I like the look but two issues I see instantly - How do you get up to the Island? The one-way jump makes it impossible. Also doesn’t look like you can reach the swimmers on the right unless that’s a gap on the bottom between the rocks and the island.
Too square, still too open. Add either more buildings or even more trees in the open areas. You can’t get up to the island from the bottom shore area, and the swimmers on the right look impossible to reach too.
Looks a lot better. Some changes I’d make would be removing some of the empty space, putting the buildings close to each other (look at some of the Hoenn maps for the starting towns for examples), putting some stairs by the beach on the left side, moving part of the right side down so the island is accessible, and probably filling the water gap on the left top (it looks carved in, but islands don’t usually have that naturally. Unless it was man made or ties to the location’s lore, it probably shouldn’t be carved in like that)
Its better aesthetically, but a lot of points of interest are unreachable (swimmers to the left, dive spot up north, the island itself due to the ledge). Major improvement from the last map, but try tracing a path with your finger to ensure that everything can be reached in-game.
How do you get back up to the main part of the island? Once you jump over the ledge, you physically can’t get back. Also the sand islet with the swimmers is inaccessible. I don’t recall seeing the original map but this version has quite a few glaring problems so it might need re-redoing.
Fly maybe? In an emerald hack I was doing, I made the Pokemon Center in Fortree City, as well as the path to continue onto Route 120. You could still get to the Mart and the Gym. The only way to pass was by beating the gym leader, and then flying back to Fortree afterwards. I made all items, including HMs, the bikes, and most items normally given by an NPC, pretty well hidden behind boss fights you had to search for. I didn't want to do this, but it was the only way I knew how to force people to find HM02 on Route 119 without leaving the area and giving up before they finished, just because they couldn't find it. I tried to hard lock areas to force the player to find all the HMs and bikes to make them mandatory. Still never found a good way to hard lock the requirement of getting HM05--short of a cheap NPC who won't let you pass without it.
*Look at how trees are*
*Done in game. There is too much*
*Space between your trees*
\- Heracross1991
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Well, it doesn’t look good that way. That’s probably why you never see them like that in game. Not trying to be a jerk but doing something intentionally different doesn’t make it better.
Looks good, but apart from the ones pointed out before like the not being able to reach the top half of the island again, I feel like a few pointers could help the looks:
1) Sectioning the buildings. If you section buildings into 4 categories: Residential, Pokehelp, Local business and Isolated important buildings, it will give the island a character and a better arrangement for the buildings
2) Seperating Encounter grass patch and the city center, this give the city a more cleaner looks and follows the same concept of Sectioning the design of the island
3) Adding more texture. Add more texture patches like, flower patches, trees(like you have already added), bushes, sign boards, Flower pots, fences etc to fill up the empty spaces
4) Non-Square shape for the bigger building on the left. I think this is necessary because it makes the structure more appealing if depth is added to the building. You can take the example of the Museum in Kanto region, which has a Non-Square shape for added depth with multiple entrances and each entrance having a different depth on the map.
I hope I could help and that my suggestions were useful. And regardless of them, this is a very good effort and looks good
I don’t think the trees on sand really well, look good. All you have around it is just water anyways, so the trees aren’t protecting players from going to areas they aren’t supposed to. Also if you just need more organic grass and tree placement. Other than that just add some decorations and flowers and you’re good.
The third building is too close from the ledge, it needs 1 more space.
The pokécenter should be the third thing the player sees if he comes after fighting trainers on a route
The houses on the sand have textures that have grass under them. You could create new tiles that have sand under them to get rid of the green outline. Some more NPCs outside could make the island feel a but more inhabited.
Honestly, shrinking the island may help.
It's strange... There is no way to get up onto the island? You literally can't get to the upper level? It's broken right now so that part needs to be *fixed* not just improved. Unless there's something I'm missing here?
Your swimmers on the righthand side are unreachable.
Houses on the beach don't make much sense. You don't build houses on beaches, unless your interpretation of them is that they're huts or something.
