Ok, so I'll do one before going to bed today. Here Xenophil asked:
Ok so i was lead her by Luna (Thank you btw!) and her is my biggest mapping problem. I can only map nature. I am absolutely horrible at mapping towns/villages and the most i can ever do is make the walls of the ity and then i am stuck . _ . so yea until i learn how to do this any game i make will be on a complete stand still.
So we'll tackle
villages and towns today. Oh boy.
Ok, let’s get this out of the way early on: mapping towns, villages, etc is
HARD. Most people have a hard time with it, and that’s normal.
This is because while you can be random with natural areas or dungeons, no one will bat an eyelash; but cities and villages are supposed to make a certain amount of sense.
Be it village, town, military base, manor or what have you, the point is that people
live there, be it permanently or not.
This is the key: these places must have enough facilities to keep the residents going: a way of living (farming, raising animals, trade, craftsmanship jobs, a freaking fort while they’re resting from dismembering monsters to cook the carcasses, you name it).
So there must be residences. They may range from full out castles, to normal houses, to even tents. Even if you don’t have the player enter a single house, there should be at least one or two, to signal that people live there (unless you have a really minimalist game where you only get shops in each location or something).
Next, before anything else:
what does you player want from this place? Is it simply a rest stop to refill supplies? Is it a plot heavy location? Is it the protagonist’s hometown? How long is the player going to be in the village? Is he going to be returning many times, or never?
These all matter a LOT. There is a tremendous difference from a village you place on the map so the hero can rest and leave, from a hub city or town the hero returns to after every big quest.
Make your own life easy: if the player has no real business somewhere except as a rest stop or just a shop upgrade, don’t make it a sprawling monster of a city. Players do not mind having a small village with nothing very much to offer except finding a couple herbs on the closet and going on.
Now, if it’s a hub city (a place where you return often) it’s natural to put a lot more detail in there. Still, always, ALWAYS, keep in mind what is necessary.
Never make a huge sprawling place just because you think it will be cool. If the player has no business there, a big place to walk around and get lost will only get in his nerves. “All this places and I can only stay the night? This sucks.”
So, let’s move on, or I’ll enter rant mode forever.
How to actually map these things. In 7 rough steps:
1 - Note down what you NEED gameplay and plot wise. This means shops, plot related buildings or areas, etc.
2 - Try to come up with the setting of the village. Is it a farming town? Do many people live in it? Do they have to deal with a lot of monsters or war and need an outer wall? Is it technologically or magically advanced?
3 - Take all you’ve noted down in the previous two steps and place the buildings in the setting. Just what you need and nothing else.
4 - With that done, see if the map will be too big, or too small. Adjust as needed.
5 - With all the core elements in place, start filling the place with buildings that would make sense to have (stores, houses, barns, etc) until you have something less empty (Warning: unless the location is SUPPOSED to be that way, never make it cramped and cluttered looking or hard to navigate).
6 - If you’re happy with your buildings, start working on the extra decoration: stalls, fences, gardens, trees, lampposts, boxes left around, parks, fountains, anything.
7 - Put the people in. This important to get a real feeling of the place. It doesn’t matter if they’re all placeholder sprites. Empty tile maps are deceptive. What to you looks bare now may be too tight a fit with all the npcs.
And now you have a town! Now on for some
hints.
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DO NOT MAKE WHAT YOU WON’T NEED. I cannot stress this enough. Make the locations to suit your needs, never the other way around.
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Houses don’t have to be all the same size and shape. They can have multiple floors, different building materials (be reasonable within the setting of course), etc.
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What sort of floor and material you use for your location speaks volumes. A countryside village will have a grass and dirt ground, with maybe some stone on the important areas. Towns and cities may vary, from stone in the main avenues to grass or dirt in poorer places. The type of tile making the road can be different for different social standings, or even differentiating the “main road” from side roads or residential streets.
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Always think of what the people of the location do when the player is not there. Is it a farming hamlet? A trading port? Unless in times of extreme crisis, people do not just sit around waiting for someone to stop and talk to them. Make your residents DO things. People have jobs, friends! Even if they’re not actively doing anything, they’ll be on standby somewhere that makes sense (a bench, a corner, admiring a statue, taking a nap, ogling women, whatever), not on the middle of the street without any purpose. Don’t leave them standing around just waiting to welcome you to their village.
