Mapping Help

[Kensho]

Hi guys ! I was wondering if someone  have a tutorial for improving skills on mapping ? I really need to improve myself on mapping so if someone can give me some advices it could be great. Thanks you for reading my post have a good day.

[Beast Boyz]

Hello ! There's several way to improve in mapping :

 

First : Copy/Adapt/Rework. You can look at maps made with similar tileset (Or not ! Adapt beautifull maps to your tileset and standard ) and see if you find them pretty, and why. Then try to "copy"  them but modify location, road, etc...  It will come naturally after a while, a lot of do and redo will help.

 

Second :   Questions. Ask yourself a lot of questions according to the type of map, imagine a forest. Is there some wildlife ? How big the tree should be ? Why is there a road here ? Do people come for woodcuting ? So i could add  cuted tree trunk. Etc...

If you do a city/village you can ask for other questions : Where do people get food ? How and where do they buy something ? What can they do for a living ? Why is there a road leading to the castle of the evil lord (That's stupid, or perhaps he stole the castle...) etc...

 

Third : A good tileset. Even if you have very good mapping skill, if your tileset doesn't give you enough materials for the kind of world you want to do... well, it's not gonna be good.

 

Fourth: Details. If you pay attention to details it will give a lot of life to your maps. Littles animation like wind in the tree, animated water, bubble in lava, critters, flowers, lighting, shadow, etc...

 

Five : Does it look natural ? Avoid pure symmetry and nonsense mapping shortcut. Even if your world has magic or flying pig, it also have rules, define your rules and stick to it, if you do something a way, it would be illogical to do it differently later, except if there's a good reason ! 

 

Hope it can help.

 

[MohenjoDaro]

Straight Lines: Don't use them. Nature doesn't have straight lines or 90* angles, so use them as little as possible. You can use them in towns, but even then I say try not to: buildings are made with the land in mind, the land isn't made with the buildings in mind. (This goes for making cliffs, tunnels, towns, placing trees, etc..)

 

Elevation: Levels/layers are important. When's the last time you went for a walk and didn't go up or down at all? Just having small changing in the elevation around the map can help a LOT.

 

Diversity: A good tileset helps with this, but having different grass, rocks, trees, etc. can help a map be more appealing to the eye. Seeing the same thing gets boring after awhile.

 

Practice: No one starts off perfect. My first maps were HORRIBLE, but after practicing a lot and seeing what doesn't work, I started figuring out what does work. Just jump in and start experimenting. If you see something you don't like, figure out why you don't like it: is it too straight? too flat? too repetitive? Learning what doesn't work can be as helpful as learning what does work.

 

Get Feedback: Make some maps, and once you've hit a point where you're ok with people seeing it, post it somewhere and ask for feedback. People here are more than happy to give feedback on maps.  You can also look at other threads asking for feedback and see what they did, and what they're being criticized on (I've posted on a few threads giving feedback, so feel free to checkout my posts)