Map Madness Qualifiers, Entry 9 Poll (Quexp)

[RPGMakerWeb]

Credits: REFMAP
(Note: Credits for materials may also include map creator, omitted for anonymity)​

 

[hiddenone]

@Quexp You've got some good ideas going on in parts of the map, but it really suffers from all the straight lines. The river shouldn't be that linear unless it was carved out by people (in which case it could use some man-made edges to keep it in place), a bit of variation in a flowing river makes it more interesting to look at. The cliffs also suffer a bit from straight lines, if you broke up the 2-tile high cliffs with some 1-tile high ones it would feel a bit more natural.

Your use of the moss near the cliffs is interesting, but I'm not sure it quite works since I'm reading it as those areas are a bit swampy. If you wanted some variation in the ground, I think using the tall grass instead would have been a better choice.

The two buildings on the map makes me think this is the edge of a village, which could have worked even better if we could see a few edges of other roofs at the bottom of the map. Currently you don't have much besides the river and path crossing below the bottom of the map, which makes this world feel like there's nothing farther down. Adding a few roofs or even tree tops could help the map feel like it's bigger than what the viewer can actually see.

I like the design of the wooden house, and the pots of flowers makes it really feel like someone lives there. But the lack of a path from the house to the main path makes me feel like maybe whoever lives there isn't there anymore, which doesn't make sense with the laundry hanging outside. Even if the person living there doesn't use the main path often, a small path from their house to their crops and laundry would make sense.

And this is more of a personal preference, but try not to mix tree styles on one map. The FSM trees look totally different than MZ's trees which makes them stand out oddly. Are they special trees and that's why they're so different? Are they just there because they look nice? Your viewers won't know your reasoning for using certain tiles so you want to try to either make your tile choices coherent or really highlight the differences, like by giving them a fancy fence around them and a plaque that could talk about how special the trees are. If you want to use FSM trees because you think they look nice, then try to stick with them for all the trees on the map (or edit the other trees so they share a similar palette).

 

[Quexp]

Thank you sooooo much for the insight, @hiddenone! I'm going to take what you said into account and give it another whirl!

I never thought about different tileset images clashing and I like how you put so much thought into how I could make the scene more natural/realistic. The bottom does look kind of bare and I can see how less straight lines can spruce things up a bit. Thanks again for the open feedback.

 

[WaywardMartian]

Because you did mine: I liked this one for being straight-forward and the cave up on the cliff makes me want to find out how to get up there. I like the design of the wooden house - the balcony is a nice touch. ^_^ Where I docked points was on 'it's a bit plain' and it feels like it's a piece of a bigger map. If it's actually part of a bigger map, cool. If it's a stand-alone, I'd want the wooden house shifted left a bit so it's not sitting so close to the edge.

 

[Quexp]

Because you did mine: I liked this one for being straight-forward and the cave up on the cliff makes me want to find out how to get up there. I like the design of the wooden house - the balcony is a nice touch. ^_^ Where I docked points was on 'it's a bit plain' and it feels like it's a piece of a bigger map. If it's actually part of a bigger map, cool. If it's a stand-alone, I'd want the wooden house shifted left a bit so it's not sitting so close to the edge.

Thanks, @WaywardMartian!
I found doing a small outdoor map to ve a little challenging so the cutoff edges was to compensate and give more space in the middle. Only seeing a bit of garden does seem kind of weird now that I think of it and I definitely could have leveraged better use of the bottom-center space.

As for the wooden house, I'm glad you guys like it! I had a heck of a time trying to make the top part but I'm glad it worked out.

 

[Punamaagi]

I found your map pleasing to look at: there are a lot of "points of interest", and I agree with the above posts in that the wooden house is very nicely designed. I also like the shape of the cliffs even though hiddenone's point about varying the cliff height is probably a good one.

One thing which keeps catching my attention is the bridge. Due to the lack of any support pillars or shadow underneath, it looks a little like it's laying directly on top of water... but I'm not sure if there are any easy improvements (since I couldn't quickly find any suitable bridge tiles in my own collections, at least). I wonder if a drop shadow would have looked out of place?

All in all, I think you did pretty good job with the map, and I want to thank you for leaving positive comments on others' maps, mine included.

 

[Quexp]

I never thought that entering a little challenge/tourney would turn into an interactive learning experience but I'm digging it. Thanks again for taking time to help me improve mapping skills!

I think it'll be fun for me to revisit this map and step it up using feedback you guys shared.


Thank you, @Punamaagi!
I super appreciate your thoughts and can't wait to mess around with that bridge this weekend.

 

[Quexp]

Okay, I took some pointers into account and made some changes!

• Less linear and added structures to edges to give community feel
• Kept some of the "moss" as tall grass since I don't see another option in my tilesets
• Made all of the trees the same but might play around with that some more and see if I can find some other trees that go with MV trees
• Shifted wooden house to left and fenced off garden
• Added supports under bridge (used bottom of ladder tile)
• Switched to MV cliffs because the edges on the MZ ones look goofy
• Added a couple of odds & ends (used GIMP to add waterfall base and fire to tileset)
• Added tint (used GIMP for this since a Tint Screen event won't show on exported PNG)

Spoiler: Map Touch-ups

I think it looks a lot nicer and I have YOU to thank for it!