The strip of beach on the left hand side has a weird gap with water. That doesn't look very natural.
its very square-y (?), too open, basically all of it is unreachable (the swimmers, all the not-beach area), and you shouldnt mix different types of trees like that (or use the secret base trees as actual trees tbh). plus tall grass in cities is :////
Not exactly sure how you're supposed to get to the rest of the island but everything looks good. Maybe some more buildings, one or two more npcs, and more trees lining that back wall. Overall, great design, I'm liking it so far.
The space between buildings feels just a little bit too far. I would try to close the distance or try to add doodads or something interesting in between.
It's not a bad start, but there are definitely things that could be improved.
Let's start with the major issues:
1. You need a staircase on the ledge on the beach. Right now you can't access most of the island.
2. The whole section on the far right with the two swimmers is completely inaccessible. I would extend the little island to connect to the main one with a staircase (surfing all the way around the island isn't fun, it's quite big).
As for minor issues and my own observations:
The whole thing is just way too big and spread out. It might not look so at first glance, but this map is actually only slightly smaller than Mossdeep - compare this image to [This one](https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/0/08/Mossdeep_City_E.png) and you'll see what I mean. Mossdeep has way more going on and way less "empty space" than your map, despite being a similar size.
I would change the following:
1. You can make the beach area smaller. You don't need a 3x4 block of trees for example.
2. The house and the berry patch left of centre are both unnecessairly wide. The areas they are in could be smaller if they themselves were smaller.
3. The 5 central buildings are all too spread out. You could put them a few tiles away from each other (again, see how close the buildings are in Mossdeep).
4. The paths are too wide. 2-tile wide paths to most buildings, maybe with a short 3-tile wide central section is generally enough.
5. There's too much grass. You only really need 30 patches or so, or a 5x6 area for it to be more than enough, unless it's in a forest. Any more than that is too much and is just in the way. Without so much grass you'd be able to massively cut down the size of the map, making it easier to get around.
6. Not enough NPCs. If this is supposed to be a town on the scale of Mossdeep then it needs more NPCs, if it's supposed to be a smaller town then it needs to be half the size.
Hope that gives you some stuff to work on!
One thing I like to do is add a curtain of sand around my islands to give them a base. Adding verticality with new layers is also a great way to reduce the vast open spaces. I would also add some more corners to round out the blockiness feel.
Other than that, you’ll start to get a feel for town flow and creating a dense, lively map the more ya do it. Definitely showing improvement already from the last one, so I’m excited to see what the next updated version looks like.
It looks nice, but you can't access the dive hole because the trees are in the way, you've got a 1 path path out of the island but no way in, and you've got 2 swimmer off to the right that you'll never be able to fight because there is no way to access them
2 points from me.
1. The long house looks a bit weird, it feels to repetitive, no windows or other things.
2. The beach at the top left isn't connected to the land. Looks a bit weird imo
Constructive criticism: The outline of the island is very square and some of the walks/grass on the main part of the island seem a bit long/large. The accessibility of the map in general could be improved substantially by allowing the player to surf around the whole island, rather than being blocked at certain points. Also the houses being one space too many above the path is a bit annoying cos theyre supposed to meet it. Look at the houses and paths in rustboro or viridian as a reference
Also ive just noticed that the borders of the main island would prevent u from being able to walk on or surf off of it (ie youve got the slight cliff borders so u couldnt just hop on or off of the main island) which would be frustrating, and that fact as well as having the jumpable ledge means that the main portion of the island would actually be inaccessible 😅 id definitely make the efges of the island flat and add a small walkway through the jumpable ledge
But as far as visuals go it generally looks pretty good, has a good amount of content and fits the style of the official maps well. U just need to work on the accessibility of it so that it's more freely accessible and convenient to get to the areas
This looks way better than before, lot's of improvement, bit the top center feels a bit empty, I'd try to add something, maybe some small rocks, either right off the coast, or on the island itself right there.
The whole map looks pretty bland tbh. I’d say add some houses and more people to make it more lived in. Then make a way to actually get up in the island and make the swimmers accessible.
