[How to;basic;mapping] The ultimate mapping tutorial.

Hello mappers, newbs, not mappers and other persons viewing this thread.

I'll be going to explain you how to create a rpg map. Yes, you heard me correct, I'll be explaining you every aspect and how to create that to get you a proper and playable map. Since this will take some time to write, I suggest you not to post 'You didn't add this', because everything will be added later. I will explain everything in chapters, which will be the following:
Chapter I
- Choices
- Your map editor
- Planning your map
- Getting ideas
Chapter II
- Nature
- Caves
Chapter III
- Cities (will be rewriten by Mackan)
Chapter IV
- Details
- Randomizing
Chapter V
- Storyline
- Quests
- Spawns
- Npcs
Overview City Mapping Tutorial

As you have seen, this are 5 chapters with 12 sub-chapters, now that's gonna take it's time to write. Anyway, enough talked, let's begin our journey through the world of rpg.

Chapter I
Choices

Every mapper needs to take decissions, like what they want to add to the map, what they don't want to add, the shape, what will be in, what not. You name it.
As you take these decissions you will find out that you can't add everything you want. And maybe the most important choice: which map-editor will you use? You can think, oh, does it makes a difference? On which I will say, yes. Later more about the map editors. Other choices you need to make when you are developing your own rpg server are, will I do it alone, or shall I find another mapper to help me? Do I need to set up a team to script things and make a website? The outcome of your server will depend on all these things. And you should ask yourself as well if you have enough experience to start a serious project.
And the last choice you need to make before you can start is, what will the exp rate be? Low (3-15), medium (15-50), or high (50+). Because the style of the map will be different at an exp rate of 10 than the style when the rate will be 999. Now, enough talked about this.

Your map editor

Your map editor is important, it's like your work spot at work, or your schoolbank at school. You need to choose if you want to use RME or Simone, or a combination of these two. If you're using Simone, you'll need to do a lot by hand, but the detailing goes fine. If you're using RME every border will be done automatic, and house creating goes at a high speed, but proper detailing takes pretty long, and it's hard since not all items are in proper categorizes (yet!). When using them both, the only disadvantage is that you need to switch between the 2 map editors, which cost you some time. Furthermore, make sure you always got the latest version of the map editor(s) you're using, and if that's possible also add extra useful stuff (such as extensions for RME, or the new materials.xml for simone). Now I hope you were able to choose which map editor you're going to use. [/size]

Planning your map

Planning your map is important, after you have choosen your map editor, you can start a bit with mapping. But I suggest you to make a global drawing of your map first. I'll show you mine as example:

Now as you can see, I've drawn the continents, made dots for the cities and draw some lines (which are supposed to be the rivers). No detailing at all, this works the best, because you can get stressed if it doesn't match . Now you've made a drawing for your map, you can (if you want to) open your map editor and draw the borderlines in it, though this is optional.

Getting ideas

To map, you need ideas and inspiration. It can happen that you have an idea, but don't have the inspiration, don't worry, this is extremely normal, and everybody has it.
About the getting ideas: to map something, you need an idea (unless it's just boring nature, or another cave). You can collect ideas by looking at other mapping here at otfans, or another Open Tibia forum. You can also google a bit for ideas, and look at photos on the web. Watching movies will help as well. If you get an idea at school, and you think you can't remember it, write it down somewhere on a mapper, so you can make it at home.
You might also want to add a main storyline, which is the most important storyline in your map, this helps to get things lined up. Like an ancient story or so. Well, I hope I gave you enough general information.

Chapter II
Nature

Nature, it's the filling of the main ground, and 90% of the nature on the main ground is just boring forest, jungle, desert, or plain fields. Now you can just do it fast, tree here, tree there, and some bushes, or you make it detailed. I'll give you 2 examples, and you may say which nature would be good, and which not:


And, which one do you think is wrong? If you have a bit of feeling for mapping, you would know screenshot 2 is bad, and 1 is good. Why? Let me explain you that.
Try to find a photo of nature at google. You will see it's a dence forest (if you did it right), and not a huge open field with 3 or 4 trees. Also the nature contains way to less details, such as flowers, grass tufts, bushes and small/large stones.
Of course, your nature doesn't have to be dence forest only, you can also make some fields, but they'll need details as well. I'll give you 3 examples, 2 good, 1 wrong.



Now, you can say for sure that screenshot number 4 is good, which is true. Also screenshot 3 is good, which means 1 and 2 are wrong, let me explain why.
Screenshot 1 is wrong because, even though it is not that wrong, it doesn't have any details, except from the grass tufts.
Now, not all nature has to be boring, you can also make some special places, such as a dark cathedral, or a swamp.


Here is screenshot 2 false, why? Because it once again doesn't have any details at all. By now I hoped you already learned details are important.

