Making a map

So hello there, I’ll start with a screenshot.


At this moment my map looks like this. Basically my question is: Do you know any good tutorials or tips on how to make the map look better, like mountains or hills around the map so that players won’t fall from the world, or something like a very heavy fog. Or even a huge fence around the tiny map and a fog on the other side. Like I really need help with that cause my map looks awful without that:)

I will be very thankful for any help:)

I’m assuming this is meant to be fairly realistic, so we can look at reality for some ideas…

Have you ever seen a street that looks like that? I haven’t. Even the most boring, cookie cutter ‘McMansion’ developments have more variation - driveways, garages, gardens, pathways, backlots, shrubs, flowerbeds, etc. Even if it’s an army barracks, there are likely to be more details - flagpoles, parade areas, admin buildings, etc.

This obviously requires more assets, and more work, which could be a problem if you under very tight deadlines.

In terms of only building a small section of a much larger world, it would be good to have some form of internal logic. Not necessarily real world logic, but something that ties into your story, world or gameplay mechanic.

Surreal: a small enclave on the top of a high rocky pinnacle, surrounded by crawling clouds. Only the top of the rocky tower is green and lush, like a piece of suburbia ripped from the ground. The background is so far away is can be a skydome.

Gameplay: there is some force field, timer or allowable zone (such as a person under house arrest with an ankle tracker) that only allows movement in a small area. We can see further down the street, but can’t ever get there (allowing you to build to a much lower LoD)

Real world: we are in a cul-de-sac in a suburban neighbourhood, and the only exit is blocked- by a tree, military roadblock, quarantine zone - whatever works for the narrative. Because the road turns a corner, we can’t see that far - and the houses all have garden fences that block view and progress.

Sci-fi: a test area in a large sci-fi bunker. The walls are concrete and metal, and drip with rust - but the lights on the ceiling give a reasonable approximation to sunlight.

…there are thousands of ways to do what you are asking, from simply blacking out the inaccessible areas, a wall of dense fog, a glowing forcefield, etc. None of them will make your map look better, though - that needs more work, and a lot more assets and texture variation.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

Scribbler

Hello
sorry for posting this problem to this thread but im new there…
I have a big problem with making map using Google Maps.
Is there someone who can tell me a tutorial ? I watched some tutorials on YT but nothing works well for me :confused: Thanks

Scribbler,
I assume you thought that the map is nearly finished. If so you’re terribly wrong. The map is in the early beginning( I just made a one house and copied it. Same with trees, fences etc). Believe me, it will get more various with time. Thanks for your very informative reply, but you didn’t actually answered my question. Believe me, I’m not lacking any creativity wit filling this map. I just asked for some tutorials to make my ideas real. Any tutorials on how to make something like you wrote : blacking out the inaccessible areas, a wall of dense fog, a glowing forcefield, etc. Believe me, I have a lot of interesting ideas and motives how this map will look like, but I’m a bit too green to make it real all by myself so any tutorials would be good:)

Thanks

Fair enough - didn’t mean to sound condescending. Sounded like you were stuck for ideas.

Be helpful to know what you had in mind before suggesting tutorials - an animated scrolling texture for a forcefield is a very different tutorial to a ‘fog of war’ effect.

I think it would be great if you could suggest any good tutorials on ‘fog of war’, because I think it would look more cooler and be easier to make. So waiting for any good tutorials:)

Thanks

Took me a while to find it, but this looked interesting:

Transforming-vertices-into-orthographic

Not a ‘step by step’ tutorial, but you should be able to implement the techniques described.