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Do not get obsessed with size or realism. If you have no use for a city outside a couple shops and an Inn, make the rest inaccessible and invisible (map limit). Put some guards on the road further into the city or make it so the player refuses to go further for whatever reason (like having no freaking business in there).
-The more developed a city is, the less natural spaces (outside parks and expressly made places like that) it will have. The reverse also works, the less developed and populated a village, the more “wild” it will be.
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Not every single town needs a castle where a king lives. In fact, kings are sort of supposed to be ONE per kingdom. You can make lords or nobles, yes, but you can also SKIP the castle quite easily.
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Not every building or house must be accessible. In fact, most people don’t let you into their house uninvited. Feel free to make houses on the outside only, or shops blocked by people at the door, or simply not putting a door anywhere visible (it could be on the laterals or the upper wall that you cannot see. This does not mean you should make buildings that could not possibly have any entrances).
-Be careful of going too far and too big with villages, towns and cities. Buildings take up a lot of space very fast, so if you space them out too much or have too many of them, you may be left with a monstrously large map that you don’t need.
And that’s it for the tips.!
Now for
things you can use in your cities, towns and all that if you’re lost. Of course, be mindful of the setting at all times.
-Farming Plots, fences holding animals, work areas.
-Fences or walls around the entire location, part of the location, or even just individual houses.
-Laundry lines, racks or mats with food drying or being prepared, boxes, barrels, chopped wood, etc.
-Lighting sources (torches at night, lampposts)
-Gardens (from individuals or belonging to the town)
-Parks, fountains, memorials, statues. If the town has a particular history, or an hero, or a founder, it’s a good way to add lore without being intrusive.
-Graveyards, churches.
-Shops! Not only the obligatory shops of item/equipment. There are infinite things the player has no use for, but the townspeople might. Even if a vegetable seller does not sell YOU tomatoes, the people who live there need to cook. Street stalls, stores, facilities, city halls, churches.
-If the location is big, it can have streets, rows or ordered houses and buildings. Districts depending on social standing are pretty common and easy to do: the people living rich will usually not want to be near the slums, and the shops may be clustered on the commercial area.
-If you’re mapping a village that’s big but has few houses, rivers, natural ground between residences, patches of trees, etc, can help give it a feeling of being “out there in the country”.
-Elevation. Be it by cliffs in nature, or by cobbled roads and walls on cities, if the location is on a mountain or a hill, chances are it will be built to adapt to it. You can have entire sections of the location on different heights, or even have the location suited to it.
So with that done, here’s two very minimal examples:
The little village has a lot of empty space, and fences with animsl and farming plots, and no visible limits. The houses are smallish and wooden, and well apart form each other, the people loiter around either working or talking.
The town is more cramped. There are shops, people on about their purpose, a port, a difference from the main roads the side streets in different floors. There’s a protective wall around it, and even hints of a secret location that maybe we could access if we convince the dude blocking the way to let us through.
The point is, despite these two examples being extremely small, you can imagine a few more maps like than making a village or a town when put together.
And finally, here’s are some
very simple questions you can ask yourself if you feel lost when making your location:
-Is it large or small?
-Do many people live in it?
-Are they a tight community, or a loose one? Do they have people from many different cultures? Are all the buildings in the same style?
-What’s the weather like? The terrain?
-Where do they get water? Is there a well or a river?
-How’s economy? Are there very rich and very poor people, or are they all roughly the same?
-What’s the main focus of the town? (Farming produce, crafts, services, etc)
-Do they trade with other places? Do they have a port? A market?
-Does the location have any interesting history?
-Any special buildings? Schools, libraries, orphanages, military training grounds, etc?
-Does it have an external wall? A castle or manor?
-Are there soldiers or guards?
-What is the player doing in there? Is what where he/she has to go obvious? Is it hard to find? Hidden?
-Are there any “secrets”? Things to find? Optional quests? Hidden places?
And with that, you should be able to pull something decent.
Now, mapping execution wise…All I can say is
start small. Don’t try to make enormous towns from the get go: they will probably look terrible. Stick to simple and work from there. If you feel your buildings are all the same, change their shape…within reasonable limits. No game of tetris with houses, please.
And that’s it! Hope it helps somewhat.
