I have no idea how to make town/city maps

[sutorumie]

I can sort of make simple wilderness maps (sort of) but cities/towns confuse me to no end. Where do I start? What do I do?? What goes where and why and what should it look like and (screaming)

What do people do when they make these maps?? Do you have an idea in mind, do you just wing it?? How do you know what it should look like??? When I try it everything is just an awful mess, awkwardly sized, boring, flat, with no rhyme or reason to anything. Specifically I mean modern maps, but old-school cities (not so much towns, though I do still struggle with old-school towns) confound me as well. I just want to know how people start, how they progress, I don't want tips like "put flowers everywhere!!! trust me just do it!!!!" I want to know more like, how do you plan the layout? How do you even come up with the plan for the layout??? Howdo mappi ng cities ????????? (more confused screaming)

 

[Stapleton]

What I do is start out by getting a size of your city in mind. 50 x 50 or 100 x 100 so fourth. And I place the buildings first. I really have no plan in mind when I place them I just place them anywhere.

It takes about 5 min to place a good amount of them. If you have trouble with making buildings, practice making what you think looks best.

Then I look it over and move or replace any buildings that look out of place or awkward.

Once I've placed the buildings and satisfied with where they are, I place the roads being careful to not make it look like the builders built the town using aerial view lol especially for games of earlier ages.

Then I place the trees, bushes, and so fourth. Clutter really does make it look spiffy, just remember to make it look more "natural" instead of designed from aerial view.

Remember the first draft of the town, chances are won't live up to your satisfaction but do not get down on yourself. Keep moving things around and changing until your happy.

At first just throw something together quickly to get a rough shape, however it turns out I find is at least the outline of how my towns are shaped.

 

[Miss Nile]

I found this tutorial by Luchi-chan extremely helpful,

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/1159-luchi-chans-city-mapping-guidelines/

That said, I'll second putting your buildings first, but you need to at least have a rough idea about what kind of buildings you want to have, aside from houses of course. Church? Shops? Inn? Port? It's best to make those important places first and position them suitably, then work your way on the rest of the houses. If it's a village in the middle of the forests, buildings would be place randomly, but if it's a castle town or a port town, houses will be closely packed together.

Remember that practice makes perfect. ) Also, look at other people's examples. Looking at others' different maps helps a lot. ^^

 

[Paladin-Cleric of Awesome]

I always say start small. You can always expand a map outwards if you need too.

I always start with 20x20, stick in a few houses, then sit back and think to myself, what part of the city is this? Then I blank the whole map, pull out my notebook and plan what areas of the city I need (rich area, poor area, magic/university/library/knowledge area. Cities tend to be devided into sections, normally you find all the buisnesses clustered together, the slums are always grouped together and the rich tend to live close to each other. Mmusuems and librarys tend to occupy the same space, entertainment houses the same. Then I go back to my map and start to add in what I think goes in one section, then I widen the map (or open a new one) and make the next section, and by building it up slowly like that you can have a nice, varied city.

(note to self, make a big, interesting city!)

 

[Candacis]

That is exactly the topic i am trying to make a mapping tutorial about. As the others suggested, i would also start with some of the buildings. Think about what you need in that town. The smaller the settlement the more you should think about the occupation of every family. Do yo have farmers, fishers, merchants etc.


Think about the location of you town. At the coast? They will probably have a port and sea-related professions/markets. Near mountains? Then maybe more mining activities, hunters, masons. If you think about the residents of your town, you will hopefully come up with some ideas. Place 1-3 buildings, after that think about your layout, especially if you have water, cliffs and a townwall. I think every settlement can benefit from height differences, so i always put in a cliff or a small wall (works as a cliff just for big towns).


And the bigger the town, the smaller the space between houses. Even in a village it is unusual to have big spaces between houses. Cluster some of them together and see how it looks. And think of the player and how he could walk around in your town. Keep the walks short and offer some alternative routes.


You should also give it some thought, if you want to use only the normal roofs or pitched roofs as well. I like pitched roofs, but they need more space. Just something to keep in mind.

 

[Paladin-Cleric of Awesome]

Also, think about the focal point of your town or city.

If it's religious then a cathedrel or temple should be the focal centre. That's where everyone wants to go when they get the the town/city, houses and shiops etc sprang up around it, because it was there.

A merchant city would revolve around it's shops, so it would be set on a crossroads, some trade route, or at a port and th shops and stalls would be plentiful, houses would range from opulent merchants guilds and mansions, to the shacks of street theives just tryng to get by stealing the food from the stalls.

Water source is important, towns and cities grew u around water, or defensible positions. you need to really think about why your town or city is there and what people would need to survive there.

 

[sutorumie]

Thank you to everyone who replied. I think one of the biggest problems I have is with building placement. I can decorate the hell out of something but the actual layout hardly ever looks good. I think I'll try to make a bunch of buildings and place them on a different map afterwards.

I always start with 20x20, stick in a few houses, then sit back and think to myself, what part of the city is this? Then I blank the whole map, pull out my notebook and plan what areas of the city I need (rich area, poor area, magic/university/library/knowledge area. Cities tend to be devided into sections, normally you find all the buisnesses clustered together, the slums are always grouped together and the rich tend to live close to each other.

This is a pretty important thing. I never know what I'm doing, what sort of theme I should have, etc. I just make buildings all over with no thought and it looks real bad lmao. I think I'll try to do different sections separately. My games always lag if the map is too big with too many events on it and if I do it modern (which I probably will?) players can just take a bus or something.

It seems to be a good idea to move down a checklist (need an inn, smith, general store, etc) then take into consideration the strategy of it all with what needs to be placed next to something. I play a lot of Banished but for some reason I never considered applying the same strategy to mapping elsewhere. Hopefully this will help ;;

I found this tutorial by Luchi-chan extremely helpful,

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/1159-luchi-chans-city-mapping-guidelines/

I love Luchi-chan's tutorials, esp the one on lighting. The mapping guildelines didn't really help in the past because I'm so lost and confused on a fundamental level but after this topic I think it'll help me a lot more. I hope, anyway. I'm off to try to make a map so, prayer circle for my sanity ??;;

 

[professorbeej]

Hey, y’all. I know this thread is kind of old, but I was looking for City Map tutorials and the link to the Luchi-chan one was broken.

Luckily there’s an archive.org backup, so if anyone else was looking for it, the lost thread can be read here. It’s still relevant despite being from 2013.

https://web.archive.org/web/2013041...pic/1159-luchi-chans-city-mapping-guidelines/

 

[Kes]

This thread should have been closed a long time ago, as it is not an appropriate subject for General Discussion.
Correcting that now.

[mod]Closing[/mod]