviantArt certainly isn't.

Enjoy!

Spoiler:

More info on my DeviantArt
Click to expand...

While it's hard to make a judgement on any one map since they're only small snapshots, I will say that from what you've shown they look to be really high quality. What I like about your maps most of all is that you make each area very distinct through individualized tilesets, while at the same time there's an overarching style which ties them all together. Once it's finished I'm sure your region is going to feel really 'complete', if you know what I mean. Like it really is its own world.
 
Your fog effects are way too grey I feel. You should at least tint them a bit. Your tall grass colors are way too similar to the color of your trees, you want them to be similar, but not that similar. It is not only distracting when trying to appreciate the scenery as a whole - it is just not aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
 
Here is a new map that I just made for Crimson Skies, felt like getting some opinions on this one. I'm making a long route and thought I would spice it up by adding a farm to it. This is only part of the Route, the cave entrances link to the other parts (they are just short tunnel's). Pokemon you can find here include Miltank, Stantler, Tauros, Bouffalant, Ponyta and Spoink (you can also find them on all the other parts of the route too, not just exclusive to the farm spot). The area's on the sides of the Barn that are inaccessible have Pokemon walking around in them.

Spoiler:
 
Florio said:
Here is a new map that I just made for Crimson Skies, felt like getting some opinions on this one. I'm making a long route and thought I would spice it up by adding a farm to it. This is only part of the Route, the cave entrances link to the other parts (they are just short tunnel's). Pokemon you can find here include Miltank, Stantler, Tauros, Bouffalant, Ponyta and Spoink (you can also find them on all the other parts of the route too, not just exclusive to the farm spot). The area's on the sides of the Barn that are inaccessible have Pokemon walking around in them.

Spoiler:
Click to expand...

The map is too linear imo, there is also zero encounter rate as the player doesn't have to walk through any tall grass.
 
Florio said:
Here is a new map that I just made for Crimson Skies, felt like getting some opinions on this one. I'm making a long route and thought I would spice it up by adding a farm to it. This is only part of the Route, the cave entrances link to the other parts (they are just short tunnel's). Pokemon you can find here include Miltank, Stantler, Tauros, Bouffalant, Ponyta and Spoink (you can also find them on all the other parts of the route too, not just exclusive to the farm spot). The area's on the sides of the Barn that are inaccessible have Pokemon walking around in them.

Spoiler:
Click to expand...

While I would usually agree with Rayquaza. about the 'not needing to go into grass' bit, since it looks like it's in the middle of a big route I think it would be good to give the player a bit of a break. Same thing with the linear criticism. I'm assuming the rest of the route looks more naturally wild though. The thing I think could be improved is that it's too symmetrical. If you look at all the gamefreak maps and the really good looking maps on deviantart or whatever, they steer away from symmetry, because symmetry is predictable and predictable is boring. I think you could just cut out one of those vertical paths along the vertical axis (either half of the map could go doesn't really matter). So for example, pull the cliff on the left hand side in 8 tiles, and curve it around the trees. That way (assuming the path is left to right) when the player comes out of a long wilderness section, they immediately have a short break of open space and a barn, and then the long vertical path on the right leading back into the cave signals that they're back into the wild.

The other thing that comes to mind though is why would somebody choose to build a barn THERE? It looks like it's so far removed from a town I just think it's a bit weird.
 
Evilrake said:
While I would usually agree with Rayquaza. about the 'not needing to go into grass' bit, since it looks like it's in the middle of a big route I think it would be good to give the player a bit of a break. Same thing with the linear criticism. I'm assuming the rest of the route looks more naturally wild though. The thing I think could be improved is that it's too symmetrical. If you look at all the gamefreak maps and the really good looking maps on deviantart or whatever, they steer away from symmetry, because symmetry is predictable and predictable is boring. I think you could just cut out one of those vertical paths along the vertical axis (either half of the map could go doesn't really matter). So for example, pull the cliff on the left hand side in 8 tiles, and curve it around the trees. That way (assuming the path is left to right) when the player comes out of a long wilderness section, they immediately have a short break of open space and a barn, and then the long vertical path on the right leading back into the cave signals that they're back into the wild.

The other thing that comes to mind though is why would somebody choose to build a barn THERE? It looks like it's so far removed from a town I just think it's a bit weird.
Click to expand...

