The purpose of this post is simple, to help you improve how your maps look. This is purely for visuals only, designing smart, fun to play maps is different for every game and genre and I am not entirely great at it. So I will help you make your maps look better at the least.
I'm also not providing technical help on things like how to use the map editor.
Anyway, first things first. I'm list a lot of the problems I see in BYOND games (and a lot of games in general).
1. This is something that annoys me more than anything. A lot of BYOND games have amazing looking graphics. Some highly skilled artist put a lot of time and effort into making some beautiful looking graphics. And then some plonker takes these amazing looking graphics, and makes a half assed attempt at making a map. He spends 10 minutes throwing them into a map, putting no thought into the process at all.
Point I am trying to make is, just because you have good graphics, it does not mean you have good maps. Making maps is entirely an art of it's own that is independent of making graphics, and you have to put as much time and effort into making a map as the artist did into making the graphics.
http://www.byond.com/games/hubpic/97077_11999.png Here is an example of the above point. I would kill to have an artist like this. But I'd want to kill the person who ruins these graphics on a map like this.
2. This has to be the single biggest problem I see in any game ever. People make maps too big. Big maps look empty, empty maps look bad.
You do not need huge, empty areas. No game does and there is no excuse for this.
http://www.byond.com/games/hubpic/99920_10754.png Here is an example of a map that is too big and empty. 90% of this screen is wasted space.
3. Next is variety. A lot of maps I see have very little variety. Every house looks the same, a wall is just a tile that is copy and pasted, a forest is just one type of tree, a field of grass is just a flat green surface.
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/TX/ GreaterSW_TX_field_02.jpg Here is a real field of grass. Just in this picture I can notice at least 4 different lengths of grass, and several types.
http://www.byond.com/games/hubpic/98017_12906.png Here is an example of this. The path is one tile, there is only one type of tree, the grass is all the same.
4. This is becoming less of an issue than it use to be, but I still see it more than I should. Inconsistent graphic styles. There is nothing more to say, you shouldn't be using graphics from two totally different artists. They simply do not fit well together.
http://www.byond.com/games/hubpic/104404_13244.png I cannot find any great examples of this, but those trees have an entirely different style to the rest of the graphics. It's hard to not notice them.
5. The next few points are more specific to certain types of maps. But the same kind of issue.
Nature is first. Nature is random. It is not square. You will not find me a naturally occurring square patch of grass, a straight cliff or a neatly organized forest.
http://www.byond.com/games/hubpic/99109_9158.png This cliff however is a straight line.
People on the other hand, they tend to be a lot less random, and a lot more logical. Walls are straight, houses are generally square, things are in places that are either convenient or logical.
Unfortunately, I cannot find a great example of this and don't want to pick on the same person twice. So imagine there is a screenshot here of someone putting their dining table infront of their front door so no one can get in or out of the house.
These are the some of the most common issues when I see people making maps. I am sure there is a million and one more issues you could all list. But these are the biggest ones, and provided you avoid these, your map should look passable at least.
Anyway, in the next post, I will show you an example of a bad map, and using these points I will show you how to fix it and make it better. After this is done I will take requests on how you'd make a decent looking type of map, and even offer specific advice if you need it.
ID:1367124
 Sep 1 2013, 1:56 pm
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So, here is the map I am going to improve. (ignore the rest squares)
http://i.imgur.com/mIgGNoJ.jpg This map is big and empty, there is little variety and the cliffs are straight and square. http://i.imgur.com/0MevSda.jpg So the first thing I do is remove all the useless fluff. Now I have a very basic looking map. Just remember, every good map starts with a solid foundation. If the map you are working with had fundamental issues with it's layout, nothing you do can fix it without fixing the entire layout. If a house is lopsided and upside down, you can't fix it with a layer of paint. You're going to have to take the house, straighten it out and flip it the right way up. http://i.imgur.com/Faur4hg.jpg So this is what I am doing. The first step is to remove a lot of the empty space. Notice how by adding a few extra cliffs, I've cut the amount of empty space practically in half? http://i.imgur.com/3Dany1q.jpg The next issue is that this map is too uniform. This is nature and nature is not straight or square. So I fixed this by making the cliffs jagged. These two simple steps have given me a solid base to work with. Now my house is straight and the right way up. All I need to do is paint it. The order these next few steps are done in is upto you, I do it in this order because of the way I've implemented the graphics. http://i.imgur.com/ybPo1t7.jpg So I place trees. There more variety of tree now, and have you noticed where I placed these trees? I have specifically placed them in open areas that would be too small to stick a cliff into. By placing these few trees, I've taken the open area and cut it in half again. Now we have 25% of the original open area we had before! http://i.imgur.com/20PDKyG.jpg Next I take the grass, and add variety to it. Again, notice how I am taking this long grass, and placing it in areas that are empty? By doing this, I have eliminated so much open area that you should be unable to find an empty 4x4 area, you might not even be able to find an empty 3x3 area. (This long grass looks better in game, it autojoins. Also working with autojoining tiles is a major pain in the ass, if you're less lazy than I am, you could very easily add more than one type of grass) You could probably pass this off as a workable map. But I am not finished yet. http://i.imgur.com/hG57IxU.jpg Now I add detail to the map. Since this is a naturay area, this means plants, rocks and so on. A few weeds and now I know for a fact there not a single 3x3 empty area on this map, and you will struggle to find an empty 2x2 area. (Ignore the top part of the map) This is more than passable as a map. You could add this to your game, and I do not think people would complain about it. http://i.imgur.com/TYr6H7D.jpg Here is a screenshot of it in game with some minor touch ups added. The majority of the maps I posted in the first post use these exact same graphics. But notice how different (and better) this map looks simply by following 5 simple tips? | |
I'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular, I was just using these screenshots as example and meant no insult by doing so.
