Map Screen needs scenery Help

[The Faction]

I have created a map screen that will be uswed throughout my game. However my attempts at adiing things such as trees and hills have so far not been very good.





The image is far from finished. Much more work will be done on the water. But right now i only need help with the island.
As you can see I have tried three different methods of making trees. Which is best? Is there a better way?
Any feedback on my hills is also welcome.

[DragonRose]

I only have three real problems with your map.

1. It's flat as a pankake. Flatter, even.  Look at this map from Monkey Island. There is a lot of texture in the land, shown by areas of light and dark. You have a start on it around the river, and you did a wonderful job on the hill by said river- just spread it out.  Also, put some varied colours in the water- lighter near the islands, and darker the further out you get.

2. I'm not quite sure what is going on with the blueish land around the river.  If it's the flood basin, use more green and less blue. Use the sort of dense stippling you have at the edge of the blue closer to the river, it will really clean it up.

3. The different kinds of beaches are kind of cool- just have smoother transitions between them .

My suggestion about the trees is to mix the three styles you have together. Overlap the trees like in the black outlined one, use a variety of colours like in.. the one with a variety of colours, and use some different colours on the ground underneath them, like in the black and dead one.

[Babar]

The Island is viewed from "Birds eye view", but most of the objects (the trees, hills and town(?)) are shown from the side. Perhaps you could "tilt" the island a bit, or just make the objects showing from top view.

[Flippy_D]

The river bit is a swamp, right? You might want some stick-like trees.

In fact, that's what's missing. Trees. Incidental scenery, trees and rocks, etc.

Take a few pixels off the beaches at the top (or erase them completely) and that'll help the map look a little more 3D.

I do like what's there so far, though.

[lazy dragonrose]

The Island is viewed from "Birds eye view", but most of the objects (the trees, hills and town(?)) are shown from the side. Perhaps you could "tilt" the island a bit, or just make the objects showing from top view.

Actually, a lot of old maps did just this- land in birds eye view, with topographical things being shown straight on.

It's also a style used in strategy games like Heores of Might and Magic Ã, Birds eye ground, straight on everything else.

[Flippy_D]

Yyyeah... but that's a minimap..

[fertoff]

I did a quick paint over


i changed:
-The trees, although i don't like how they turned out(they look too rpg-ish). But pehaps making them a bit more realistic would do the trick
-The mountains
-The grass layer: making it more uniform allows makes the map a bit cleaner

and i don't know why when i save in photoshop, the image saved is always darker than the image i worked on...

thats all, bye

[Flippy_D]

Hmm... looks worse to me.

[jrl2222]

and i don't know why when i save in photoshop, the image saved is always darker than the image i worked on...

I haven't played around with it lately but you probably have your color settings set wrong.
I know in photoshop 7 it's under the edit menu at the bottom. I think it's in the same place on Photoshop CS but I can't check because I don't have that installed at work.

[fertoff]

well flippy, i tried to follow a more rpg-ish map style....if it was my map to make,,,i would have done it more monkey island style, or at list with the correct perspective...

[InCreator]

Yes, perspective.
Perspective's what is missing here and what needs to be remade.


Red cube is your version, much better would be angle of green cube. This is what they did in Monkey Island too. And why MI's island looks better. If cliffs and beach is well visible at two sides, it shouldn't be so on other two.

The trees are quite nice, I could only suggest using a bit more contrasty colors - shade brightly one side of the tree and leave abother darker. Otherwise, trees just collapse into boring one-color mass. But don't go overboard with this (like fertoff almost did).

Actually, so little trees are incredibly easy to make, When I said contrastier shading, I meant something like this...

[The Faction]

I have done a version similar to the MI one dragonrose posted a link for.



Is this better than my original? It is shaded so that the moonlight is coming from the left side. This image is also not finished. The extra water line on the bottom left is because I will add another small island later.

[Redwall]

Beachs look odd, too bright maybe? And why the change to night?

[The Faction]

Sorry Redwall for not explaining myself. The 'gradiented' outline of the island is not beaches but breaking waves which i plan to post an animation for soon. Also the change to night was made because it would be easiier for me to portray topography as I want to. In case I didn't explain it the green part is swamp as flippyD guessed.

[Ozwalled]

Maybe it's just the new nighttime colouring, but I do have a bit of a hard time telling what exactly I'm looking at.

[mätzyboy]

Anyone else spot the bearded man in the middle of the island?


Sorry, couldn't resist, i just saw him staring back at me...

I most def like the new map better than the old one. The definiton of a light source was a great improvement. Make sure to make the different locations visible in a suitable way!

[Redwall]

Sorry Redwall for not explaining myself. The 'gradiented' outline of the island is not beaches but breaking waves which i plan to post an animation for soon. Also the change to night was made because it would be easiier for me to portray topography as I want to. In case I didn't explain it the green part is swamp as flippyD guessed.

Actually, I wasn't referring to that but the brown/tan areas on the left side.