map project from concept art

[JamesKing3d]

Hey all.

I've begun to draft out a simple top down map based on a concept painting by Noah Bradley. Painting is:

I've been working in illustrator, as a new direction, trying to find a middle ground between CAD (what I worked in for the last 2-3 years) and game engines.

here's the map, as it's coming along. I'm planning on designing it out kind of like the first location/town/area you would play in an RPG or an adventure game. it'll have a town hub with shops/mission centers and story elements, then it'll have 2 or 3 different spots to adventure to where you would find a dungeon or have to run errands or look for stuff.

anyhow, here's the result of about a week of lunch breaks at work, trying to get the basic map layout down.

[Thrik]

What a wonderful piece of art, I can imagine it making a great map. Are you planning on actually building the map or are you focusing on the planning and design stage specifically? The layout looks great whatever the case, maybe if I'd taken the time to plan out my maps like that I'd have made it as a level designer.

[JamesKing3d]

I'm currently just doing the layout and planning. I think I'll probably grey-box the whole thing, and then try and model/fill 1 or two areas. I'm thinking probably 1/2 of the town and the shrine area would be the two I'll try to fill in.

anyone ever map out in 2d levels like this for work? if so, any tips/hints? i come from a CAD/carpentry/assembly background, so i'm having a bit of trouble thinking in mapping terms when it comes to 2-d layouts. I get like 1/2 as detailed, then I begin to struggle.

James

[Chimeray]

The goal is never to make a detailed blueprint, at least for me, I think in blocks, structure.

You marked the overall structure of the map quite well but detailed the town a little too much I think. It all depends on the stuff in your head though. If you've got no specific ideas then structuring a town on paper is a good exercise to get the creative juices flowing. Don't rely on it too much though cos it'll likely change quite a lot once it's in 3D.

Therefore I usually never detail every street/house more than neccesary cos it ends up being a waste of time. But like I said, if the idea was not yet in your head then drawing often helps you get ideas and visualize it.

On a random sidenote, sometimes I add moodboards to different areas, not always neccesary though.

I usually mark/scribble way more on the map than you do, I see almost no gameplay. But perhaps that's only because it's not for a specific game?

I'm thinking combat scenario's, progression (bridge that opens at a certain point in time for instance), puzzles, dragon here, ambush... That kind of stuff.

I take it it's meant to be somewhat open world-ish since it's an RPG? Even if it is a semi-open game then they often block certain paths to the next areas by a certain progression element, a key is missing, a troop of orcs is blocking the end of the road and you can't pass it until you finished Quest X. These are structurally very important. Right now I see a very isolated map, not tied into the game as a whole. I see no start, no end.

I also draw the player path if there is one, a sort of visual timeline so to speak. Depending on the structure of the game the player might have a quest that requires him to venture into this new area, towards the town for instance. That would be the start. The end is not marked either (going to the new area).

Ask yourself if this is ready to be shown to other people, this is a tool for yourself but more often than not you'll have to share it at design meetings, show it to your art director, ...

Is it missing key elements that are important for these parties?

As far as the actual layout is concerned I notice the player will have to use the same roads quite a lot, so you better plan for some shortcuts/interesting transitions or the experience will become quite stale. All this feedback is from a level designers point of view though, not sure how far you'll want to go with the concept since you're not actually gonna create the gameplay.

So it depends if you wanna treat it as a fictional "level" or rather as just an artsy area. Just my 2 cents

[Sentura]

for an RPG or adventure game this map is pretty cool. i'd even go so far as to say i'd expect it to be in a sort of MMO game, simply because of the vastness of the area. one thing that kind of bothers me is that for an area like this, it seems like there's no thought to subdividing the area into smaller areas. when looking at similar maps (especially in terms of MMO games), maps are often subdivided into smaller maps that each have a proper landmark. so in one large area you'd have a monolith, a town and a cave area (which are good landmarks), but then the rest is kind of blurry - what are you supposed to do there? what is it supposed to be? just hills and water covering more than 50% of the map?

[JamesKing3d]

Thanks Sentura, I'll have to think that out. I have no problem adding design/gameplay elements to this map, and diverging from the concept a bit. I will probably add some high brambles or stones to the field on the bottom left, to break it up and create some areas for monster battles. I'm thinking of designing this map for action/adventure gameplay. like zelda or metroid gameplay. (except no arm cannons.)

good advice, I'll make sure to post when I've updated.

James

[⌐■_■]

http://www.mapcore.org/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=3913&start=45]

thanks!

[Sentura]

just an addendum to my post - you could use narrative clues in creating more landmarks. usually when you enter a new area there's a whole bunch of things going bad. either it's a faction war or zombies attacking or maybe it's more subtle, like a disease or something. in any of those cases though, it gives you rich possibility playing around with the environment to see just what exactly the area holds.

[syver]

jesus christ that concept art is amazing. i want to travel in time so i can see the result.

[JamesKing3d]

heh, it'll be a while. I haven't touched this map for 3 weeks almost. I am in a transition between steady jobs, working a time job which needs lots of overtime.

so don't have much down time. I liked your comments, Chimeray, especially the ones about marking/scribbling. I usually do that as well, but I'm trying to get together some super-clean 2d maps along with their greyboxed 3d counterparts, and also trying to teach myself a bit of illustrator as well. I've used it, but never for mapping. my goal for this project is clean/precise 2-d and a to-scale 3d world. I have issues going from my brain to 3d without all the scales getting weird.. so it's practice. I will definitely take that into consideration though, and try to add some clean gameplay descriptions somehow.

also "Ask yourself if this is ready to be shown to other people, this is a tool for yourself but more often than not you'll have to share it at design meetings, show it to your art director, ...

Is it missing key elements that are important for these parties?" excellent point. This should be asked any time something is going to be shown off.

thanks for all the advice guys, I'll keep at it.

[residentzack]

The concept is great, however I have to ask: What's your goal? Are you tying to make a 2D top down map? What game engine and is this going to be pixel art or current gen rendering? I have a bit of experience in RPG maker but I have the feeling you're going for something a little more alien swarm.

[onji]

anyhow, here's the result of about a week of lunch breaks at work, trying to get the basic map layout down.

I've been there man. When I've got downtime at work I'm doing pen & paper design phases of my current map.

Like residentzack said it, if you can indicate what your goal is, or at least a couple of engines you'd consider implementing I think it'd be easier to provide answers. Anyways here's my 2c. I'll make it clear that I'm not a level designer working in the industry, so one of the pro's here may have better advice.

And like Chimeray said when you're in the preproduction, for me at least. It's good to have some designs down on pen and paper. The designs should be descriptive and have enough information to construct a rather rough draft of the level. It's better not to have a fully comprehensive design as what works on paper may not work so well in a game world, or a specific game engine.

I'm doing to assume you're going to implement this into a current engine like CryEngine, UDK or Source.

1. Take your sketch and turn it into a heightfield/heightmap.

2. Import that heightfield into your specific engine, and cleanup any artefacts that may be present.

3. Block out some key points of interest, and the larger pieces of architecture.

4. Export this to the engine, and load up your level at runtime.

5. Run around and see if everything looks and feels to scale.

6. Go back to your level editing environment and fix anything that felt wrong in-game.

7. Once everything looks & feels ok, start working on the medium scale environment, and iterate the process. Then do the same for the small scale.

It looks like you're off to a good start with your 2d map work. It looks much cleaner than my original prototype for my current project. You can see my awesome lunchtime work below