But for those screenshots you posted, once again, they suffer from almost all of the points I listed. I assume the first one is some kind of swamp? 1. The graphics look good, but the map simple does not. 2. The map is essentially an empty green field with some trees and a few bushes added to it. 3. The map has little variety. I think I can see two types of ground, but it's hard to see. And all of those bushes are the same. 5. Is that blue thing some sort of river? I didn't know rivers form perfect rectangles. And all of those bushes are perfectly aligned. The snowy map suffers from much of the same issues. The map is empty, and there is no variety. Tomorrow, I will see about making a swamp map to show you how I would do it. | |
Keep in mind not everyone is working with RPGMaker graphics, so some of the things shown in your second post simply aren't possible in some games because of art restrictions.
The snowy map is supposed to look barren; it's mostly a tundra-esque area. Although there could be a few dead trees sprawled around here and there, possibly more types of rocks, snow decals, and possibly a few twigs strewn around. Other than that, most of what you said is true. Oh, and, there are three screenshots in my previous post. I should probably have made it more clear, oops. | |
I try to make the most of the art at hand.
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If you have an artist working for you, "art restrictions" should not be an issue.
http://knowsphotos.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ Buffalo-Peaks-Tundra-HDR.jpg This is an actual tundra. Notice how different it is to the screenshot you posted? http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/images/erebus.jpg http://isen.com/blog/uploaded_images/IMG_3058-703563.JPG http://tcktcktck.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ antarctic-ice-sheet-cc-nasa-2011-big.jpg These are pictures of Antarctica, the snowiest, most desolate place on the planet and even they don't look as empty and lacking in variety as that screenshot. Designing a map to be empty and barren is never a good practice. You cannot make a good looking map if you do this. I cannot find any great examples but look at this http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s241/sk8tertim/ mideumview.jpg and imagine it snowed. The tower is not just a square, it is rounded, it has variety, details and so on. The surrounding land has lots of height variations (height variations are great at getting rid of open space, you should use them), trees and even water. Hell, it even has a graveyard and some ruined walls. Could you not learn from this image and remove that empty field? EDIT: I see you posted a screenshot of a forest. It is an improvement. But it still suffers from issues. You have some variation with the grass, and it's an improvement, but it's too square. There is still a lot of empty space, especially on the lower half of the map. Those trees are both to few in number, and too uniform in their placement. http://i.imgur.com/iuZuuTI.jpg This is neither an actual forest, nor a finished map. Notice how despite this, there is not many open areas? And the few, small open areas can easily be covered with 1 piece of long grass? Once this map is finished, I will probably add several more trees just to this small section of it, I will add more variety in grass, and a lot of plants. Maybe even some details like tree stumps or fallen trees. If you're going to make a map of something, my advice is always google what you want to make. I've never been in a cave before, nor to a jungle, I don't even know what a swamp looks like. So without googling these things, I would not know how to make them look like they should. If I don't know what they're suppose to look like, how can I make them look good? | |
You need to design the map to play nice and then add the decorations afterwards. The Magic Man is suggesting to change the map around decorations and aesthetics which is a major mistake.