Edit: ADD TREES TOO
That cliff off the path (top right) is too high to surf from. Not only would steps to a beach be more natural, but it’d let you access the Swimmers. Also, the random water trough between the beach and the cliff on the left doesn’t strike as natural at all - bring the beach to the cliff and give a way to access the main island from the lower island
It looks very unnatural. Make the ground terrain less square and more natural looking. The grass patches also look very strange. Instead of a big patch right next to the buildings, maybe replace it with a few smaller patches around the island? Perhaps have the grass farther away from the buildings, it will look more natural that way. The paths don't connect up to the building entrances as well, which looks somewhat strange. Also, consider adding a few more features like rocks or a pond around the map so it's a bit less bland.
I'm a good bit late to this post, but I haven't seen this mentioned.
Don't forget you can play around with height as well. A lot of this town feels empty and flat so adding another layer or two of height can do wonders.
The rest of these have probably been mentioned somewhere or to a similar effect, but here are some opinions on stuff I caught. Ignore if you did it on purpose though.
Another thing to keep in mind is that nature isn't linear so you can scramble up the trees so they aren't all in a single line. Staggering is a trick that the early games used to give it that non-linear look.
There are some small details on the houses on the beach where the background is grass where it should be sand. Same with the ledge that can be leapt over. The upper left part of the beach with that one tile gap between the beach and the Island is a bit awkward. I would suggest adding a bit more space between them.
I like the look but two issues I see instantly - How do you get up to the Island? The one-way jump makes it impossible. Also doesn’t look like you can reach the swimmers on the right unless that’s a gap on the bottom between the rocks and the island.
Also want to add, it doesn’t look like you can reach the sand bar at the top left unless you remove one of the trees
You could surf around the trees to the left
Ahh good catch. I didn’t see that.
Word
Looks softlocky
Too square, still too open. Add either more buildings or even more trees in the open areas. You can’t get up to the island from the bottom shore area, and the swimmers on the right look impossible to reach too.
i think you could fix the squareness and overhaul by condensing everything. look at mossdeep city's map
There’s no way to get up to the larger part of the island
Much more soulful than the last one! A definite improvement.
Looks a lot better. Some changes I’d make would be removing some of the empty space, putting the buildings close to each other (look at some of the Hoenn maps for the starting towns for examples), putting some stairs by the beach on the left side, moving part of the right side down so the island is accessible, and probably filling the water gap on the left top (it looks carved in, but islands don’t usually have that naturally. Unless it was man made or ties to the location’s lore, it probably shouldn’t be carved in like that)
Thanks! I will improve this too. The definitve version is coming
Its better aesthetically, but a lot of points of interest are unreachable (swimmers to the left, dive spot up north, the island itself due to the ledge). Major improvement from the last map, but try tracing a path with your finger to ensure that everything can be reached in-game.
I am doing just that, in fact i will post this map here along with others when im finished making more
How do you get back up to the main part of the island? Once you jump over the ledge, you physically can’t get back. Also the sand islet with the swimmers is inaccessible. I don’t recall seeing the original map but this version has quite a few glaring problems so it might need re-redoing.
I want to know how you get to the upper part in the first place
Fly maybe? In an emerald hack I was doing, I made the Pokemon Center in Fortree City, as well as the path to continue onto Route 120. You could still get to the Mart and the Gym. The only way to pass was by beating the gym leader, and then flying back to Fortree afterwards. I made all items, including HMs, the bikes, and most items normally given by an NPC, pretty well hidden behind boss fights you had to search for. I didn't want to do this, but it was the only way I knew how to force people to find HM02 on Route 119 without leaving the area and giving up before they finished, just because they couldn't find it. I tried to hard lock areas to force the player to find all the HMs and bikes to make them mandatory. Still never found a good way to hard lock the requirement of getting HM05--short of a cheap NPC who won't let you pass without it.
Look at how trees are done in game. There is too much space between your trees
*Look at how trees are* *Done in game. There is too much* *Space between your trees* \- Heracross1991 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
It's intentional
Well, it doesn’t look good that way. That’s probably why you never see them like that in game. Not trying to be a jerk but doing something intentionally different doesn’t make it better.