Mountains

I created a special sub-sub-catogery for this, since mountains are common, but mostly made wrong. I know there's already a great mapping tutorial (by Mannen med Brillorna), and it is way better to view thatone than the one I'll be posting here, but I guess it doesn't really matter, since mine is good as well.
--------------------------------
In simone you press J and jump to ID 919. In RME you go to the terrain palette and than to nature. select the mountain filling in the first row.
Now draw a bit mountain filling over the ground, until you get a good shape for the mountain.

Now, that's going to be my mountain. I made a small cave to the inside, where a stair will come.
now let's give it some borders. When you're working with RME, press the border button (in terrain palette, the button 1 row up of pz-zone tool).
In simone's you will need to do all borders by hand, (unless you modified it and you got auto-border in it).

That's my mountain now with borders.
If you don't have auto border, this figure shows you which id goes where:

Now we're almost done with the first floor, the thing that needs to be done now is the stair, and some small detailing.
Add some small stones (if you have a small cave like I do), and some mosses (or however they are called).

Code:

IDS: Small stones: 3610-3614 and 3648-3652
    Mosses:4580-4594
    Archway: 914-915

And the result is:


Now press the '+' button to go 1 floor up.
Here are multiple ways to continue on your mountain (this depends on the land it's placed on). This are the 3 most-used ways.
Note! The yellow square is from the stair I placed inside the cave. Now, there are also multiple ways to detail your mountain:


For the grass:
grass tufts 6216-6219
trees: 2700-2708
Flowers: 2740-2743 + 5156-4158
bushes: 2767-2768 + 2785
brach: 2770

For the rock soil:
dead tree: 2715-2716
small stones: 3610-3614 + 3648-3652
mosses: 4580-4594
big stone: 1286-1289

For the desert:
cactus: 2723-2736
grass tufts: 6216-6219


Caves

Caves are not as common as normal nature, but they are still important. They provide different places to hunt. Why? Because not all monsters like the sunlight. Take rotworms, they'll never walk above the ground. Also caves can be made in various types:
- Hunting Caves
- Passages made by humans
- Quest caves
- Mines
And caves are probably used for many more different things. Also caves can be made different in shape: long and straight, narrow and completely no straight pieces, or some kind of a 'circle'. From all 3 different types I'll give an example, but this time they're all good, and none of them is wrong.



On the first screenshot, you see a cave which has a 'circle' shape, on the second one it's a mine, with a long straight cave, and the last one is a cave with hardly any straight pieces.
Also, when making caves, remember that they are never supposed to be 100% straight lines, with exception of some small pieces of a dwarf mine.
Creature made caves: Max 5sqm straight
Human made caves: Max 15sqm straight
Mines: Max 25sqm straight
I hope I've told you enough about the nature part. If you have any questions you can send me a pm, or post in this thread.

Chapter III
Cities

Now, I hope you find a good location for your city, where they have wood and stone to build with, and water to drink with. A city must at least have:
A temple
A depot
Houses and guildhalls for players
Shops: Food shop, tool shop, magic shop, armor/weapon shop.
The temple is the first thing people build when they create a new city, so you will build it somewhere in the centre. Close to the temple will probably be a square where people can meet and trade items. Next to the square there should be a depot. After you've done this, you can fill spots up with houses, shops and some nature. Please do not place all shops in a line next to each other, this makes it boring, place them all over the city. An average city should have 50~70 houses. A town, which is rather small, should max have 30 houses. Now let me tell more about towns (In the last post I'll quote my city mapping tutorial anyways).
Towns are small, mostly just a few houses somewhere in the countryside, near some wood. They live from farming, fishing or chopping wood. They have simple houses and are rather poor. There are mostly none or a few shops in a town. I suggest to use dirt roads in a town.
Every other information about cities can be found in the last post.

Chapter IV
Details

As I mentioned before, details are really important, and you have them in any size. From small grass tufts to beds in rentable houses. You will find them everywhere, and they give a feeling to your map. Which means they are really important.
When you're mapping I suggest you to do the details immediatly, and not at the end when your whole map is done, because you will get crazy of the detailing. Also take your time for this part and take it easy. If you think it's going wrong, save the map and continue on it later, but don't say your map is done, because it's even worse if the half map is undetailed than when you did no details at all. I'll give you 3 screenshots of a house, 1 wrong, 1 good, and 1 almost good, but this time I'll tell you what's wrong or good at each screenshot, and not at the end.

So, what's wrong here?
A lot, I would say: the house doesn't have any windows, no lights, no beds. And there is no place to live in and be together, simply because there's no space for it.

This one is slightly better, but it's still not good. The things which are good are:
It has windows, lights, beds and some place to live in. But the downstairs floor is still too empty, and not good looking. It's still missing some details.

This house is finished. It has everything the second screenshot has, it also has an oven, casks, a large table, book cases and some more randomized walls. I hope you now understand with what I mean when I say details are important.

