Map Designs

nerovergil

Map design

one huge map (like gw2)

Has a huge city (like alexandria final fantasy 9), has a settlement (like riverwood skyrim), surrounded by forest, rivers, nearby area has rabbit, deer, as you go far in the forest you will get attacked by wild life and bandits, you will found bandit camps. far inside the forest you will see bandit fotress. more far than that, u will found, orcs, undead, new huge city.

Cleffy

I always found forests to be a lazy level designers troupe. You make 4~5 trees, a couple bushes and repeat repeat repeat. Then add a couple barrels, logs, tents and enemies; bam you have a map. I also found it bad for rendering. A lot of alpha masks on top of each other always take a while to render.

For a new level, I want to try a new easy level design. Cities/islands in the skies. Easy to define the boundary, easy to design the background, always have wind for a dramatic look, very easy to render.

Gamer54321

What is the point of this thread?

Gamer54321

I think a proper way to make a map, is to achieve what BIS has done with their huge Chernarus map. What is interesting I think about that map, is that every place/location looks and feels unique and memorable. Some credit for this might be to using real terrain data, scaled down, which might explain a more natural flow of things, with roads and hills all around the map. Though, the places are memorable, partly from the type of gameplay that warrant extra caution from the player (Arma), but also that the buildings and the arrangement of buildings look unique, with basically no place being the same. Having said that, there are lots of re occurring things on the map, as the building types are reused, which might create this heightened sense of familiarity, where ever you go on that map.

NPCPak

A map design I always thought about was having one massive hub city, home to all players with player markets and housing. In the center would be a core that powers the benefits of players, and anything from killing monsters, discovering hidden lore and secrets, dungeon and land exploration made this core grow. Outside this hub city are massive lands, designed to be all kinds of different environments, from the southern ice fields to the western deserts and eastern landscapes to the northern tundra. Everything would be so unique that even it's placement during development would have a story to share for every player who comes by these areas. Dungeons would be a part of the open world, and travelling deeper would unlock new areas to explore as it gets harder to progress... A true dungeon where it isn't 3 bosses, but a whole cavern to explore. 

But, this would also probably cost over 10 million dollars plus add-ons if I ever wanted this to be run on a larger server. I don't really expect this at all either, it's just a really old idea I had years ago.