{"id":601,"date":"2026-05-14T03:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T03:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/?p=601"},"modified":"2026-05-14T03:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T03:41:14","slug":"map-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/2026\/05\/14\/map-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Map Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

1.Understanding the GDD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Based on the draft, my team and I agreed that this was a 2.5D game and quickly decided to use Don’t Starve<\/em> as a reference for creating the maps and backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I hadn\u2019t yet settled on a style with the other artist on the team and I wasn\u2019t familiar with map creation, I opted for digital painting, which I felt most confident with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was the first map I ever created. Since I wasn\u2019t sure how the programmers would handle the assets, I placed everything on a single layer. It wasn\u2019t until later, after they explained it to me, that I realized I needed to separate the ground, the map\u2019s edges, and the vegetation, because the programmers would have to \u201creassemble\u201d the assets in the game engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These are the \u201cparts\u201d I\u2019m providing for the second time. I\u2019ve also learned that, due to the screen size, the ground section requires a canvas of a specific size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to the game mechanics, I also drew some collectibles scattered across the map. Since the art style wasn\u2019t finalized at the time, I just sketched two simple ones for testing purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once I had decided on the style, I started by sketching with watercolors on paper, then scanning the drawings into my computer. After making minor adjustments in the drawing software, I sent them to the programmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Misty placed the character in the scene, we noticed a problem: the background was too saturated, making it stand out more than the character, and the scan was blurry. So I lowered the saturation and increased the brightness to keep the colors from looking muddy, and I also improved the image quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here are the two revised versions. Ultimately, we felt that the image above looked better.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

2.After The First Playtest<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make the game feel more complete, I created a mini-map that shows players their location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the same time, I redrew the food items to increase their variety while aligning them with the animal behaviors described in the copy. I also created some trash that would appear in the scene due to a change in the game mechanics (this mechanic was later removed because it didn\u2019t fit the GDD theme).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As the project progressed, I began working on the second map\u2014the lake area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Following Misty’s suggestion, I drew some rocks along the edges of the Lake District map as decoration, so that readers would be enclosed by the rocks and wouldn’t see the unmodeled void beyond the map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3.After The Second Playtest<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since some players found the collectibles hard to spot and the layout and scenery confusing, I created two rough sketches of how the map assets should be placed, but ultimately didn\u2019t get around to implementing them due to time constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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4.Final Playtest<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last playtest didn’t yield much feedback on the background or items, but due to a programming issue, only two types of collectibles were implemented, even though players needed to collect four. Since three of them looked identical, the last one didn’t appear to be an interactive item.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another issue that hasn\u2019t been addressed yet is that I\u2019m in the habit of using colored pencils for outlines. After scanning, the blue of the colored pencils stands out so much that some players mistakenly believe the background walls with blue borders are interactive. I\u2019ll pay closer attention to details like this in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1.Understanding the GDD Based on the draft, my team and I agreed that this was a 2.5D game and quickly decided to use Don’t Starve as a reference for creating the maps and backgrounds. Since I hadn\u2019t yet settled on a style with the other artist on the team and I wasn\u2019t familiar with map […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-semester1-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":627,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/xz16u24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}