[SIZE="4"]Randomizing[/SIZE]

I see it happening a lot here on otfans. A persons makes something with Simone, but he doesn't randomize the grounds. Than some guy sees it and says 'You should randomize it'. On which you can answer 2 things: Yes, I shall randomize it, or No, the server I'll be using randomizes it for me.
If a person makes something with RME it randomizes automatically (unless you turned it off, which I doubt). On which a persons says 'Nice randomizing'. So what I'm trying to say is, don't say somebody should randomize it, because he uses a different map editor. All servers randomize the grounds nowadays.
So if you're mapping and you know which server you'll be going to use, check if it has auto-randomizing function. If not, you'll need to do it by hand, or use this special trick I found out: Download RME and open your map with it, go to the sub-menu Edit>Border options and press randomize map. RME will ask you if you're sure, because the action can not be undone. Press 'yes' and the map editor will randomize everything for you.

Chapter V
Storyline

A storyline might be useful in a map, it makes it easy to create a lot of quests (or 1 really big quest with sub-tasks), because you have a main idea. However, I can't help you with getting a storyline for your server, nor can I give tips, since there are endless possibilities which you can use.

Quests

There are a few different kind of quests, I'll list them for you, and explain what they are:
- Missions -- missions are given by a npc and mostly end there again, by gaining a reward for a task you fulfilled, however, some quests also end at a quest box, but they started at a npc.
- Kill&take -- this are on some basic servers the most common quests, fight your way to a quest chest and take the reward.
- Riddles -- (Having a harry potter moment here, Tom Riddle..) this quest, or however you want to name it, is basicly a huge riddle you'll have to solve (paradox quest as example). These quests could be filled with questions you need to answer correctly, or puzzles you'll need to solve.
- Team quests -- the name says it all, quests you'll need to do in teams. These quest can be a bit or even much longer than the normal onces, however, how longer the quests, how better the reward has to be. You can also make these quests harder, which means more monsters at 1 spawn or stronger monsters (of course not at 1 spawn).

Rewards
A quest should have a reward, else it's just a normal hunting cave/field/mountain or whatever. Also, the rewards should be attractive for players, they won't do (example!) annilhilator if they get a crown armor as reward, make it attractive for them. Also, how harder/longer the quests, the better the rewards should be. I also advice you to use rewards which are hard or even unobtainable in the rest of the server, to make the items unique, or even highly valuable, and worth to kill somebody.

Spawns

Players want to hunt, and they should be able to do that. Therefor you need spawns. First I'll explain you what they are:
Spawns are locations where monsters walk around. The monster you want to place should be able to live there (no fire devil in a swamp...). This makes it look realistic, but players can also expect what they'll encounter at certain areas.
If you're making a huntplace (there's a tutorial about this!), make sure you start with the easy monsters, and not with the hard ones, a good and right example of this is the hero cave, edron. It starts with easy outlaws if I'm right, but deep in the dungeons there are heroes, demons, and (if I'm still right) even behemoths. It all grows stronger slowly, so players can still hunt at the easy places if they're lower of level. Which means, don't make caves with demons at the cave entrance!
I hope I made myself clear with this.

Npcs

Npcs are the persons who will make your tibian life 'easier', they sell you stuff and buy stuff from you if you're in need of money. There is a large variation of npcs:
Equipment, tools, magic, spells, furniture, distance stuff, food, you name it. But these npcs aren't the only one walking around on a good server, you'll also find normal city inhabitants, one or more kings, outlaws, monks, and probably a lot more. Some of them like it to chat with you, others are annoyed and will not be happy to talk with you. Some of them can tell you rhumors (?) about a quest, or others even know one and are willing to share it with you (read the pharagraph about 'quests').
Npcs should be placed all over the map, not only in the major cities, but also in the small towns and villages, or even some lonely outlaw hidden in a cave or swamp, or an old beggar living in the wilderness.

~The End~

Hereby I hope you learned a lot about a rpg map, and of course don't hestitate to post tips and improvements! Below you'll find a tutorial about how to make rpg cities.

Sincerly yours,

Heer Karel

I saw your on otfans aswell
I can only say that it's really nice,
APPROVED

Great tutorial! I allready readed it at OTFans. it will look more clear if you put a space between each screenshot (in the begin). Just a suggestion!

Yours,
SuRv1vOr..

Survivor wrote:

Great tutorial! I allready readed it at OTFans. it will look more clear if you put a space between each screenshot (in the begin). Just a suggestion!

Yours,
SuRv1vOr..

well, had to fix some stuff first, like this forum doesn't have sizes to pust on, which I used on otfans.. But I'll see, first I'm gonna post my other tutorial here.

hmm, the forum does has sizes,
big eh?
it's just [.size=xx]text[./size]. No "" or something

Air wrote:

hmm, the forum does has sizes,
big eh?
it's just [.size=xx]text[./size]. No "" or something

uhh, well, I guess the sizes do work, but are the same which are used in word, and not otfans, right?
But that was enough offtopic, ok?

Holy crap! Did you make this? O_O
Awsome job there mate! Make more. Even greater mappers can learn something from these kinds of Tutorials.
Thanks!
Over and Out!

Nice of you taking your time typing this down.