Lore of World Map Design

I've seen plenty of self-proclaimed incredible map makers come and go in the RM community, offering tutorials on how to do detailed maps, when they themselves have much to learn. As you will know, if you had read the entire tutorial, I rarely favour the layer by layer approach that has been suggested by those that make tutorials. Of course, I suspect they just do it like that as it is the easiest method to teach. Well, making busy maps is as simple as doing a ten piece jigsaw, except without the possibility of getting stuck. But naturally there are some areas of making world maps that are just plain common sense.

When we make world maps, the smart creators generally already have their plot thought out and how our heroes will get from A to B, whether it requires a pass over a bridge, a rowboat for shallow water or a ship for travelling almost everywhere. A world map is different to the other maps that you will be creating, as you must have an idea of how it is going to work when before you create it, otherwise you will merely end up with a gigantic mess in your hands, no matter how pretty the actual map may look. This will be a huge killer for your game, as this map can itself help you figure out the very specifics of how your plot may be driven. Of course, before the game you will have a storyline and a general idea for how it will be told, where the heroes will go and such, but you will also be able to see your world come about, creating obstacles between one plot development location to the next (The traditional mountain range, for example). As long as you have a basic design prepared, like how many continents there are if it's a world, or how many separated kingdoms if it's an area map. I'm assuming that there will be linear directions on how to get to certain locations in the majority of areas, but they aren't necessary, just recommended. Natural obstacles are a good way to keep the heroes from going from A to E straight away.

So now that we've established that you should have a set a definite design to your world, how do we address the detail? Well, let's start with areas near towns. As you know, the larger the village/town/city, the more resources would be needed to create it. To suggest this, adding chopped down trees usually conveys a location that is growing, therefore the larger the location is the more tree stumps would be evident. The stumps would be a close as possible to the towns, as it is just common sense for them to chop down the ones nearest to them. It is also a smart idea to position your towns next to large tree clumps, as they would be able to chop down further trees in the future. For a town with specific attributes, the landscape around should have some relevance to it, like a mining town should really be near mountains and farming villages would be in areas of long, fairly empty grass plains (That don't look empty by dotting the odd trees, using grass changes and putting crops around). I mean, this is completely obvious, I would hope. Another thing to remember, when making roads, is to think about the size of the locations they may be leading to. Would anyone have a long road that goes to a single house, for example? Other factors to take into account would be how reclusive the location is and how difficult it is to reach. Who would build a road to reach a place that is blocked by almost impenetrable mountains, evil woods and the bitter cold? No normal person would even bother travelling along that path, 'tis a shame that your heroes will though.

Here's a typical plain farmland design. It's nothing to shout about, but you'd have no shortage of land to explore, since the trees here would be passable. Passable detail is the best kind of detail. Of course, if you don't find that sort of land interesting, then there is always the potential for adding more unique buildings around or a few dead trees. Another little tip is that tree stumps can be placed next to roadsides as well as towns, but not nearly as many. This again gives a further reflection on man's involvement in nature, something you'd expend when they are travelling here and from these locations. Do you want your town to look a little more understandable? Well, you can also make lakes by using the coastlines in land for small areas. Put some of these next to your locations, since a town next to a fresh water supply is normally a given. The locations all do have wells, but another supply won't hurt.

Mining Towns are usually on higher ground, so the grass will not be as powerful. Depending on the location of the town, the grass could become tundra or dirt, but both are suitable for mining towns. More people would probably expect to see them in arid landscapes, as first impressions usually take you to America and gold rush fever. Depending on your choice of map, you can add dotted buildings around the towns, but it isn't necessary. That's merely just an optional extra available to you.

All this talk of farming and building next to fresh water supplies brings me to my next point; the climate. Now, we know that it is warmer around the equator (I'm thinking more on the lines of a world map now, not an area map) and freezing at the poles, but it would be very hard to make a globe-styled map using the basic functions available to us. If you think up a good way to do it, like having two poles on the map and such, you will still encounter difficulties with the perspective afterwards. So, the next best way is to adopt the Final Fantasy tactic, probably most evident in FF9, which is where there are a few continents which have different climates. You can do slightly better than this with the grass changes, as climates aren't exclusive to different land masses, so they can change as they go further north or south. There are just some things to do with climate that you can easily avoid unless you're bloody stupid. I've seen some shocking maps in my time, sometimes having roof tiles in the water and water tiles for the roof, grass for cliffs. These people obviously don't have a clue, but nevertheless, I will still mention this for the purpose of that specific game creator. When you are creating arid, sandy regions, don't put down snow covered/icy trees. This works the other way around as well, as you don't mind too many palm trees in the snow. Also, try not to put snow next to deserts; this just doesn't make any sense at all, although I know that you'd probably want to have a nice range of town designs in your game. If you feel the need to put snow next to sand, make your map look like the icy areas are on higher ground.