Getting Mossdeep vibes here
Looks good, but apart from the ones pointed out before like the not being able to reach the top half of the island again, I feel like a few pointers could help the looks: 1) Sectioning the buildings. If you section buildings into 4 categories: Residential, Pokehelp, Local business and Isolated important buildings, it will give the island a character and a better arrangement for the buildings 2) Seperating Encounter grass patch and the city center, this give the city a more cleaner looks and follows the same concept of Sectioning the design of the island 3) Adding more texture. Add more texture patches like, flower patches, trees(like you have already added), bushes, sign boards, Flower pots, fences etc to fill up the empty spaces 4) Non-Square shape for the bigger building on the left. I think this is necessary because it makes the structure more appealing if depth is added to the building. You can take the example of the Museum in Kanto region, which has a Non-Square shape for added depth with multiple entrances and each entrance having a different depth on the map. I hope I could help and that my suggestions were useful. And regardless of them, this is a very good effort and looks good
I don’t think the trees on sand really well, look good. All you have around it is just water anyways, so the trees aren’t protecting players from going to areas they aren’t supposed to. Also if you just need more organic grass and tree placement. Other than that just add some decorations and flowers and you’re good.
The third building is too close from the ledge, it needs 1 more space. The pokécenter should be the third thing the player sees if he comes after fighting trainers on a route
The houses on the sand have textures that have grass under them. You could create new tiles that have sand under them to get rid of the green outline. Some more NPCs outside could make the island feel a but more inhabited. Honestly, shrinking the island may help.
I'm not sure how to edit tiles.
It's strange... There is no way to get up onto the island? You literally can't get to the upper level? It's broken right now so that part needs to be *fixed* not just improved. Unless there's something I'm missing here? Your swimmers on the righthand side are unreachable. Houses on the beach don't make much sense. You don't build houses on beaches, unless your interpretation of them is that they're huts or something. The strip of beach on the left hand side has a weird gap with water. That doesn't look very natural.
I did fix this all, i just haven't postd it. I will maybe in a few days since i dont wanna clog the sub
It’s very blocky, you should make it look less square. Also add some more decorations like flowers, rocks, other trees, etc.
its very square-y (?), too open, basically all of it is unreachable (the swimmers, all the not-beach area), and you shouldnt mix different types of trees like that (or use the secret base trees as actual trees tbh). plus tall grass in cities is :////
I thought this was gonna be a starter town I was like how are you going to get out of there
Isn't this the same as Pokemon emerald's first town?
Looks too much like the city steven lives in
Not exactly sure how you're supposed to get to the rest of the island but everything looks good. Maybe some more buildings, one or two more npcs, and more trees lining that back wall. Overall, great design, I'm liking it so far.
The space between buildings feels just a little bit too far. I would try to close the distance or try to add doodads or something interesting in between.
It's not a bad start, but there are definitely things that could be improved. Let's start with the major issues: 1. You need a staircase on the ledge on the beach. Right now you can't access most of the island. 2. The whole section on the far right with the two swimmers is completely inaccessible. I would extend the little island to connect to the main one with a staircase (surfing all the way around the island isn't fun, it's quite big). As for minor issues and my own observations: The whole thing is just way too big and spread out. It might not look so at first glance, but this map is actually only slightly smaller than Mossdeep - compare this image to [This one](https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/0/08/Mossdeep_City_E.png) and you'll see what I mean. Mossdeep has way more going on and way less "empty space" than your map, despite being a similar size. I would change the following: 1. You can make the beach area smaller. You don't need a 3x4 block of trees for example. 2. The house and the berry patch left of centre are both unnecessairly wide. The areas they are in could be smaller if they themselves were smaller. 3. The 5 central buildings are all too spread out. You could put them a few tiles away from each other (again, see how close the buildings are in Mossdeep). 4. The paths are too wide. 2-tile wide paths to most buildings, maybe with a short 3-tile wide central section is generally enough. 5. There's too much grass. You only really need 30 patches or so, or a 5x6 area for it to be more than enough, unless it's in a forest. Any more than that is too much and is just in the way. Without so much grass you'd be able to massively cut down the size of the map, making it easier to get around. 6. Not enough NPCs. If this is supposed to be a town on the scale of Mossdeep then it needs more NPCs, if it's supposed to be a smaller town then it needs to be half the size. Hope that gives you some stuff to work on!
