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Post by [GG] Lord Ashram on Mar 25, 2006 22:46:01 GMT -5
The first thing that struck me about Shogun: Total War was simply how beautiful it looked when my army was lined up and ready to fight. Flags snapping in the wind, horses pawing at the ground… nothing looked quite as good. I felt like the film “Ran” had come alive and I had been put in command! In Napoleonic: Total War, some of my fondest memories are actually of similar moments; of moments when all the graphical elements of the game came together and really made such a nice picture I couldn’t help but take a step back and enjoy the view… at least, before ordering my Russian Grenadiers to attack! And one of the most important parts of having both beautiful and fun games is playing on beautiful maps. Let me share some of my own tips for making pretty, and functional, maps, and hopefully they will help you in your own map design.
When you are first conceptualizing your map, you should always draw a quick pencil sketch first, and you should always try to break up your open spaces, unless you are purposefully trying to determine exactly where the main line of battle should be, as in a Waterloo map. Often I try to cut woods and terrain features across the field at a diagonal to where the players deploy, as shown in this somewhat crude graphic.
I find this forces players to move more and creates less static games, which are often good fun.
Now, assuming you have started working on the map in the map editor, let’s start with the basics. Remember; attackers are to the north, defenders to the south. First and foremost, when you start a new map, you should always place a hedge first, before doing anything else. By placing that first, you are telling the computer in which direction all of your scenery pieces should be aligned. This is important; if you don’t establish which way your scenery needs to be aligned first, you will find yourself unable to line up your hedges with the edges of your various ground textures! This obviously can be very frustrating, but as long as you always place a single hedge to start, that will serve to keep your scenery properly lined up.
When starting a map I always use the “ring of trees” trick. When you make a map, the hardest part of the map to make look good is the edge, where the map ends. This often looks very abrupt and can subconsciously ruin the realistic feeling of the map, as while you play you can see the edges of the board very clearly. I always take two steps to cover this up. I have found that, by lining the outside edge of the board with an outer ring of forest texture, and an inner ring of edge-of-forest texture, you can hide the edges of the board nicely. If you then elevate the outside edge of the board to a point slightly above ground level, any players who are on the map will able to see what looks to be wooded ridges leading off into an invisible distance, the edge of the map now hidden. While this does take up some tree texture, it also results in a very natural looking board, as it seems that the map goes on in all directions, rather than simply ending abruptly.
A “cheap” easy trick for making more natural looking maps is to elevate any tree-covered ground slightly. In real life, trees work to prevent erosion of ground, often resulting in wooded areas being ever-so-slightly higher than non-wooded areas. If you VERY slightly elevate your forest areas, you will find that the map begins to look far more natural.
A word about elevation, while we are on the topic; avoid dramatic elevation changes when at all possible! Often gently sloping hills look far more natural, and also help minimize the often-dramatic advantages units defending hills get. Maps with more than a couple of massive drops and cliffs are not only less realistic looking, but often play poorly too.
A word to the civil engineers out there; when you are placing roads, make sure to always know where they start from and where they go. If you think logically about where roads would be made, and how they would be built around most natural features, you can achieve a very natural look. Remember to have roads near all settlements; buildings were almost always built right on a road, so avoid having anything other than the most basic farm shack away from the roads. Buildings need to be placed very carefully. They can be used to break up natural attacking spaces, making attacks more difficult, or can be used to secure flanks, making one or another a veritable fortress. Either way, buildings can be used dramatically to break up battle lines or to reinforce them. While buildings close together can cause problems with moving troops, they can also be used to force the enemy into column and to force smart movement! Speaking of buildings, when you ARE placing your buildings, don’t forget all those wonderful little models that help a village look realistic. The wagons and the well in particular are fantastic for bringing a chateau to life, but try to avoid overusing flags; they tend to look more arcade game than realistic.
Finally, while you are making a map, always make time during the process to look from both sides and consider where you would ideally attack or defend. If you get close down to the map and really try to see it as a player, it becomes far easier to understand where there might be until-then-unnoticed bottlenecks that should be opened up, or even sometimes tightened up!
A shameless plug, if I may, aimed at those map makers out there. We DO have large sized flat maps, as well as large sized flat maps with the “tree ring” effect, already finished and available for you to build on. If you would like a copy of either map, please just post here or drop us an email.
