JohnnyRancid
Forum Regular
Posts: 776
Registered: 08-07 |
To be a little more realistic, I like to make the basic layout of maps first.
When I do this, the first sectors I draw are the simple exit room, and starting room. After that, I draw 'target' rooms, which are rooms that house keys or switches that operate doors to other target rooms. All these rooms are all simple and basic shapes, such as squares, octagons, rectangles, X's, H's, crosses, diamonds, T's, etc. None of the drawn rooms will be connected. Instead, later on connect the rooms together with hallways and stair sets.
When I first started mapping, I used to go room by room by room until I get to an exit. This often created pretty nice detailed maps, but later the maps seemed to just go on and on and the maps were too linear. I rarely finished them too, because I simply lost track of the idea. With my new method, I can spend a couple minutes mapping, then save the map and work on it later, and still know what I was doing because the exit and target areas are still there.
Once the layout is finished, I spend the rest of the time fitting sectors into my basic shapes. For example, this:
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/6721/94037075ag3.jpg
to this,
http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/4831/60284874ba5.jpg
to this.
http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/1274/34946975mk6.jpg
Every sector has either a different floor texture or height difference or both. Of course this example is a little too symmetrical and wouldn't look all too good in maps as it would be easy to get lost in the map when all four directions look exactly the same.
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08-02-08 16:13 