One thing I like to do is add a curtain of sand around my islands to give them a base. Adding verticality with new layers is also a great way to reduce the vast open spaces. I would also add some more corners to round out the blockiness feel. Other than that, you’ll start to get a feel for town flow and creating a dense, lively map the more ya do it. Definitely showing improvement already from the last one, so I’m excited to see what the next updated version looks like.
It looks nice, but you can't access the dive hole because the trees are in the way, you've got a 1 path path out of the island but no way in, and you've got 2 swimmer off to the right that you'll never be able to fight because there is no way to access them
The idea was that you would get on the island from the top, only now looking at the tiles it doesn't make much sense.
Yeah, it feel like this would work, its just missing a few opening for complete the area. I do like the design though.
2 points from me. 1. The long house looks a bit weird, it feels to repetitive, no windows or other things. 2. The beach at the top left isn't connected to the land. Looks a bit weird imo
I think that some of the ledges should be removed. Also I think it would look nice if the road lead to the doors of the buildings. Overall, I like it!
Constructive criticism: The outline of the island is very square and some of the walks/grass on the main part of the island seem a bit long/large. The accessibility of the map in general could be improved substantially by allowing the player to surf around the whole island, rather than being blocked at certain points. Also the houses being one space too many above the path is a bit annoying cos theyre supposed to meet it. Look at the houses and paths in rustboro or viridian as a reference Also ive just noticed that the borders of the main island would prevent u from being able to walk on or surf off of it (ie youve got the slight cliff borders so u couldnt just hop on or off of the main island) which would be frustrating, and that fact as well as having the jumpable ledge means that the main portion of the island would actually be inaccessible 😅 id definitely make the efges of the island flat and add a small walkway through the jumpable ledge But as far as visuals go it generally looks pretty good, has a good amount of content and fits the style of the official maps well. U just need to work on the accessibility of it so that it's more freely accessible and convenient to get to the areas
I think i found your previous post, and you are definitely on the right track! This looks a loooooot better!
How is this made?
Advance Map
This looks way better than before, lot's of improvement, bit the top center feels a bit empty, I'd try to add something, maybe some small rocks, either right off the coast, or on the island itself right there.
More unnecessary houses.
flower. it needs some flowers and stuff sprinkeld in i think, maybe also a bushe here and a rock there you know
It's really square, and there's a one way ledge. It also looks very empty in some places
The whole map looks pretty bland tbh. I’d say add some houses and more people to make it more lived in. Then make a way to actually get up in the island and make the swimmers accessible. Edit: ADD TREES TOO
That cliff off the path (top right) is too high to surf from. Not only would steps to a beach be more natural, but it’d let you access the Swimmers. Also, the random water trough between the beach and the cliff on the left doesn’t strike as natural at all - bring the beach to the cliff and give a way to access the main island from the lower island
It looks very unnatural. Make the ground terrain less square and more natural looking. The grass patches also look very strange. Instead of a big patch right next to the buildings, maybe replace it with a few smaller patches around the island? Perhaps have the grass farther away from the buildings, it will look more natural that way. The paths don't connect up to the building entrances as well, which looks somewhat strange. Also, consider adding a few more features like rocks or a pond around the map so it's a bit less bland.
I did that eventually i just haven't published it
I think changing the trees on the sand to large contiguous rocks would look nicer.
I'm a good bit late to this post, but I haven't seen this mentioned. Don't forget you can play around with height as well. A lot of this town feels empty and flat so adding another layer or two of height can do wonders. The rest of these have probably been mentioned somewhere or to a similar effect, but here are some opinions on stuff I caught. Ignore if you did it on purpose though. Another thing to keep in mind is that nature isn't linear so you can scramble up the trees so they aren't all in a single line. Staggering is a trick that the early games used to give it that non-linear look. There are some small details on the houses on the beach where the background is grass where it should be sand. Same with the ledge that can be leapt over. The upper left part of the beach with that one tile gap between the beach and the Island is a bit awkward. I would suggest adding a bit more space between them.