Game & Map Screenshots 12

@Etheral200 Welcome to the forums! I merged your post with this existing thread, the best way to get mapping feedback.

@Etheral200 I am going to say good job! Your mapping is probably better than mine. That is an area I need to work on...a lot.

A couple of things. When I first looked at the map, I thought the cliff sides were actually paths for some reason. A trick of the eye. And there is a tree top in the lower left corner that is missing...cut off by the cliff side.

But again, I think this is really nice and I'm not criticizing your work.

Progress for the game today - created this unnamed town. Lighting looks good, just balancing it between not too dark, not too light, since the entire game takes place in perpetual twilight.

Trynna do my first real "mapping" for a game (just making it as fun for myself), any idea of what i could improve ? :3

I see quite a lot of points for improvement, but don't be discouraged, most of these are pretty quick fixes and you will soon get used to them!

* Most importantly, your cliff height is inconsistent. Exiting the bottom house, if I go round by the path to the top house, I have to climb up 3 tile-heights of stairs. If I go left and rope straight up the cliff, it's 5 tiles high. Just to the right of the house, it's 2 tiles high. This is impossible unless the ground that looks level is actually on a slope, but nothing visually indicates that it is.
* The cliff side uses the same tile all over. If you look at the bottom-left of your "A" tileset in the editor, there are six tiles to choose from for cliff side -- the left and right ones are used to show where part of the cliff bumps forward to make it look three-dimensional, like this:
View attachment 252690
* As ZKR mentioned, on the left edge, a tree is missing its top half. There are similar errors on the right side: you have continued the tree texture all the way up, with the result that a tree is growing straight out of the cliff, and two others are closer to the cliff edge than would be realistic.
* The bottom boundary is made of a mixture of trees, rocks and stacks of firewood. I get that you want to prevent the player touching the map boundary, and that you want to vary things a little, but you have to think about how people use and live in this space. If there is in fact a clearing to the south (even if it's not mapped out in-game), then people are going to want to use that space for something, and so they're not likely to stack their firewood blocking it off.
* All the paths consist of stepping stones, indicating that they were deliberately placed. But then there's no reason why the paths do these waggles instead of going in straight lines -- people like to save themselves effort where possible. (You might consider using the path or road textures in the top-left of the "A" tileset instead.)
* The top-left house has its windows raised, as if they are on an upper floor of the house -- but this doesn't make sense when put next to the other houses, which have a 2-tile-high single floor. (This is a matter of personal preference, but I would suggest keeping all the windows at the middle level, increasing the door size to 1 1/2 tiles, and raising the house to 3 tiles high in cases where you do actually want it to have a second floor.)
* The cliff edge texture is missing all its inner corners. You can find these at bottom middle of the "A" tileset.

So, I am not very good at mapping yet. I haven't spent very much time practicing. And I think this looks pretty nice so I am definitely not criticizing. And I have a hard time making out details on some of the buildings. But a few things that stand out to me as maybe a player, without being able to compare with what the rest of your maps look like and how these fit in:

#1 This map doesn't tell me what time period or type of environment this is. I sort of see a mixture of what I would think is more rustic/less modern and then more modern elements, like playground, benches, and lampposts.

#2 A playground stands out to me as being odd compared to everything else. It is pretty big and seems out of place if this really is a more rustic setting.

#3 The proportions of the graveyard look off. The graves appear too close together.

#4 Again, I can't see everything well, but several of the buildings in the first map look like they have long, yellow, school buses on them. I have no idea what those are.

#5 The school(?) and playground seem disproportional from the rest of the town. Too big for the amount of residents maybe?

#6 A couple of the buildings on the first map seem like they don't have long enough shadows on the right side of the buildings. At least not in comparison to the other buildings and where the sun must be shining from.

#7 And to be super picky, now that I have seen the shadows of the buildings, it seems odd that other features of the map wouldn't cast some sort of shadow. I usually don't pay that close attention to that sort of thing as a player though.

Again, I think these maps look nice and I would be happy if my maps come out like this.

I hope this helps and is the type of feedback you are looking for.

Good luck!

@Bernkastelwitch The thing that struck me most about these maps is that they are about twice the size they need to be. What this usually means is that it is a somewhat boring slog for the player to get around a town that has not much in it except long paths and open spaces.

In addition to Zombiekidzrule's points, I have a couple of others.
Do the houses/buildings with flat roofs have heating? None of them seem to have a chimney.
Why is there a stall which is not on the market space? Stalls usually group together to better generate business.

@Bernkastelwitch I don't think that it's the wall as a wall that's being questioned. It is that it doesn't fit the type of town you've constructed. Throwing in a wall (or any other feature) just because it would be a nice challenge does not automatically mean that it's a good map.

At the moment that is one of the reasons why the map lacks coherence. You have too many styles and building materials for so few houses. You do not need or want to have total uniformity, but buildings in the same locality tend to be built out of the same materials and each town has its own vernacular style. (And, btw, the house at the bottom right corner has a roof error. That is not the way to indicate that part of the building sticks out.) You have a lot of empty space - that is not how towns and village are initially built or grow. You have paths which differ in width for no obvious reason. Why would any town leave a dead log lying there, but then also carefully cut their paved path so that it went round it? If that is a well in the centre of the first map, why is it on untrodden grass? And so on.