Perhaps my personal dislike for the smilies isn't what effects a game, but I am living proof that some people will not play a game based on certain things, thats good enough, that was my point. Incidentally I haven't logged into Darke Dungeon in almost 2 years.
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Now what game of yours is this that I should be looking forward to? Hoping for alternative Murder Mansion settings is a fun thought, but looking at the color coordination I'd have to say it's a new project.
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Guess what? It actually is one of the new alternate MM maps...
I know it seems a bit too bright and cheery to fit the theme, but I'm hoping that the irony of placing MM's gameplay in a hospital will offset that hit to the atmosphere... Although, with the lights off, it might become creepy enough (I don't have the system in yet, but I'm planning on having emergency generator lighting come on during some game-controlled power outages) | |
The Magic Man wrote:
I guess you don't fully grasp the concept and you are one of the people who put as much thought in as "don't put trees in a straight line". don't patronize me, thanks. no matter how much though you put into the "why" of what objects are, if the map is clunky, awkward, and planned poorly -- from a developer's perspective -- you've got nothing worthwhile. the thing you seem to fail to realize is that you're trying to make a game that people will enjoy playing, not a painting. yeah, the forest behind your house might be a pain in the ass to navigate through, but that's because it wasn't designed to be navigated. in a game, your forest is probably serving as, say, a pathway from a city to another city, or perhaps hunting grounds. if your player has to walk through a maze to get where he wants to go, it's not going to be enjoyable. if your player has to walk through intricately placed trees in order to dodge an enemy, it's not going to be enjoyable. you say that I don't put much thought into mapping, when in fact, the exact opposite is true: I'm telling you that more thought is required than what you're telling me. strip away any textures (in this case, icons) from your map and envision dense things to be black and non-dense to be white. make your map make sense, flow smoothly, and be playable and enjoyable this way, then worry about why a table is a table. and again, please drop the whole condescending attitude and your points will be a lot more valid. | |
Like I said, if you think about it and use a bit of common sense you take everything into account when making a map. If a forests main prupose is to connect two towns then you obviously take that into account and add a path connecting them, and since that is it's purpose you'd take human nature into account. Meaning if it is a commonly used path it is likely to be relatively straight forwards (because no smart human would walk aroud in circles to get from point A to B, they'd do it in the shortest route possible), and since humans have used the path a lot there is probably going to be something that is noticeable. Such as trampled and dead grass, or sign posts to prevent people from getting lost.
And if the forest is a hunting ground. Well, I don't know anything about hunting, but I'd imagine it would at the least have areas that are good for hunting, such as areas with cover to hide in and areas with fewer trees (because it is pretty hard to hunt anything through a wall of trees). Also. I disagree with making players navigate through mazes. In essense every dungeon in every RPG ever is at core a maze, some of them might not be very complicated, but they are still a maze. If you don't want to make players navigate through a maze then what do you do? Make every dungeon in the game a straight line where by walking to the end of it they have completed their objective? Anyway. I'll keep saying it but when you make a map you take EVERYTHING into consideration, even things like the layout. | |
I think in the end it boils down to what you need at any given moment. If you look, its sort of a contradiction there: A forest should have a logical straight path through it because that's what humans would do. A dungeon should have a maze because a straight-line dungeon is no fun. Well the straight line forest isn't any fun either, and a maze-like dungeon isn't very practical.
You might look at a game like Metroid Prime, which has a beautiful map and I doubt anyone will say that they did a lousy job on mapping in that game. However, very little of the maps used in that game are practical from the enemy's point of view. The goal of the map is to make it fun for the player, not to be practical. But that isn't to say that practical maps don't have their place. Its really all about what you want for your game. Practicality, which contributes to atmosphere, is vital for games such as Murder Mansion where atmosphere is a key part of the game. Impractical maps can be more fun, and are important for games like Metroid or Zelda. Really, the best maps would combine the two: The practical route is blocked by a gate and guards forcing the player to take the impractical (but more fun) route to get to the other side, until a certain objective is accomplished, then the gate is opened up so they can take the practical route. | |
I said that humans tend to take the shortest route possible. Technically that is a straight line, but depending on the games settings that's not always possible.
In modern/futuristic settings humans would just bulldoze through the forest and build a road connecting the two cities, because they can. But in a medieval setting that's not always a possibility. Depending on what the forest connects the path will vary. Two poor villages are very unlikely to be able to make the path very short. They will have to move around nature and in the case of things like bridges they are probably not going to be able to build big ones, meaning bridges wont be too common (have to walk a long way around) and if they are they will probably be at places where the bridge doesn't need to be as big (such as at a narrow part of a river). Or maybe they can't even afford to have a bridge built and you have to get past the river by walking through the shallowest parts of it? So they might be taking the shortest path possible, but it's not a very short path! Whereas in a rich city they are likely to be able to afford bridges and the likes, meaning the path is probably shorter and easier to navigate. As for dungeons. They can be built for a variety of reasons, especially in a game. True enough, some of them might not be maze like but what happens if the dungeon is just an ancient castle? It might have crumbled and pathways might be blocked, making navigating the dungeon a lot harder. Even if the castle isn't old and falling to pieces, it is probably a big building and unless you've been in it before navigating through it isn't going to be completely strsight forwards. What about if the dungeon was originally designed to be awkward to navigate to keep people out on purpose? Maybe it had some treasure in it or some nasty creature was trapped inside of it. Or the dungeon could just be a natural feature such as a cave, in which case you wouldn't expect it to have a straight forwards layout. Like I said. In essense every dungeon is basically a simple maze, they have a right way to go, and usually a lot of wrong ways that lead to either dead ends or back to earlier parts of the dungeon (dead ends usually lead to treasure though, or there might be a switch there required to open up other areas of the dungeon). I don't expect any game to ever include a dungeon that looked like http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/notapoet/ 1189509004754.png (but it'd be pretty funny if a game did, hahaha). But what about something like http://ao.stratics.com/content/guides/images/smugglersden/ ingame%20maps/SD%20Map%20big.jpg ? It is a maze, has multiple routes to go, some leading to dead ends, it is neither too complex nor to simple to navigate through and it could easily be made in BYOND. But since it is maze like (in a very minor way) I am guessing it is a badly designed map? | |
Sounds like a pretty cool forest map to me. :)