Do not put decorative crap jutting out into the playspace blocking players from moving. It only takes one time for a player to run away from a projectile right into something, stopping, and getting hit to get really, really annoyed. Walls should mechanically be as smooth as possible so you can't get stuck in them. They can look uneven and jagged all you want, but even a cliff face should form into a solid line of what's blocked vs not blocked. It's important for a player to be able to look at a wall and identify it as a wall that can or can't be crossed. Player-sized gaps between trees and other obstacles suggest "you can get between these", so fill the walls as much as possible. Especially forests, watch them carefully. At the end of the day, maps are basically just paths between mechanically-interesting things, so fill the non-path areas with a ton of trees to make sure the player doesn't even think about going there. For tile-based game, avoid turns that require the player to move something other than 90 degrees to get through them. They're just a pain to navigate. The easiest way to maintain a visually interesting turn or path that doesn't look like garbage is to just make it wider. Then instead of having to follow a narrow path turning constantly, the player just stays in the middle and runs along only turning once or twice. Avoid situations where a player can get behind something and be invisible. If this means making a building's bounding box include its roof that's ok. Usually though it's trees that are the problem. Making the leaves block movement can be kind of jarring, but it's a good idea. If you don't want to do that, don't allow the tops of trees to jut into paths. That requires only putting trees above or to the sides of paths or making trees really short and/or making players tall. | |
Ok, here is a little test.
I use a screen resolution of 640x480. Assuming the game uses 32x32 tiles, that is 20x15. If one person can stand on one tile, how much people can occupy just one screen in a game like this? The answer is 300. How many games on BYOND have more than 300 people playing? 1 game. How many games on BYOND have more than 300 people playing on a single server? None. I use 200x200 maps. That is 40,000 tiles. You could fit every single person on BYOND currently playing a game on a map like this, and they'd have a lot of space to move around. Infact, at the time of me posting this, they wouldn't even use 10% of the space on a map like this. So explain this to me, if you can fit every single player in your game on a single screen... Why do you need more room exactly? You see this http://i.imgur.com/TYr6H7D.jpg ? You could fit over 50 players into this space, and there would still be room to move around. Do not put decorative crap jutting out into the playspace blocking players from moving. It only takes one time for a player to run away from a projectile right into something, stopping, and getting hit to get really, really annoyed. Walls should mechanically be as smooth as possible so you can't get stuck in them. They can look uneven and jagged all you want, but even a cliff face should form into a solid line of what's blocked vs not blocked. This is an issue of skill or in some cases lag. What you're suggesting is make the game an empty field so skill is not a factor. What I'd suggest is fill the world with obstacles so players can use their own skill to exploit the terrain, while bad players will have to learn. Tell me what is better if you go skateboarding. A flat surface that lets everyone move around, or a lot of ramps, hills, railings and obstacles so good skaters can exploit these? You're suggesting the flat surface is better just so you know. Walls should mechanically be as smooth as possible so you can't get stuck in them. They can look uneven and jagged all you want, but even a cliff face should form into a solid line of what's blocked vs not blocked. This however, I cannot even begin to comment on. This is basically what I call "BYOND game design", and in "BYOND game design" you do the total opposite of what is good or right. All of your other issues, can be fixed with smart game design. Players blocking a small pathway? Make it so players can walk over other players, this is why every single MMO ever does this, so players cannot block off other players (people figured this out back in 1996 and since then developers have done things to prevent it). Players hiding behind obstacles? How is this bad exactly? If people cannot click them, add some sort of keyboard macro that makes it possible to target a nearby player. If you absolutely need to see a player at all times, simply add a transparent overlay on them that will display when they walk behind something. What you're suggesting people do, is make their games look bad, because you're too lazy to figure out better ways of designing a game. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
They can look uneven and jagged all you want, but even a cliff face should form into a solid line of what's blocked vs not blocked. I think MisterPerson is suggesting that you don't add so much detail that the map is a pain to navigate. Walls should mechanically be as smooth as possible so you can't get stuck in them. They can look uneven and jagged all you want, but even a cliff face should form into a solid line of what's blocked vs not blocked. Again, I think MisterPerson is in the right here. The mechanics of the game's movement makes a difference in terms of how much this really matters, but I think it can be an issue even with default movement. However, let's just assume that you are not using default movement. Instead your game allows eight directions of movement, AND you can move diagonally by pressing two directions. This is a very intuitive movement system which is used often. Now consider a portion of the map that looks like this:  Here we have a beautiful scene with interesting, varied terrain. Or at least, pretend that's what it is...anyway, as you can see the walls are not straight lines, they are jagged and uneven. Now if we are being a progressive BYOND developer we will have pixel-based movement and the player will collide with walls only when their pixels touch, as one would expect. But what's the problem with that? Well, if a player walks along one wall and presses two directions (trying to move diagonally), instead of sliding along the wall they will get snagged on one of those little details. And the bad part is that those details have no purpose other than to look nice. Now consider this image:  Here I have drawn a red line to indicate where the player's movement should be stopped. This way, the player can run diagonally into walls all day long and they won't get snagged. Now in a tile-based game your obvious reaction might be to just draw wall tiles for the edge and have the entire thing be dense, but the concept of keeping the player from getting caught in visual details that serve no other purpose should always be kept in mind. I would also like to note that what I'm showing above is totally different from this:  In this last example, there is a small hole in the wall as well as an obstacle in the middle of the hallway. These are not -just- details. Although they might improve the look of the scene, they could also be useful terrain for taking cover from enemy fire or something. In this case the player should be able to move into the hole, because it serves a purpose, and because it is big enough that they would not be surprised when they get stopped after moving into it. | |
I think MisterPerson is suggesting that you don't add so much detail that the map is a pain to navigate. Take a look at this http://i.imgur.com/TYr6H7D.jpg and then break it down into areas you can and cannot walk. You get this http://i.imgur.com/gco4xjs.jpg Red is a dense area, green is an area you can walk, and blue is an area you cannot access (but could walk on if you could access it). It's a bit rough but you get the idea. The green area is in no way cluttered or hard to navigate, yet in game it looks full of detail. As for the second point, I kind of agree. But he made it sound like walls should always be a straight line. Here is an example http://i.imgur.com/UdWvZ2L.jpg The wall is kind of jagged, but this is purely visual. If you break it down into where you can and cannot walk, http://i.imgur.com/wwjKptU.jpg as you can see it's a lot smoother. Those juts in the wall were entirely visual, they do not effect gameplay in any way at all, but they make the wall look a lot better. | |
I can agree that having a large, empty map is ugly and boring.
