Town Design & Structure

[Shinma]

So today I was wanting to start work on a town in my game and suddenly, I drew a blank. I've made several towns before, but this one just had the slate cleaned. This got me to thinking, how does everyone draw inspiration for their town besigns?

I myself have done a few methods. I sometimes look through the pre-generated towns to get inspiration. I'll think back to towns I liked in this style of RPG, pull up maps of them and try to get inspired. Other times I build around a centerpiece and then add the buildings as needed.

So how about everyone else? Do you use music? Other peoples designs?

 

[djDarkX]

I just start designing and makes changes were necessary.  Usually works for me.  I also play Sims 3 which allows me to exercise my creative muscles.  Another thing is that drawing too much into a town can make it seem way too busy while drawing too little will have it seem to empty, especially on bigger maps.

Here's my work on one of the villages I am currently working on, using modified XP trees, Mack tiles and shadowing using fixed pictures:

Spoiler

All depends on what you are looking to make and your style of creation.  Experiment and such.  Before making this, I made pretty...meh maps.  This is actually a lot better than I've done before. lol

 

[Lorenze]

I usually just sketch out a design of the entire town and plot out buildings, special areas, etc. and

then create the map within Minecraft, then transfer it over to the editor.

It's kind of time consuming, but it's pretty fun and allows me to use my creative muscles. 

 

[Milennin]

Or think of your hometown, or part of it, and make a very small, simplified version of it in the game.

 

[Clord]

One method I use to do some towns is to start from the center of the town. Then after that I increase the borders as needed.

 

[supercow]

look at the design on building around the world and get inspiration from it.

 

[Chad Sexington]

I try to think about what makes the town special or unique. Take that thing, start there, and spiral outward. The special "thing" could be a shop, NPCs, cut scenes, interactive graphics, or even non-interactive structures made out of tiles that stand out and are not used anywhere else in the game, but are just there to be generally interesting and memorable (aka unique).


(I take this same approach to creating dungeons and a similar approach to playable characters. Focus on what is unique, special, or memorable and spiral out from there.)

 

[PixelLuchi]

Depends on the type of town I'm mapping. Villages and isolated hamlets tend to be more random than towns or cities:

 

Basically, towns will normally have a large-ish inn in the middle of it ( that's where I start, and gradually I expand ). Then the commercial centres ( like item shops, crafting stores, weaponaries and armouries tend to go on one side of the town; if there is a port, it will be close by, for easy shipment of goods and trade ) while residences take up the other side of the town. 

 

You will notice all the shops are located on the eastern section of the town, where the main gate is for merchant

trading ( path is a bit worn due to heavy traffic ).

A typical 'large town'.

For real large towns: I have slums, middle-class and upper class, ( with the upper class being closer to important

government buildings ) and a large park nearby, with a fountain or two in a nice water structure. Plenty of statues

and greenery too.

 

A bit like this.

 

Smaller towns tend to have a church in the middle, with an inn nearby. Structure is similar to the large town.

 

Inspiration-wise, not a lot to draw from. I just tend to follow common sense ( I've played shockingly few RPGS, like only 5 or so since I started with the genre in 2001 ). The Caesar series is a good place to start ( I have the third one ) to get an idea of how to start with basic town layouts. 

 

 

 

[Shinma]

All very good ideas, and I appreciate the feedback.

Luchino, those screens are incredible, are they from the game in your signature?

 

[PixelLuchi]

Yes, all of them save the last one are from Heim. =)

 

[GrandmaDeb]

I'd like to comment that unless you are making lovely maps (as some of our artistic mappers are able to do) that economy of movement for the player is an important factor.


A map with tons of walking necessary just to get to the shop where you buy a heal potion or two just so you can walk over a bunch of brick tiles to get there is pretty worthless - not to mention irritating. As a player, it immediately takes the game down two notches in my book.


Obviously an incredible map which adds to the drama and majesty of the game is worth a few extra tiles, eh? But just spacing things out for no reason is pretty awful.