Anyway, hope these tips were useful. There are many nice maps out there, including a few of the ATW maps (Guilford Courthouse is a particularly pretty one) and possibly the most playable defender friendly map, [GG]Plateau01. Also, check out [GG]KingoftheHill for possibly the most carefully constructed “GO GET’EM!” map I’ve played on. (In the interest of full disclosure, I made none of those maps.) Thanks for reading, and if I may end with a little bit of my own, real life terrain work… enjoy, and good gaming!
When you are first conceptualizing your map, you should always draw a quick pencil sketch first, and you should always try to break up your open spaces, unless you are purposefully trying to determine exactly where the main line of battle should be, as in a Waterloo map. Often I try to cut woods and terrain features across the field at a diagonal to where the players deploy, as shown in this somewhat crude graphic.
I find this forces players to move more and creates less static games, which are often good fun.
Now, assuming you have started working on the map in the map editor, let’s start with the basics. Remember; attackers are to the north, defenders to the south. First and foremost, when you start a new map, you should always place a hedge first, before doing anything else. By placing that first, you are telling the computer in which direction all of your scenery pieces should be aligned. This is important; if you don’t establish which way your scenery needs to be aligned first, you will find yourself unable to line up your hedges with the edges of your various ground textures! This obviously can be very frustrating, but as long as you always place a single hedge to start, that will serve to keep your scenery properly lined up.
When starting a map I always use the “ring of trees” trick. When you make a map, the hardest part of the map to make look good is the edge, where the map ends. This often looks very abrupt and can subconsciously ruin the realistic feeling of the map, as while you play you can see the edges of the board very clearly. I always take two steps to cover this up. I have found that, by lining the outside edge of the board with an outer ring of forest texture, and an inner ring of edge-of-forest texture, you can hide the edges of the board nicely. If you then elevate the outside edge of the board to a point slightly above ground level, any players who are on the map will able to see what looks to be wooded ridges leading off into an invisible distance, the edge of the map now hidden. While this does take up some tree texture, it also results in a very natural looking board, as it seems that the map goes on in all directions, rather than simply ending abruptly.
A “cheap” easy trick for making more natural looking maps is to elevate any tree-covered ground slightly. In real life, trees work to prevent erosion of ground, often resulting in wooded areas being ever-so-slightly higher than non-wooded areas. If you VERY slightly elevate your forest areas, you will find that the map begins to look far more natural.
A word about elevation, while we are on the topic; avoid dramatic elevation changes when at all possible! Often gently sloping hills look far more natural, and also help minimize the often-dramatic advantages units defending hills get. Maps with more than a couple of massive drops and cliffs are not only less realistic looking, but often play poorly too.
A word to the civil engineers out there; when you are placing roads, make sure to always know where they start from and where they go. If you think logically about where roads would be made, and how they would be built around most natural features, you can achieve a very natural look. Remember to have roads near all settlements; buildings were almost always built right on a road, so avoid having anything other than the most basic farm shack away from the roads. Buildings need to be placed very carefully. They can be used to break up natural attacking spaces, making attacks more difficult, or can be used to secure flanks, making one or another a veritable fortress. Either way, buildings can be used dramatically to break up battle lines or to reinforce them. While buildings close together can cause problems with moving troops, they can also be used to force the enemy into column and to force smart movement! Speaking of buildings, when you ARE placing your buildings, don’t forget all those wonderful little models that help a village look realistic. The wagons and the well in particular are fantastic for bringing a chateau to life, but try to avoid overusing flags; they tend to look more arcade game than realistic.
Finally, while you are making a map, always make time during the process to look from both sides and consider where you would ideally attack or defend. If you get close down to the map and really try to see it as a player, it becomes far easier to understand where there might be until-then-unnoticed bottlenecks that should be opened up, or even sometimes tightened up!
A shameless plug, if I may, aimed at those map makers out there. We DO have large sized flat maps, as well as large sized flat maps with the “tree ring” effect, already finished and available for you to build on. If you would like a copy of either map, please just post here or drop us an email.
Anyway, hope these tips were useful. There are many nice maps out there, including a few of the ATW maps (Guilford Courthouse is a particularly pretty one) and possibly the most playable defender friendly map, [GG]Plateau01. Also, check out [GG]KingoftheHill for possibly the most carefully constructed “GO GET’EM!” map I’ve played on. (In the interest of full disclosure, I made none of those maps.) Thanks for reading, and if I may end with a little bit of my own, real life terrain work… enjoy, and good gaming!
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