However, game design in most of these games sort of requires that (though again, this boils down to "BYOND design") The games that use large and open/barren maps are usually designed around action-oriented, fast-twitch, button-mashing PvP battles with attacks that come with huge special effects. Trying to cram a battle such as that into the relatively small usable area in your example map just wouldn't be a fun experience. These games are not designed for tactical battle, but for "who can dodge the most huge attacks and manage to land one on the opponent?" Of course, this does come back to "don't follow 'BYOND design'", but it is what it is. | |
I will point you to these two games.
http://beta.euw.leagueoflegends.com/ http://blog.dota2.com/ Two games that are objectively more action packed and fast paced than almost all BYOND games. http://www.devilesk.com/dota2/images/ dota_map_full_compress2.jpg Here is a map of the game. It has a lot of (cleverly hidden) open area, but it's not just a huge, empty field. Even PVP games like GetAmped 2, which I think is what every BYOND PVP game wants to be (according to your description) don't stick the player into an empty field. http://mmohuts.com/wp-content/gallery/getamped-2/ get-amped-2-playing.jpg?ec9f9b I can understand why these games might have large, empty fields and you're right in saying it's more of an issue with the type of game than anything, and I'm not really trying to teach people how to improve the design of their games. But I still don't think having empty fields is ever a good idea. | |
It's kind of unfair to compare 3D games to 2D, tile-based games (though BYOND gives its developers the ability to get away from that restriction somewhat)
It's much easier to create varied maps when your movement and graphics aren't restricted to a grid. Again, though, this isn't really an excuse, because BYOND does allow developers to opt out of the tile-based system, and now allows for larger-than-a-tile graphics (so there's no more need to draw everything based on the grid) But again, this is an overall design issue (most developers can't be bothered to "break out" of the grid, because it is the default and it is what everyone here originally learns to use) | |
I totally agree with you here.
A 3x3 area on a tile based movement system gives you 9 locations you can be. That is a tiny area. A 3x3 area (32x32 tiles) on a pixel based movement system gives you potentially thousands of locations you can be. This area is the same size, but suddenly it feels a whole lot bigger. If you're making an action game, tile based movement is not the way to go. It restricts gameplay, map design and visuals. And frankly, it's not hard to use pixel based movement now. | |
http://www.mediafire.com/?0bhxeqah97ldsvj
It is this. It's something I sort of work on whenever I feel like it, I should try to finish it but I always get interrupted by things. At the moment I'm in the process of redesigning all of the maps since most were made 2-3 years ago and I'm not satisfied with the quality of them. | |
Flysbad wrote:
http://www.byond.com/games/Flysbad/Densetsu#tab=pics Looks nice! But even so, there is still a point of constructive criticism to be offered. I see in this shot that there is a dirt path that sort of snakes around:  If that is supposed to be a human-created/worn pathway, it should be in as straight of a line as possible. People don't walk in meandering lines from point A to point B unless there's a reason to (like they're perpetually drunk and stumbling around on their way home). It's no biggie, though. Looks good, regardless! | |
This map looks better than what you normally see on BYOND. But it still has issues.
http://i.imgur.com/vsm4pVo.jpg The red circles represent empty space. As previously mentioned, the path would probably not be that curvy. Also consider adding variety to the fences and the bushes. Maybe the board on one of the fences is broken, or wonky or something. It is small details like this that can make a good map amazing you know? | |
Have a look at some of the better places of the game!
EDIT: I realize you were trying to make a point about bad mapping. I agree with essentially everything you've said above!