Yeah that is what I was more so going for, it is suppose to be a break in the route. The rest of the route does definitely look more natural.

I do kind of agree it is too symetrical, I think I will take your advice and pull in one of the cliffs so that both sides don't look exactly the same. Also the player first enters from the right cave, not the left one.

And I don't really think it matters where the Farm is built. If anything I'll just say it is a Family-owned barn, and that they chose to build it there so that the Pokemon they own can't easily escape from them.
 
I like the visual part but like other said it's too symmetrical. Also try to break the lines with those cliffs.

About why this barn is here, well there are farms like this one in real which are far away everything. Maybe you can add some fields near it, which would explain why hay bales are here.

It's fine for me to have parts of roads without forced grass.
 
Florio said:
-snip-
Click to expand...

The map is a good start, but it needs some work.
I like the idea of making a break between cave path to allow the player to heal up, presumably at the farm, and get out of a random encounter you would face in the cave.
The problem is that the map is so square, you could easily make the map sort of like a mountain valley by expanding the map a bit more and changing the scenery to be more mountainous and hill-ish, if that makes sense.
Also, farms would benefit from being near mountains for the rich fertile soil and utilizing the technique of Terraced farming - which would only require a slight edit if anything in the background to show it off.
Another interesting idea you could do is allow the player to either grow berries in this area or purchase different soils if you're using that in your game.
 
Okay, tell me what you guys think of the revamp of the map with the farm on it. I made it less symmetrical, made the ledges less straight, and added some berry patches.
Spoiler:


And also the inside of the barn. The Pokemon are behind the fence, and there will be two NPC's you can talk to. One that heals your Pokemon, and one that sells Moomoo Milk.
Spoiler:
 
Florio said:
Okay, tell me what you guys think of the revamp of the map with the farm on it. I made it less symmetrical, made the ledges less straight, and added some berry patches.
Spoiler:


And also the inside of the barn. The Pokemon are behind the fence, and there will be two NPC's you can talk to. One that heals your Pokemon, and one that sells Moomoo Milk.
Spoiler:
Click to expand...

Looks like you fell for one of the biggest pitfall traps in map making, and you didn't really fix it much in your update. Let me explain this a bit more, because a lot of people do this with their maps and when they receive criticism - they don't fully understand what the problem is in it's entirety, making it hard to correct.

Blocky paths.

The issues is not so much that they are in a straight line, it is that the entire route is in 3 straight lines, and long as hell ones to boot. You did a good job of tackling the symmetry first which is what I would always suggest trying to do before breaking up your linear paths because it allows you to break them up more aesthetically in the long run. Paths in the real world are rarely this straight unless they are roads or something and if you think about them to scale with movement compared to on foot, even they are not really straight.

Your character moves slow, and the speed in which something moves is going to dictate how long they experience something like a straight line. On your highway or freeway, there may be stretches of straight road but you are traveling at a faster speed which means you really are not feeling those straight lines for very long. When you are walking, that same straight line seems like you experience it much more because you are moving so much slower. Think about this when you are building your straight line and imagine how long it is going to take for the player to walk the path. Chances are that if the player is experiencing a straight, unbroken path for more than a few seconds of movement - it is too straight. Even in the official games the longer maps are not having the player walks for more than a couple seconds without the viewport of the screen revealing some sort of break up in the path. Be it the path jarring itself a bit, grass getting in the way, or the path simply changing direction of fading out to something else.

In this mapping tutorial I broke the map up into a grid. Each of those squares of that grid are the same size as the screen, which was 8x6 tiles. This means that when the player is in the game, they are going to be in middle of seeing 8 tiles wide and 6 tiles tall. If you look at the left side of the map where the entrance is, you will see that it is a straight path, meaning the player is going to be walking across 16 tiles going left or right and will not have to change direction. In fact, they could move 24 tile left or right before changing direction if you think about the maximum length of distance they can travel this way. However because I broke the map into a grid, I can see how the map is going to evolve as they move and I broke this linear travel up by breaking up the path tiles and throwing grass in the way so that if they do move straight, something is going to change, giving the player more of a natural sense of the environment as the move within that 8x6 viewport.

