Making a map

You might now think: Avery, have you not made plenty of mapping tutorials yet?
And the answer is yes, mostly focused on certain types of maps, about dos and don'ts, pitfalls and tips. But since those were very focused on certain themes, I wanted to write a very basic one, that shows my process and that might help you with your future mapping endeavours!

Since I don't want to talk vaguely or write a scientific article here, let me make up a random example:

In my hypothetical game, there is a faction of rebellious soldiers. Since the kings mind was poisoned by a demon, his nephew and his knights have organised a resistance and fled to the mountains where they have a hideout in a cave behind a waterfall.
Step 1: Thoughts
This might sound stupid, but before I start, even before I start collecting tiles, I try to think about my idea: If I am building the tileset anyways, I can already look for stuff I might need for related areas. Here I wanna map the outdoors as of now, but even though this is the current to do, the inside will come, and so will maybe the mountain path to the hideout and the mountain top where the white wizard lives and so on and on. This will massively streamline the work process on further maps.

And if I know what I am looking for, I know some buzzwords for a google or forum search ;)

Also, I need to keep an open mind: what if there are no tiles for what I have in mind?
While some of the alternative things might be stuff I find while looking around, I might think about ideas that would work as well: they could have hidden in an abadoned temple or just a plain normal cave or maybe an old fort...

Step 2: The tileset
This is basically something that will be going on all the time while I am mapping: I don't build my tileset and map, I add the things I think I need, map and then will see what my map might lack and then expand my set again and so on.

But for the basis I like to copy and paste all the sheets I might need and open them, here it was Outside A2, A3, A4, A5, B and C, and they are all open in Gimp and I added an 48x48 grid:

You might now wonder: but Avery, you said, you wanted a waterfall? And then you don't make an A1 sheet?

Well, I already have one that I made quite some time ago!

Sometimes you already have the full sheet you need or a basis you will expand in this process and then of course you don't need to start off with an all empty sheet!

My next step is to gather resources for my concept: I need round rocky cliffs, some trees, something for a path. For the cliffs I need a cave entrance for sure, and I aso might want some decoration or fortification, something that shows that people live here right now.

My own MV water cave for example would work nicely for the cliffs, but it has plenty of water stuff that does not match with the waterfall and water tiles I wanna use and indoor stuff. While I might save that for the actual indoors, for this set I can throw everything that will not be used on this map out:

For the trees I am simply checking my own list, looking for some things that I like and that work for that type of region.
Where to find large trees [MV/MZ]
Basically, it is a mix of checking where I remember good stuff could be and googling the things I could not find before.

This is my B sheet after the first round, with stuff by myself, PandaMaru, NuraRay, Venere Marte and Cyanide:

With that and my A1 sheet I will already be able to achieve a lot, all I need is some grass and a path on A2 and I am good to go!

What you see above, is default grass and slightly recolored dirt, which both got the treatment from this tutorial here to be able to use them without that sharp edge and some grassy things I liked by aqua.

And with that I will go into
Step 3: Mapping

As said, I already have plenty of mapping tutorials, so I will not go into full detail, but some basic ideas:
I make my maps as large as they need to be to properly display the stuff and encapsue the gameplay, period. No wasted space with random boring areas and nothing to do.

If I map cliffs, I start with them, and I also usually start with a very rough sketch that at that level only I understand xD

And after my first "wave" I have some plateaus with consistent wall heights, know where my map will be entered, where I want to put something to explore (the ?) and where to leave the map (to the cave):

Consistent wall height is key, that is why I start off simple with tall walls and then break them up step by step. Here I will have to end up with some huge walls though, to get the impressive waterfalls I am after!
That is why I in this case would draw them in now, they are the main visual key and I want to design my remaining map around them and not try to squeeze them in in the end!
I place my water on Layer 3, so I can map ground variations below it. When I need more than one layer above it (here for the bridge), I can shiftmap that part one layer down!

Tip: What is your key visual? Make sure it gets its room on your map to shine!

And with the waterfalls added I now know which parts need more details and which are already done:

Now is a good time to go in with more details, and folks, ground variations are key here: being it more vegetation around waters, some different type of grass or paths... look around, there are only so many plain and boring meadows with straight paths!

And then I start to fill it with rubble - since I used various sources, I have plenty of options so I don't have to overuse the same things!
Tip: If you make specific maps for each region, you have enough space on your sheets to add the variation you need - for this whole map I ended up using less than the B sheet and just A1 and A2 in addition!

Try to place your rubble naturally: Certain plants grow on the rim of water, plants, trees and bushes grow usually where you have grass or at least fertile dirt, rocks will probably be near the walls where they fell down or stand where the water washed away the surrounding rock...
Since people live here now, some trees have been chopped down (probably for the bridges), but since the area was forgotten, it is very naturally overgrown and unkept.
And in this process I usually realise: hey, I need chopped down trees! Or hey: I need some stepstones to cross the water!
This is where I go back and forth a lot, expanding my set by the decorative elements that I need to round the particular map I am working on out :)

Step 4: Playtest and Recolor
I my default set, some colors were to bright and some trees had varying shadow styles. That just happens, when you mix the stuff by several authors. If you can, try to look out for such inconsistences and correct them.
Here you can see the before and after of some of them:

Also, now that I am done, I use my main character and check of the whole path they can walk: is there a shot that looks off? Too full, too empty? Does each shot look nice?
Always remember, yor players don't see this:

They see this:

Or this:

Or this:

As you can see above, I also filled out the areas the player cannot access: some are visible when the player walks right to the edge of everything, and as said: all shots must look nice!

If I would make the map next to this set now, I could use the same tileset and just expand it by the few tiles I need there... and so on.
You might notice that I reduced the human impact to just the bridges, since my area seemed to be defendable enough as of itself: that means, I could thow the palisade tiles out if I don't need them in another part of that game's section.

Some basic tips:
Build yout tilesets as you need them, that makes mapping so much easier. Gather therefore the resources you need, and expand the set as you need it. There are so many amazing tiles out there, noone has to use default as is!

Try to reuse the same base tiles for the whole connected region: the grass won't change complety just because you walked 200m east! If you use for example one cliff for a certain region and a different for another one, players will have less trouble to tell those apart from each other. Especially if they travel back and forth a lot, distinct looks can help them to process where they are right now.
Same goes for buildings: people in one town will usually use similar materials. You usually won't find five different types of stone in one village, usually one: the local one.

Be open for alternatives if what you really wanted isn't there.

Think about your key visual elements and make sure they are what you want them to be! Give them the room they need, but also accompany with a surrounding they deserve!

If you mix tilesets, try to spot major differences in the styles and see if you can fix them!

Cliffs need to be a consistent height overall, but be sure to break them up for a more interesting look.

Make sure your rubble is diverse and fitting, don't overdo it, but also make sure your maps don't stay too boring and empty.

Testplay your map, walk into every corner and pause. Does the screen look good? If not: fix it!

Make sure you make a nice map to the rim: it should not look weirdly empty when you are on the edge of the map. You can add trees that protrude out of the map for example.

That was it for now, maybe I'll do another example at some point. That was a little different from my usual ones, for more basics check

Spoiler