Everyone does not need a backyard to scale. [=

 

[Shinma]

  OK, so I have decided to post my town. It is nearly complete, but first let me point out that I am trying very hard to stay within the RTP (you will notice a couple of Mack tiles in there) and do very little parallaxing/overlays on this project. I still have a few details to add. But all in all, it's mostly complete.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwl097pmsulx7br/Town.PNG

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

I've always struggled with town creation. I always seem to start off good but end up with what seems like a 'piece of a town' instead of a full-fledged town/city.

The game I've been working on only requires one major city so, I've decided to go all out and put all my abilities to the test with this one! As of yet, I've not even begun to construct the town within an image editor. I've only conceptualized my idea on paper. I wanted to create a town/city that is based on an actual medieval design.

The center of the town/city will contain a very large, roundish town hall with a 'main square' in the midst of it. The actual office building for the town will be a large tower with a bell. around the south side of the town hall will be the wealthier resident's houses while to the north will be more government buildings that surround a very large cathedral. All of this will be surrounded by the town's inner wall. Around the outside of the inner wall, to the south, will be the rest of the resident's homes along with the businesses. All of this will be surrounded with the outer wall, which joins up with the inner wall along the eastern and western sides. One gate to city lies to the south and leads to the docks at a large river. The other gate to the city is to the south-east and leads out into the countryside.

All together, I plan on about 89 buildings not including the town hall and the cathedral. At first, this may seem to be to big of an undertaking and seem much to extravagant. However, I don't plan on making more than about 10% of the buildings accessible. Also, I plan on giving the city streets a clumped (for lack of a better word) look. By this I mean to have the blocks of houses very close together without allowing the player to walk in and among each individual building. The player will only be able to access the city streets. I want to have the feel of a bustling medieval capitol city (actually more renaissance then medieval). But at the same time, I don't want the player to feel overwhelmed with the vastness of such a place.

Next week I plan on beginning the creation of the 'block of houses' parts. I'm drawing inspiration from pictures of 17th century English and German buildings and probably using a mix of Celianna's tiles and whatever I need to create myself to get it done so... Wish me luck!

@Miroku: You should post of pic of one these towns built with minecraft and then converted over to the map editor. It sounds very neat and I for one would like to see one!

@djDarkX: That's a very nice looking town map. Although it seems a bit odd that the chimneys are in the center of the houses.

 

[GrandmaDeb]

Well, Shinma, this is a discussion topic, so I won't ask you things that go in the Game Map and Screenshots thread like "How do you get into the paddock in that top row?"


But another important discussion point is to remember that the player can only see a small portion of the map, and therefore needs visual clues to keep bearings.


All wood houses don't help.


Each location needs distinctives - different colored flowers in the windows, or different roof tiles - or it gets very confusing walking around looking for "that wooden roofed wooden sided house in this village - um - oh yeah, there are fifteen of them!"

 

[seita]

My town designs start with the foundation of the environment first. I go about it as if a town is built with its surroundings in mind. In this instance, a cliffside town where the village was built around an important tower that looked out towards the see, which eventually evolved into a clocktower. This village is pretty poor so you won't see any fancy houses, mainly wood and stone houses of the most basic design.

Because the village was built slowly and without any planning ahead of time, it's very messy. Buildings smack into each other as if trying to stay warm and farmland is wherever it'll grow.

As for not really being able to see the whole tower, there's a cutscene at one point that shows the tower from the bottom all the way to the top, with the parallax view behind it to show perspective. It's much better with effects, and the events aren't being shown so the doors look missing. hmm.

 

[Shinma]

Well, Shinma, this is a discussion topic, so I won't ask you things that go in the Game Map and Screenshots thread like "How do you get into the paddock in that top row?"

But another important discussion point is to remember that the player can only see a small portion of the map, and therefore needs visual clues to keep bearings.

All wood houses don't help.

Each location needs distinctives - different colored flowers in the windows, or different roof tiles - or it gets very confusing walking around looking for "that wooden roofed wooden sided house in this village - um - oh yeah, there are fifteen of them!"

