Realistic Multiple Elevation Map Design

[Wolf Rawrrr]

Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right place but I saw threads that have to do with mapping here so... I have 2 main questions (red).


I've been looking a lot online trying to learn how to properly handle multiple elevation levels and such - and I don't mean just with bridges. I'd like to collect some opinions and advice here as well, rather than just look at pictures and watch videos. Not that I found a lot of good results, anyway :/ Here is a picture of a section of an underground cave. It has three elevation levels (of which the middle one is inaccessible) and a bridge that connects the two highest ones. Can you please tell me if this is done right? I want to avoid illogical/impossible height designs, which are all too easy to occur.


Note: Images are kinda big so here's a link instead of direct image.


IMAGE 1


Secondly, since I am bothering to make elevation realistic, I'd like to allow the player to walk behind walls that are high enough. for example, I think if a wall is 2 blocks high you should be able to walk behind the upper block. This adds to the realism, or effectively ruins it if you cannot do this. And don't say that it doesn't matter unless the player is tall enough (or wall low enough) so that their head or more is protruding from cover. This is one way of doing it, but it doesn't have to be. You may not see any part of your character but that doesn't take away value from being able to walk behind walls where it makes sense.


On the second picture I have marked with a red grid areas that I believe should be walkable behind. Now, I know that I could simply go to tileset and put a star for the cliff top to achieve this. The problem is that cliff tops also run vertical some places, and if I universally made all those tiles walkable behind, then the player could enter vertical walls from the sides as well. The only way that I can think of to selectively choose which tiles are walkable behind would be to create copies of the cliff top, put them in an imported tileset and make those walkable behind, and then manually place them where I want the player to walk behind. I am interested to know if there is another, possibly better, way to do this?



IMAGE 2


Notice that part of the bridge area is marked with a green grid. I need the player to be able to walk both above and behind these tiles, depending on which level he is. I saw one solution for this by placing events all over the bridge and using a variable like PlayerElevation that would activate on places where player can change elevation, setting value like 0, 1, or 2 - and then restrict where he can go depending on which elevation he officially is on. In this case the bridge would be considered Elevation Level 2 like the cliffs it is connecting. Like shown in this video. I am wondering if this is the best solution, or if there is a better way to do this. So far it looks like a good method.

 

[Pine Towers]

Best way to graphically represent elevations is changing the floor. There is a light-grey and dark-grey floor tiles that can be used. Also, wall height. EL1 and EL2 are so close to themselves (1 tile high) that it can be easily ignored.


On how to make the character pass down the bridge, you'll need additional help, as I can be of no use.

 

[Wavelength]

Most of it looks decent, but the EL1 area to the right of the bridge looks confusing and bad.  I agree that using different or similar terrains for different or similar elevations can help.  You should also use the Shadow Pen tool in the map editor to show shadows in places like under at least one side of the bridge (since a bridge would block light to the nearby area below it).  The entrance looks like it could be at EL0 or EL1 rather than EL2, but I don't think that would disorient people too badly.

 

[sbethune81]

You can make all the bridge tiles events with the bridge graphic (two pages, have them above player if a switch is off and below player if a switch is on).  Put events at the bottom of the stairs that turn the switch off and events on the top section of the stairs that turn the switch on.  This will change how the player interacts with the bridge events based on what elevation he/she is on.   Put two switch on/off events across both sections of the stairs so the player has to walk over them.

 

[Wolf Rawrrr]

Thanks for the useful feedback, guys *woof*