In the above shot, you can see how the pine trees stop, turn to dead trees and then we move on to palm trees. This is where the pine trees have spread into areas that are too hot for them, died out and where the palm trees have done the same. I've started the palm trees on a yellowish grass tile, where the land is hotter and there is less moisture around. That grass tile would be comparable to countries like Spain and Italy. The palm trees would also be found in even hotter regions as well.

Again, from having a look around the RM community, a lot of people's world maps tend to just stick to the basics, like perfect land masses that take you from one place to another. Often the only island you will see is occupied by a large castle and attached by a lone bridge, presumable for battling through a countless number of enemy soldiers and a boss at the finish line. What ever happened to those uneventful islands that had broken off from the mainland? They don't have to contain the magi's fortress or the Tower of Death, they could just be another little pointless location that makes the world look like a world with possible some new monsters to face or a hidden cave like I spoke of earlier. There are some important points to think about when adding them, unfortunately. Since these islands have broken off from the mainland, they should be created so that look as if they could almost slot into place. They don't have to be a perfect fit, just be similar enough to look as if they could just make it. After this has been done, if you want to be clever, you can add some smaller islands that have broken off from the original, which would get smaller each time. This is just pointlessly adding detail, but it never hurts to throw it on. Any mountains that run into the edge of the main continent should really continue onto the island that has broken off from it. These mountains would have broken off from the land as well. However, trees are a different matter, since they could have grown after the land had broken off or before it had. This is entirely up to you whether you'd want to put them down or not.

There are many islands here, though not all areas would be as busy as this, obviously. Some areas would be more broken than others and some may not have any islands near them at all.

As the sea gets closer to land masses, the water usually becomes shallower, especially with the coastlines and beaches. Whenever you place coastlines and beaches on your map, make sure that you put them next to the shallowest of the water types, otherwise it will look faulty. However, when it comes to cliff edges, it can be deeper so that it is the ideal waters for mooring ships. When you are creating the sea for your world map, which should really get just as much attention as the land, you should first concentrate on which areas should be passable and what shouldn't with certain vehicles. If you aren't planning on having any freedom with boats and ships, then there is no problem here, but if you are, then you must consider how you would stop a rowboat from reaching a location that you don't want the characters to reach until a later time. You could probably manage to three different levels of ships on your world map; ones that can go in shallows, ones that can go in medium water and shallows and the largest ships that can go in medium and deep waters. You could easily have more options available to you, I'm sure, but I think that would help restrict the freedom on a world map when you need to. Once you have figured out how you are going to design your water to make it satisfactory to your needs, it becomes time to think about the detail. The water would usually be shallower as it became nearer to the land, but adding a few areas of impassable deep water wouldn't be a problem at all. If you want to make it look like a path of shallows is reasonable, have an archipelago full of shallow water around the edges. This would look far better than having a convenient line going across the world map from one location to the other. The final problem with water on peoples' maps is that large clumps of a certain shade look terribly uninspired. I feel that the best way to avoid this is to have the darker shade be used in strokes over the lighter water, like shown below:

Using this effect can also make it look like there is a large stretch of land continuing below the sea level; which can be used as another way to allow rowboats to travel around without going onto the deep water. If you don't want to use deep water to block off the player from travelling around the world, you can always place some sea rocks in shallow water that blocks any small gap. These rocks can be useful as well as there for extra detail. There is, however, no point in placing them in the deep water as it would make no sense for them to still be seen above the sea level.

We've now gone through both the specifics and the general points about creating a world map with this tileset. Hopefully you are all now confident to use this tileset to the best of your ability, which, if you've read this thoroughly, I would hope is of an excellent standard. I've addressed how a general world map should be made, the best method for going about creating it and provided an example map for extra help; I sure hope I see plenty of incredible world maps when your games are released or you show them off.

 

Enjoy. :) ©