Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The beginning map is based on a comfort feel. It is designed to show order and make the player feel safe. One particular problem that I faced was a section of blank map of no importance. I decided to add a farm to break up the bare ground. A farm is not complete without a house. This house must be connected to a road and so on till I had a curvy path with a pond. This did still not satisfy me so I created waterfall. The problem with a waterfall is that it must come from somewhere. I then did something I had never done before, I added a raised level and put water into it. I then faced another problem for I wanted the map to be as open as possible, going back to that safe feel. To accomplish this open feel I had to make a river that fed the waterfall and the cliff it was on, accessible. I decided to make a ramp that went to the top of the cliff and down into the river before climbing the other side of the river and going back down the cliff. This effect would create two humps with a river running through it with no sign of a cliff. Now the problems started. First I discovered the river had to be at least 4 blocks wide so as to have a ramp go up both sides (added water in the editor automatically has cliffs surrounding it). The heights surrounding the water had to be 2 blocks wide for there to be ramps. These difficulties took me at least half an hour to overcome. Here is the picture of the finished river: