Critique on Maps needed, I crave your feedback on my maps. Options

[Shaddow]

This will probably be just the first of many maps I post needing feedback. This particular one is a city who's main craft is stone masons, as you can probably see. Sadly it's a bigger city so the SS is a bit small. I feel like the city is lacking something, but I just can't put my finger on what. any opinions or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 Map.png ( 820.57K ) Number of downloads: 35



*I apologize about the unsightly white space, I think I made the png too big for the map maker...

[Jonnie19]

[Show/Hide] Highlighted Map

I've circled/highlighted area's of the map that need some form of editing or errors. But first a few general comments about the map.

There are many different colors and styles of houses, this is something that I personally would try to avoid, it makes the city or town look untidy and rather...well incorrect. For a town I would suggest a maximum of two different styles of houses unless you can justify a reason for a different style. For example, you have two basic styles of houses for the average Villagers/Townies, and then for those who are wealthy or are of a higher hierarchy, they have a grander style house. But in general keep to two different styles.

Squareness. Although very difficult to overcome in VX, there are different techniques you can use to avoid squareness, including using events to overlap tree's to give the appearance of randomness. There are other methods which can go into the realms of Parallax Mapping, which will remove the issue completely(if done in the correct way) but that is for another thread

Size of the Map. It's to big. There is too much space in the map, the reason you are thinking something is missing. Is because there is just too much space. There is a brilliant tutorial on map sizes that I recently read, and has helped me alot...I shall search for it in a moment and will send it to you via PM if you are interested. But you need to at least half the size of the map in my opinion as it has to much empty space...that cannot be filled.



Now too specifics:

Red Highlights: The house walls are different sizes, this should not occur. In my opinion each house should be the same size as the highlighted one. It is the one that isn't to big and isn't too small. All your houses, in general terms, should be the same size, shape can change of course, but it must all have the same amount of wall...if that make sense. especially on houses that are along the same street, unless of course they are an annex, or a flat (but normally even they are linked towards another building with a set height.)

Yellow Highlight: There is a square of Path missing

Dark Blue Highlights: These are either something missing, for example where are the two chimneys on the final two house on the bottom right (marked with ? marks.)
There is a door missing on quite a few of the houses, if they're meant to be linked together shouldn't you add on the roofing?
The highlighted guard....that is just me being slightly picky, he seems just thrown in there, and doesn't seem to have any purpose only to fill up the map

Light Blue Highlights:
Nature is randomized, and the way the tree's are positioned is to organised, Like I mention above, use Eventing to "spice-up" your trees abit.
Also, ponds are normally round, so a dead square pond kinda doesn't work, however this isn't your fault (DAMN YOU ENTERBRAIN) rather it is the fault of the RTP. but to try and fight against it perhaps add an odd few squares here and there, just to ensure it is less even.


Hope that is helpful to you, it is a very strong start...I am only doing to you what was done to me. These mistakes, are simple one's to make and we all make it and it certainly helped me with my mapping

[Shaddow]

Thanks for all the tips, once I took another look at it I realized it was really too big, that has always been a fault of mine, to make maps to large. I assumed since it's a castle town that it's supposed to be large. Here is the updated map.

 Map.png ( 468.82K ) Number of downloads: 43


It's still a bit wide, but that is needed for what I wanted in the map. As far as the look of the houses, I was trying to make them look unique, unfortunately unique looked like crap. They were supposed to be connected, as you can see now. I also fixed the color scheme to more reflect the culture and attitude of the populace, I think this fits a lot more. Any more improvements or suggestions are appreciated.

[rewells]

That looks much better. Good job! I think it could still benefit from more B-D tiles, and maybe something bigger near the center (like between the grey-roofed houses), as most towns contain monuments/fountains/whatever as a gathering place for people. But still, excellent improvement.

Reason for edit: As the only other person to reply, you don't need to quote the post :) -Jonnie19

[amerk]

The untidiness and disarray of various forms of houses can work for a slummish poor section of town, but you should still fill in the empty space. Lots of NPC's to show the area is crowded, crates and boxes, broken pots, cracked streets, wild vegetation (weeds creepy around) will also give it that effect.