Mapping a modern town

じ☆ve冰风

When it comes to modern towns, a lot of the rules that apply to your usual mapping have to be thrown out of the window.

My example here is a 25x25 map. Of course your city is usually larger than that or you might want to have several of those connected by teleports.
Since this is a basic tutorial, I will rely on the default MZ tiles. You can and will get better results if you are willing to spend some time editing or looking around on the forum!



Unlike fantasy maps, where blocky roads and buildings come off as unnatural, for modern settings and especially cities, blocky is how it is!
Depending on the size of the cars that are available to you you might want the roads to be wider to be able to make the sidewalks wider and not look off, that will allow you to place more people on them!
For this tutorial I stuck to this width, as I did not want the default cars to look like toys on them.
Modern towns usually don’t waste space and are often built by using a strict grid layout!
Another mayor difference is that with modern shipping, tools and paints in place, material mix is not only realistic, it helps to make the by default blocky look more interesting!



Since you don't want your heroes to be overrun by cars, investing in sidewalks is always a good choice. I used the transparent edge to have my pavement look a little more separated from the street and also decided that this city features a small park in that area.
Depending on your setting, some green is always a good choice, just keep in mind that if the place is not totally worn down, it only grows in dedicated places.
Since our road now divides our map into several smaller chunks, we can tackle these chunks one by one and start filling them with a basic structure.



One key to make this map believable is to know what kind of building you are actually trying to create here.
I was thinking of a central area with mixed buildings, some businesses but also some flats. So for example we have an office building on the left, and next to it I made an exception to the only square buildings rule, as that is a restaurant and the owner wanted some outdoor space to set up signs and possibly tables. Probably they get a lot of customers from their neighboring buildings, as the building on the right is a business as well and the workers come over for lunch and snacks.
Tip: Don’t forget that behind your buildings there are probably - you might’ve guessed it - other buildings.



Now we can use those very basic shapes as our canvas to draw in all the little details, to give these buildings some personality!
You might notice that those buildings are comparingly small, that has a reason:
Personally, I think long walks though giant maps can be very annoying, and when it comes to a large city, you have to nail both the feeling of a giant diverse amount of buildings and a reasonable time to pass through it.

So here is some more general advice: the scale you use for your city depends on its actual size and how the player is supposed to experience it. If you have just a smaller part that is explorable, you can make everything comparingly larger and have more room for details and clutter. If you have a whole city center, you might want to scale down everything or think about ways to quick travel later, especially if the player has long distances to pass.



And square by square, we fill up our map. Make sure to pay attention to details, even if those areas are not very important and don’t have many things to interact with.
For example, this park so far has nothing your player might be able to do with it, unless you take your time and add a swinging interaction or something like that. But it is still a decorative element that makes your town believable.
A good rule of thumb is: each window framed size of your map should look nice and the whole town should look consistent and alive till the end of the map.
Some of the details in this shot:

• people trample their own ways on grass in some places
  
• grass is also trampled down/replaced by sand around the swings
  
• The street lamps are placed along the paths, so they are actually of use for people passing the park as night, plus one is right at the bench
  

Another thing to pay attention to are vehicles. By default you only have a small selection of cars, but especially since you might want 4 directional and/or moving cars, some additional resources here are very recommended.
But even if you don’t you should place them in town and event them on the roads to keep them used and populated.



Finding a good balance between interactable places and “filler” buildings. Depending on the size of your city you might want to think about some kind of marker that indicates which buildings can be entered and which not, to spare your players from frustration when looking where to go. Since a lot of especially taller modern buildings can come with a flat roof, you get extra vertical space you can put to a use. Is that chest on that roof on the right interactable? Maybe! It is always good to give your players a little hint about places they might want to explore!
For the bank you can also see something important: Just because the fantasy tiles are meant for fantasy, they are not limited to that use! You can expand your range by picking additional tiles from those sets!



Make sure to take a final look at your map and answer the following questions:
Are there boring places left that need more clutter and decor to look more interesting?
Is there a legit path for the characters to walk anywhere they should be able to walk to?
Did I block off every way the characters should not take (this is pretty easy in modern cities, with the compatingly narrow roads and the possibility to block it with many types of obstacles or guards)?
Is there enough for the player to actually do and explore on my map?

If everything is done, set up some NPCs to add enough life to your city and you are good to go!



You might think about some kind of “bumping into each other and switching places” interaction with the NPCs if you have such narrow roads and sidewalks.

Have fun making your own modern city!


本贴来自国际rpgmaker官方论坛作者:Avery处,因国际论坛即将永久关站,为了存档多年珍贵资料,署名转载到本论坛存档,由于官方帖子为英文原帖，需要中文翻译请点击论坛顶部切换语言为中文就可以将帖子翻译成中文浏览,方便大家随时查看,原文地址：https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/threads/mapping-a-modern-town.156489/