If you really need more of a tangible way to see what I am talking about, break your map up into a grid the size of your game window and put a piece of paper up to your screen.

Trace the window size onto the paper, and cut the square out to create a window on the paper.

Now hold that paper up to your map (zoomed accurately) and move it around to follow your possible paths of movement.

Your map should constantly be evolving as you move this piece of paper across your map. It should not be evolving so much that it no longer feels like a path, but it should evolve enough to keep the player from feeling like they are traveling in one direction for too long.
 
While I wait for Christmas to unleash my double releases, I may as well drop some stuff here and there. This is a location in Faith & Prayer Version (it won't be present until like, very late in the game).

Route 49
A large, imposing mountain range standing between Pewter City and Crystal Village
Click to expand...
Warning, large image. An imgur link can be found here
Spoiler:

Additional details about the map, contains spoilers for Crystal Village:
Spoiler:

Also, disregard the obvious tile error. The renderer I use still is **** at rendering autotiles, and waterfall doesn't render right.
 
Derxwna Kapsyla said:
While I wait for Christmas to unleash my double releases, I may as well drop some stuff here and there. This is a location in Faith & Prayer Version (it won't be present until like, very late in the game).


Warning, large image. An imgur link can be found here
Spoiler:

Additional details about the map, contains spoilers for Crystal Village:
Spoiler:

Also, disregard the obvious tile error. The renderer I use still is **** at rendering autotiles, and waterfall doesn't render right.
Click to expand...

Looks excellent, definitely put the 3rd gen tiles to good use. It feels like a real place.
 
The latest map from my game, this is the end part of Route 11 (the same route with barn), and splits off into two directions. A town to the west, and another route to the south.

Spoiler:
 
Derxwna Kapsyla said:
Spoiler:
Click to expand...
Well.. It's.. big. And a lot of attention to detail was put into it. However, there are quite a few areas that are merely wasted space, some of which seem to just be you naturally extending features so that that they connect(IE the river, which is only visible from 2 points, despite having a large L-bend in it), Also, you have your bodies of water up to the cliff face multiple times. There should be at least half a tile(or even just a small ridge) against the edge of the cliff face so that it doesn't look like a glass of water filled exactly to the top. As much as it takes away from the awe factor, I'd recommend splitting the route into 'zones' all with the same map name, and focusing on each one individually.
 
I've decided to go back over the first section of my game and redo a lot of the routes and towns. Mostly, I wanted to bring my game up to the standard I have now I made as opposed to my standard from a year ago when I first started out in game development. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to make such a big time commitment considering it wouldn't be adding any new content upon the demo I've already released, but since I've started I'm so glad to be replacing some of the maps I was unhappy with with ones I love. Especially thanks to Help-14's seasons script which makes the in-game feel so much more exciting.

Here's an example of the change. No judgements on the first image pls, it was the first route/forest I ever made x).

Old Kaishi Forest:

Spoiler:


And the new Kaishi Forest (Spring):

Spoiler:
 
BadSamaritan said:
As far as layout is concerned, it's definitely much more dynamic and interesting than your first version.

But it has one big flaw in my opinion, and that's the trees. There's no depth to them in terms of value. Some kind of Hue shift between values would help too, because they are SO green right now. But by far the biggest issue with them is that weird purple cast shadow it has. For some reason it gets brighter around the edges, and just as a whole simply doesn't mesh well with the ground beneath it.

I'd suggest either changing the tree tile, or adding a purplish tone to the other sprites to make them work together.

Other than issue though, it is a large improvement, and I'd say worth your time to do the update.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I've modified the hue so they're the trees are a little more cyan during Spring, good call. I don't know what 'depth of value' is though sorry. About the shadow, maybe it's hard to see but there's no purple in it at all. It's totally gray.
 
I made a small town and wanted some feedback. I haven't added the shadows to the buildings and a couple other things yet.
Spoiler:
 
AfroPharaoh said:
I made a small town and wanted some feedback. I haven't added the shadows to the buildings and a couple other things yet.
Spoiler:
Click to expand...

iunno I guess it seems fine, but the paths seem too long and straight for me. The doors are also entirely too small and I don't think the berry trees look right, you should choose a closer color to the other trees, even though you're trying to make it look distinct from them.
 
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