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I am a complete begginner with mapping, i'm eventually hoping to get a server up and running in the coming months. I thought i'd show what ive done so far to maybe get some advice from some experienced mappers.
Thanks! (feel free to criticise)
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P.S I know I havent finished the pz and housing tiles but this post is more focused on design
Im not pro (there are a lot of mappers way better than me), but, my First advice, dont do square edges. Make the change grass/water looks smothier. Look at the city minimap, there are lots of protuberances. (Im using my cellphone rn, gonna take notebook in some mins and i can help u more)
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Another tip is, try to not make everything so square, the dp, for exemple. Look at the pic below, for me, looks way better than a square depot
(isnt fully finished yet, i need to add some details on ground/walls).
Another advice, explore RAW pallet, look at it slowly, u will find some great things on it.
one more thing, if u want to block player passage, dont do a straight line, the player will prob thing "uh oh, mapper dont want me to cross this line" try to do it looks like it was an accident (made this "comparison" in like 5 mins, so its a bit rushed, u can do it better than me for sure hah)
np bro. If u want, keep posting ur works here, me and others more experienced guys will help u, for sure. Whenever u want, u can send me a private msg too
Update: Downloaded real map and started taking small ideas from it and making them my own. Its alot easier than starting from scratch. Also made the edges not straight as suggested.
Avoid squared houses and try to not repeat houses. I'd recommend to have 2/3 types of walls being used in the town. You may want to use one or the other to represent how much a house is worth/tier.
Add farm areas (or others) to move away from house spam - harbour, city walls can fill huge areas if needed.
You have a 1sqm path on the left side, thats not a good idea (bottleneck) unless you really want it to be that way for X reason.
Give houses some backyard or add grass areas to the town - this works well for higher tier houses or big houses that hold several apartments.
Avoid big open areas with nothing in them - inclient perspective looks terribly bad.
Need a filler? Add a river/mountain - every town will welcome them.
I may drop some more comments later on - 5 image limit
I would also recommend staying away from getting ideas from the cipsoft map. Look around the forum and different mapping threads instead, personally I think their mapping is mediocre, aim to find your own style
Think realism when mapping, what's supporting the balconies? Maybe add some pillars, perhaps make each house a different style? Different roof? Elevated roof? Ground details etc. Unless you're going for a simple, evo-like mapping style with "fun" gameplay. Again I will remind you to look at other mapping threads for inspiration, don't be afraid to even copy them completely, with every piece you map you'll improve and get more ideas. Perhaps you play other games, other mmos, can get plenty of inspiration from area/map designs from other games too.
Here's a little example from my project (yes a lot of inspiration from different mapping threads but that's what's appealing to me, so I like the style I've mapped it in <--- for people that notice it ) in which I've used similar ground as you but with the different border so it doesn't appear as flat:
Edit: Another big tip is try and use the RAW tab instead of auto border etc , you'll have more control and a lot more thought processing when designing your map.
im kind of against making each house unique. Its not like that in the real world. Special buildings like temple, depot, banks or even guild halls, yes, totally. Regular houses is different. If you have a city that can support 100 rooms for players then you can make a good looking city with 10 different houses. Dont kill yourself and overdo it by making 100 unique player houses.
When a city or a company hires an architect to design a residential area, they often want all houses in that area to look the same. At least in the city I live in. Different areas, different houses.
Lets say that not cities or companies hires a guy to design a house, but instead a family that bought land and what to build their house from scratch - like farms. They could also stand out. Or a rich family in town to make their house special.
I'd reduce the size of houses or have them more rooms in the same space (unless they are aimed to be that big/guildhouse)
Example of a room would be around 2x2 to ~5x5 - you can obviously make them smaller/bigger but I wouldn't spam sizes out of those numbers. Take your houses and instead of having 1 big room split it in 2/3 with an small hall leading to them all if possible. Carpets, dustbins (those can be inside houses) or mailboxes along with streetlights and sewers are usually needed in every town.
The triangle rooftop will look better than that wooden one you did. You can try and make 2 level roofs like this if you feel confident.
Most of the time city gardens looks better if limitted by some border like this - there are several borders you can use but if you like natural borders go ahead I'm not saying they always look bad.
I would use a mix of 2 different floors for the town or another one that isn't that colored - dark cobblestone specifically is a bit hard to the eye.
One small detail I forgot is to use different walls for basement and 1st/2nd etc floors. That type of walls have one with stones (suited for ground floor) and others with just wood.
Use normal doors for every door in a house except for the entry point door. For most cases it should be done this way.
Don't forget windows and light sources inside houses. Most of the time you want them closed/turned off by default but thats an smaller detail. Streetlights are easier to leave them on as most servers don't have a proper day/night cycle with those turning on/off.
5 picture limit kicks in again so...
Overall you did improve a lot there. Keep trying and you'll soon be teaching us some tricks.
PS - always test you maps ingame, ramps, holes are the most trouble makers but theres a lot of stuff that will go unnoticed in the map editor. My 3rd pic have bugged stairs - just noticed
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Looking at the house in the right from your pictures - I would avoid stairs on the right side. It doesn't look terrible but it will surely look better on the left side filled with mountain or similar.
More details to add to a town - anything that breaks from house spam will improve the map quality. Fishing spots, fish shop, place for carts/horses. Gravel, stones, wood planks, barrels or some dirt are some examples. Don't spam them but it will add a lot of value.
Most of the time there is no need to go super crazy with details or trying to find that exotic combination of sprites. You can make awesome looking maps with the most basic sprites from 8.x or 9.x versions. Look at your map and feel it looks good and that it plays as you want. After all this is not art for contemplation onl -, the map is supposed to be playable so it doesn't really matter how awesome it looks if the pathing is terrible or straight up unplayable.
