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Jacksparow and Map Design
Okay so last night I was trying to explain to Jacksparow why it was to his benefit to hold off on doing serious map design until he knows exactly what he he'd have access to with the release of a new map editor:
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First of all, as it pertains to terrain/walls, it's not as simple as just using what you have now and then swapping them out with more fancy versions later. Here's a quote from Rhialto: "Indoor maps don't have to be square, either. Think of a lobby in a five-star hotel, or an atrium in an upscale shopping mall, or a restaurant in a theme park. Square is ugly, and says: "This is a cheap, low-quality building." Feel free to use lots of terrain/empty in your map to get the look and feel just right. You don't have to fill all the space with "stuff". Thrain's Mist Temple, one of the very earliest maps in the game, has an interesting floor plan made of three overlapping rectangles, forming a Y-shape. Take a look." http://web.archive.org/web/200412082...es.html#themes If you don't have an eye for it may be hard to understand why, but something as simple as a different wall will warrant a different design and, more importantly, floor designs will change the shape of a map. If you've ever been to the Amita Orc Tower you will notice that I created a unique terrain design, which I used elsewhere in Amita when I wanted to indicate that their construction came from the same source. Well, the creation of that design impacted the shape of the maps that I used it in. So if you suddenly get access to a bunch more terrain options and decide to do the same with your maps, you should expect to have the redo your earlier wall placement decisions and possibly even scrap them altogether. Second of all, the more important aspect pertains to how you populate a map. I designed layouts based on what I wanted to put in it. I didn't design layouts and then throw stuff into them. That is lazy and leads to substandard maps. This is particularly important when it comes to monster maps because you need to pay very careful attention to designing layouts based on the exact monsters you want to use in order to create the best playing experiencing for players. This is the difference between creating a big square map and dumping an Arch Dracolich in it and creating a smart, well designed map that requires players to take note of their surroundings when devising a strategy for tackling their opponents. So that's why it's good to be playing around and practicing but it's not good to be attempting to do any heavy lifting right now. And keep in mind that's not the only reason why; it's problematic on multiple levels that I didn't go into here. Also, I got to the point where I wouldn't even have designed a whole section of an area without being able to test it live as I went along because I needed to see how someone would move around in it and then adjust the design appropriately. I have told the story about how I came up with the idea to split Amita into sections after actually running around through Amita on a low level alt that I made and getting annoyed at how movement worked when navigating between structures. Originally, Amita was designed in a day and went live rather quickly after testing it on my flying wizard account. When I finally got around to doing a more thorough test of the area it radically changed the design. For Amita, that's not a huge deal because it was just one map that I had to throw out but for complex dungeons where you're moving around between rooms that are interconnected in interesting ways, this is critical to avoiding wasting a lot of time. Think, if you've ever been there, of the Forgotten Oak castle with all the different ways in which you can navigate through it. Being able to see it all in one massive map was helpful but so was being able to test it as I went along. In the past, the inability to do that has been a huge stumbling block for players seeking to create their first area. It's the reason we had so much difficulty finding new mapmakers as the years went on (our standards progressed past the point where people had an easy time making acceptable maps without being able to test them first). However, if Rhialto finally corrects that, as he said he would, you should allow yourself to take advantage of that. Don't waste time on maps that you can't test as you go before you see if that is something that you'll be able to do. |
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