Actually, I prefer all questions as criticism is well taken and helps me improve. The one on the mid-left is going to be a barn (I don't see a way to make something that looks like a gate), so it won't be needed. The one on the far right is a chicken coop, also no reason for the player to access it.

What would you suggest for bearings, as I thought the roads would suffice. I will happily add something additional.

I was originally doing all the same look for houses due to the story, but once I finished it last night and saw it I thought differently, so I will be changing that, especially now that someone else thought the same as me.

I changed things up a bit and updated the image. Does it flow a little better now?

 

[Napdevil]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always thought that a minimalist design when it comes to towns is the most effective.

Lavender Town in the original GB Pokemon games was hardly a "town" at all: three houses and the equivalent of a shop and an inn, all bunched together. The massive tower in the corner was the focal point, and the droning, almost creepy background music conveyed a sense of loss and something not being quite right. That particular area of the game has been the subject of many creepypastas over the years.

It's important to keep in mind that those games are pretty archaic by today's standards, but it does show that you can create an effective atmosphere using very little resources.

Things are different now; we have more tools and better technology at our disposal, so in theory, we should be able to do much better. What I'm seeing often though, is that simply because we can do things we couldn't do before, people feel like they have to "overdesign" things, and towns sometimes end up being this chaotic clutter of buildings and objects that make them look really messy (and a pain to navigate). It's effective if done correctly, but finding the right balance isn't easy.

 

[gvduck10]

Ok, I HAVE to weigh in on this topic:

I try to stick to a few of basic principles, based on actual human history:

1. Town Center -- this might be a small patch of dirt, or a beautifully decorated plaza with a fountain and statues and flowers, or anything in between, but every town has some kind of outdoor gathering area, so it should have some NPCs milling around as well.

2. Water -- People simply do not live without water access. This might be a beach, a nearby lake, river, stream, or even just a well (in a really small town), and is also a common spot to find people, fisherman, villagers, sailors...

3. "that big fortified thing" -- In a very tiny village this might be just the chief's slightly bigger cabin, but in all other towns, there will be a mayor's house, a castle, a citadel, a cathedral, something that stands out and usually shows who is in charge. This does not need to be in the center of town (as it rarely is/was in real life), but should receive extra attention (and fortifications), plus MORE people than other buildings.

4. Farms, Mills, and the such -- well, people have to eat, right? but these things are typically on the outskirts of town for some obvious reasons. you don't need to map all the farm land either, but a chicken coop and cows are smelly and (unless you live in India) you wouldn't see cows hanging out in the city proper.

5. PEOPLE DOING STUFF! -- This is probably the most important piece. I don't need access to every villager's house (it's really rude to barge into people's houses!) but even modestly sized cities in the middle ages supported thousands of people. so unless a plague just swept through your fantasy country or its supposed to be a ghost town, there should be plenty of activity. there should be more adult age people than elderly or children, but Populate, Populate, Populate. Sure, not every NPC is going to have something super interesting to say, but that's life. not everyone is interesting!   But it kills the whole mood when I get to a new town, and Im excited to learn its history, and engage the townsfolk, to discover that everyone is gone (like our downtown area here on Sundays!)

6. Shops, Smiths, Inns -- Inns/Taverns are typically used by travelers so they should be right on the Main Road into the town, right by the city gates or in any really obvious spot. Shops and smithy's should also be pretty obvious, but can be clumped together in a smallish "business district" or marketplace... that's just rational.

 

[pawsplay]

I start by identifying the important events and make sure there is the space I need. From this, I get a sense of where the town's center is, how big it is, and so forth. Next, I figure out where necessary buildings (inns, shops, and such) go in relation to each other. Spacing is important. As a player, I hate wandering around in unnecessarily vast towns. At the same time, there should be some visual interest. Finally, there needs to be color. Minor visual details are important, as pointed out above, for navigation purposes and to avoid monotony. I try to give every building a personality, even a simple one, but falling short of that, every screen should have at least one unique element or combination of elements. That could be three rose bushes next to each other, a scarecrow, or a cat on the roof. 

 

[Shinma]

gvduck10, that is about how I planned out my town. Good feedback, thanks!