Small update for the night. As i started a new map ill try update each stage so people can follow.
1. Know what you want to create. (Simple sketch on paper) Last thing you want to do is go in blind. Include;
- Theme - Desert, Marsh, Island, Light woods, Dark woods etc.
- Features - Towns, Camps, large structures,water body, borders etc.
2. Collect and organize all the tiles/objects you will us.
- You don't want to be scrolling through 10,000 objects repeatedly. Do it once and pull out anything you want to use for the map. (You can see in the screenshot i organized a few sub-folders containing everything i may need)
3. Check that any unconventional idea is actually do-able.
- In this case, i want to create an Oasis, however i also want the town to be integrated.
- First issue here is that the only bodies of water in the Mir2 set are either the sea which is of no use, or the Bichon river that relies on stone walls for a portion of the edges, again no use. So i opted for the Mir3 alternative.
- Now because we are using both Mir2 and Mir3 tiles so close together there is a potential issue of blending the floor tiles. It took some time but i have managed to, using a combination of Mir2 and 3 sets make it look OK.
This is not 'the map' simply quick testing to make sure that you can make different 'sets' work together and not look stupid.
(Tomorrow)
4. Create the large structures separate and save them as objects of their own. In this case i know i want a player town integrated with the body of water, and i know that i want a large Orc fort.
- These generally contain a lot of adjoining objects and takes a fair amount of time to get set up. You don't want to spend an hour making the town walls just to realize it all needs moving a few inches to the left. (This will happen) Saving them as their own object once you have the layout set allows you to place/move/replace the whole thing in one go.
---------- Post Merged on 17-10-2017 at 12:47 AM ---------- Previous Post was on 16-10-2017 at 08:31 PM ----------
Town with integrated oasis created; and saved as an object.
---------- Post Merged at 10:35 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:47 AM ----------
Main enemy fort created, saved as object.
5. This is when i would make a test map containing the 2 objects to run around, test the dimensions, make sure the size feels OK for what i want. These are large objects and the landscape will the designed to merge around them, changing them later on will be a lot more work.
- Subsequently extended the SW & NE walls of the town by 2 lengths.
6. Landscape - Now we are on to the real map design. Define the main landscape features. (You should already have this from step (1) now it's just a case of creating it. (images to come)