Questions about map design as a Wizard

[igorith]

If I am making maps in the Wyvern Map Editor with the intention of becoming a Wizard, what is probably the most important thing? After seeing Dracco and a few other's player's insane art, I got kinda discouraged and thought my maps were terrible because they either had pre-made art/objects/furnishings or very simple art. Then I remembered Arilou (or maybe Tesh, I can't remember) saying several things about how getting people to design interesting and lengthy dungeons was the biggest problem most people had when submitting their maps. So what is the most important thing in Wyvern Map Development, and what is the least?

[Teshuvah]

Originally Posted by igorith

If I am making maps in the Wyvern Map Editor with the intention of becoming a Wizard, what is probably the most important thing? After seeing Dracco and a few other's player's insane art, I got kinda discouraged and thought my maps were terrible because they either had pre-made art/objects/furnishings or very simple art. Then I remembered Arilou (or maybe Tesh, I can't remember) saying several things about how getting people to design interesting and lengthy dungeons was the biggest problem most people had when submitting their maps. So what is the most important thing in Wyvern Map Development, and what is the least?

Artwork in new map submissions would be wayyy down the list. So don't let it discourage you.

Interest, something "new" to the story etc is much more intriguing to us than art. It is after you are a wizard and get access to a myriad of tools that you can get even more indepth. Since your map submissions are made with the very limited map editor something unique in story, dungeon, and length goes a long way.
Art , honestly, won't likely even get used in your first submission.
The requirements for Hof images are much easier than getting art into the game.
Least important would be art, most important would be what ive listed above.

Hope that helps.

[Arilou]

About dungeons, in particular...

Some larger dungeons ideas may be rather difficult to pull off with arch/art limits. I used to get stuck on certain ideas even with everything I had access to as there wasn't always a large enough selection of monsters for the theme/level of difficulty I was going for. But, you can sometimes get around this by reworking the concept so that it makes sense that monsters outside your theme are in the area you're creating. I went into this a bit on my blog discussion about dungeons - Basically, I mentioned that you could create warring factions that are fighting over control of sections of a particular dungeon.

For example, you could have a player come to a hub that leads in four different directions. One goes to a locked door, one is the path you came from, and the two remaining ones lead to different factions who have invaded the area in search of the keys for that door. A very simple concept could be that one faction is a group of mages that creates golems and another group of mages that summons elementals (the reasons for this is something you'd try to incorporate into some sort of story). Each either has a key or is about to recover a key, so you have to fight through waves of different golems/elementals and various mages (with maybe the odd monster that remained from their initial onslaught) in order to claim said keys for yourself.

The mages can be made very simply by utilizing some images from the npc directory - With or without some recoloring and other tweaks, you should be able to make the appropriate arch files for your new custom foes. You could even snag some other existing images to fill things out a bit - Maybe the mages have hired some mercenaries and other muscle. Create level appropriate arch files for them and place them in your maps.

From there, you'd go through the available monster list and see what type of monsters you could put behind the locked door that will work for your developing story. Demon hordes guarding a powerful artifact? A dragon and its minions protecting an otherworldly portal? With some creativity you could create a whole host of scenarios with the options that the mapeditor provides.

That said, you might want to stick with smaller dungeon ideas. The game did need more "lengthy dungeons," but it needed dungeons of any kind. There's a lot of room on the world map for simple temples, caves, ruins, etc. Rhialto talks about this in the quest and area guidelines - There are things like Janica's Orc/Ogre ruins south of Alaria, the Wet Caves further south, a Frost Giant cave west of Glacier Point, and a couple of other things, but needless to say, the selection was limited. So create a bunch of one off dungeons like those to be put on the world map or incorporated into an existing area... or make individual dungeons, but tie them together. You've seen how areas have a typical "ruined" area with different structures that had typically led to one map monster areas. Do that, but make the structures lead to multi-map dungeons.

As for what non-monster artwork to use in a dungeon, there are lot of options using a cave wall/dirt combo, a forested theme, a typical dungeon wall/dark floor pattern, etc. There are existing objects for such themes, make good use of them and make good use of gates, buttons, locked doors, keys, dirt blocks and other puzzle related things along with traps and whatnot.

Take the Alaria Gauntlet, as an example. It's a very simple, 7 map dungeon that mostly uses the artwork found in the mapeditor. I don't know what the mapeditor comes with off-hand as it has been awhile, but if you can't find something there, you can easily substitute it without loss of quality. I didn't make a single piece of new artwork for it and it only utilizes a few custom arch files. Most of what you come across are just creative uses of door, key, button, monster, trap, and dirt block placement that anyone can do if they put even the slightest bit of effort into the design of their dungeon.

I tried to maintain much of the style of the original, so the jump from the boss' minions to a boss of that difficulty is too abrupt for my liking. If I made it from scratch I would probably have 2-3 more maps with mid level monsters. So if you were using that as a model, imagine a 10 map version of the Alaria Gauntlet followed by 3-5 similar dungeons. They don't have be related. They could be a pirate cove for the eastern islands, a goblin cave for the starting towns, a tomb for some existing graveyard that can be determined later, or anything else your imagination can come up with. When, all together, your various dungeons equal 40 or more maps, you'd have your submission.

It can actually be much more beneficial to work on smaller areas like that prior to being a wizard. But, whatever you end up doing, just make sure, like Teshuvah said, you show your story making capabilities, each dungeon is an appropriate length, (it doesn't have to be huge, but it needs to be large enough to constitute a good, solid dungeon) and I'd also add that you should try to wow the wizards with your style... or, at least, show that you have something that can be improved upon. If you do have that something, you should be able to show that regardless of what art you have access to. So, basically, a good, well planned layout with attention to detail is key... or it was when I was working on the game. Maybe whoever ends up doing this stuff when the game returns will promote people just because they were "smart" enough to figure out how to set a teleporter after they became so confused by them that a wizard took pity on them and sent back their maps with a few example ones done.

[Teshuvah]

Originally Posted by Arilou

Maybe whoever ends up doing this stuff when the game returns will promote people just because they were "smart" enough to figure out how to set a teleporter after they became so confused by them that a wizard took pity on them and sent back their maps with a few example ones done.

Wait, Wyvern is going back in time?!

[igorith]

Ok sweet. Thank you for clarifying what was important and what wasn't as important in map making. I'll start wasting less time making ugly art and more time making interesting areas.