The Mana World Forums

Hi everyone,

I would like to request two maps:

Map #1: A small, natural and humid-looking underground cave, spherical or egg-shaped. No man-made constructs. May contain a pool and possibly water flowing in/out. The cave should have no evident
entrance/exit.

Map #2: A natural-looking, medium-sized two-level map. Try to go for a `gloomy' look. No artificial constructs in here either. Each of the levels should have a cave entrance/exit.

If you have anything in particular in mind and would like special tiles for your map, please request them here!

Thanks in advance,

-- fate

I would like to work on the 2-level map.

Just a couple questions:
Are there supposed to be entrances onto the map other than cave entrances? Or should it be blocked off in all directions with caves as the only entrances?

I will require more input after I have a basic outline made for the map, then possibly requests for tiles.

Xaru,

thanks for picking this one up! The cave should only have passage ways within the cave itself: the entrance/exit from/to one level should lead to the other one.

(There will be a way for players to get in and out again, though, don't worry.

-- fate

Alright, I've been working on this a bit, and here is my progress so far:

[Thumbnail: Click to enlarge]

I would like to request one map element though. Because as you may notice, there is no way currently to go from one side of the creek/swamp to the other. Therefore I would like a fallen tree to be used as a bridge.

It's hard to describe the appearance, but I'm imagining something that is walkable for one person at a time, the middle should be able to tile so it can cover variable creek widths. My personal use would be west/east, however a north/south version could be useful for the future.
The actual appearance is hard to describe, but try imagining the large tree we have right now, falling over across a creek and then mostly dying (meaning there could be a few live branches), and possibly some moss/debris hanging from it.

Fate: where is this map going to fit in the game world? Do you have the mapping plan in mind? http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... raster.jpg

Xaru,

Eeep. I am terribly sorry, I underspecified: this has to be an underground map (both maps are meant to be underground). That being said, this is a good start on a different kind of map. It should be possible to recycle it into the map two maps south of Dimond's Cove (i.e., one map south the current 016-1), if you take the liberty of connecting the river there to the big stream coming from the logging camp. What you have in the upper left corner looks like a bit of a pond; part of the river might (over)flow into that with the rest continuing on to the north-east. (This would require a bridge or ford on one side of the pond, of course.)

I am curious how easy it will be to connect this map to 016-1, though, as we will have a clash of tilesets here. Perhaps some intermediate tiles will be required.

Correspondingly, what you have in the south-west right now should be no more than hills, and the north-east should have a mountain.

Crush, Xaru, do both of you consider that acceptable?

Sorry again for my imprecision in the request I sent out,

-- fate

I'm working on the map I took over from octalot, which is south-west of Dimond's cove. I'm trying to work in the new forest and swamp tilesets as well. (See also http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... =13&t=6150).

The map due south of Dimond's cove ends in a broken bridge -- maybe this map could be south of that?

aro

Eh, that's no problem Fate, I've been having fun working on this so it's no problem. Nevertheless, I am glad I posted what I had so I didn't finish something totally unnecessary.

I would be fine recycling what I've done so far, it would require a number of transition tiles though.

I'll start working on the cave maps.

When you want to create overworld maps in the woodland area, please note that all maps must be 150x120 tiles including a 20 tile border and must overlap with the neighboring maps.

For copying parts from one map file to another you can use TMXCopy.

I've done a bit on the caves, not much but outlining. However since you are looking for humid caves, I do have some requests. Basically that the moss gets worked on and included: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6802 And this could be helpful as well: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5659. So basically some mossy things would be nice.
We already have animated water drippings, which look promising; however those will likely take me a while to figure out.

Alrighty, I've finished the two maps for now, although trying to make them gloomy/humid ATM is rather difficult considering the lack of tiles.

I've put them both on the same map for the sake of simplicity.
Image | .TMX

Fate, what do you think?

Xaru,

sorry, I completely missed your posting!

Your overall design is very good; it's bigger than what I had expected, and in a good way.

There are some straight walls and slightly-too-straight diagonals, though. Also, would it be possible to add a visible entrance arch to the upper map (cave_x2.png)?

As for adding humidity: There are some production-quality fungi in the following thread: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... us&start=0
I could put those together into a spritesheet and/or pixel new ones, if you think that you could make use of those. The moss you pointed to doesn't seem to be at production quality yet, though.

I could also try to add puddles or other cave features, if you can think of ways to use them...

(Of course, what we'd really need would be a higher-quality cave tileset, but that is a lot of work.)

Anyway, thank you very much!

EDIT: The moss from the thread you referenced may not be ready for release yet, but it shouldn't need that too much extra work. I will look into that as soon as time permits.

-- fate

fate wrote:Your overall design is very good; it's bigger than what I had expected, and in a good way.

*phew!* I was worried that I had designed them a bit too large, good to hear that it's fine.

fate wrote:There are some straight walls and slightly-too-straight diagonals, though. Also, would it be possible to add a visible entrance arch to the upper map (cave_x2.png)?

I'll fix up the straights/diagonals right away, looking at it again they are painfully obvious to me!

fate wrote:As for adding humidity: There are some production-quality fungi in the following thread: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... us&start=0
I could put those together into a spritesheet and/or pixel new ones, if you think that you could make use of those. The moss you pointed to doesn't seem to be at production quality yet, though.

I could also try to add puddles or other cave features, if you can think of ways to use them...

Oh anything you can think to put together would be well used! Not only in these maps, but caves that are already done. Because as you said, the main problem is the cave tileset - which is honestly tough to work with, because no matter how hard you try the caves won't look very nice. I believe that if more things were added, we could go back and edit prior cave maps in attempts to beautify them.
So anything you can do, I can find a nice use for!
(Personally, I believe the caves should be top priority because we have so many caves and people spend a lot of time in them.)

Thanks for the critiques Fate!

I am going to make Map #1. This is my idea, what do you think?

TomMan,

If this is a 3x3 or 3x4 hole, then it's small enough. Perhaps it could be very slightly more interesting by having e.g. a tiny pond in there, fed by (or feeding) a small underground rivulet?

-- fate