New Forest Town, For whatever the next game I make Options

[LostSamurai]

So, the boredom of my lack of current project led me to create this town today. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I figured that whenever I feel like working on a new game I'm going to just make some generic maps, or new songs for now. Mapping is my biggest pet peeve in the program, it takes me forever to make a single one, so I figure that when I do decide to start making a game again, I'll at least have some groundwork finished.

This was made using the Forest Town chipset from the RTP, and it was done in about 90 minutes. What do you think? It's really the first town I've ever made with this chipset. There's no backstory to the place whatsoever yet.

This post has been edited by LostSamurai: May 18 2012, 08:09 PM

Attached File(s)

 New_Forest_Town.png ( 1.56MB ) Number of downloads: 141

 

[Jonnie19]

I would also suggest making the map smaller too...and then follow Cleril's suggestion, which on first reading might sound contradictory however let me explain:

There are many things that you can do to create a sense of a medium sized village/town without having a large map, perhaps create different area's of the town/village, for example you could use the Center of your current map as your first map, this also means that you can add more details also such as mention by Rewells above. Then perhaps you could create another map for each of the paths leading to different area's, this could either be a small path, which could be made more interesting with battles or some other kind of events, and add moving animals to the events, perhaps chuck in a few NPC's to make the village path seem more alive. This could lead into an opening with a house on it, with the addition of perhaps a stream or some form of water, as you need to consider how such dense a forest would grow without alot of water-fall. Also where would the villagers get their water supply from if you are in a dense forest like the one you mention...

As you can see I have barely mentioned mapping, I have focused more on Eventing and in some respects character development. Now this is a great way to make maps especially town and village maps more exciting without worrying to much on "mapping". Keep asking questions to yourself once you've made the map...
Does this map seem to have dividable sections?
Could each section of the map have more details if I zoomed in, as such?
How does this town/village live, what is the food source what is their water sources.
Another example here was the food source? How would the villagers gain their food? From a Merchant, well you'll need a cart somewhere in your maps, perhaps tie this in with a Shop event, offering food. Or even better create a Market, which then could lead to more questions such as how does the food get to the small village, well that could be a direct dirt road track to a nearby city/town, which would then mean you could create a dirt track, or perhaps sign posts for travellers...this could also spark an event where someone is traveling down the road.... etc etc etc

tldr: Put your writing head on, then think of basic necessities, and also consider making multiple smaller maps, to help create a bigger village atmosphere... and offering up more chance to do the things you love best, eventing developing characters, writing stories etc etc.