John Harper Okay. I’ve reached the point. It’s time to make a town map. I’ve watched the entirety of the map hangouts, but I’m not even close to that point yet so I gotta ask how you got started drawing out Doskvol.
Fortunately, I have a pretty strong concept of my first Household Renovation neighborhood in my head because it’s just this amalgamation of places where I have lived. According to google, several of those towns are gerrymandered as shit, which seems like fun to draw. I mean. I don’t have large bodies of water cutting up my map. It’s inland. Would it be wise to mark in some of the major streets that swoop across the whole thing first? Also, if your brain comes up with anything to the tune of “The thing that most surprised me when making my first maps was…” then that’s good too. 🙂
Starting with a general area shape, then cutting it up with roads is good. One sort-of mistake I made when first drawing Duskwall was to start drawing clusters of buildings, using the negative space between to define roads. It’s much better to start with a gray land area, then chop it up with white roads to define your city blocks.
Since you’re in the “real world” (sort of) I’d definitely grab real road maps and cut and chop them into a new thing.
It’s also well worth your time to have a look at the demo program from Introversion – a game they never finished developing, but a good city designer – http://www.moddb.com/games/subversion-city-generator
moddb.com – Subversion City Generator