Map Making

[Guest]

Some of you guys are really good at making maps, I was wondering what methods you use to make them. A lot of maps I see are really well proportioned and consistent, do you use any particular applications to make them? Or is it just hard work in paint/photoshop etc? Any input is appreciated.

[Enigmatism415]

MS Paint for me. I want to control every pixel.

[Guest]

Ah, so you do it on a pixel by pixel basis? I see, that makes sense. I was just working on a couple of maps, was curious if there was some sort of map generator or whether you just did it the hard way. I'm not fussed with being super accurate at the minute so guess I'll just do them rough until I'm ready to set them in stone. Do you have any recommendations on room dimensions, i.e. how many pixels wide the typical corridor is etc?

[Enigmatism415]

Ah, so you do it on a pixel by pixel basis? I see, that makes sense. I was just working on a couple of maps, was curious if there was some sort of map generator or whether you just did it the hard way. I'm not fussed with being super accurate at the minute so guess I'll just do them rough until I'm ready to set them in stone. Do you have any recommendations on room dimensions, i.e. how many pixels wide the typical corridor is etc?

Check out the first map I've ever made for the community nearly eight years ago:

http://www.bioflames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=951&sid=40b1a778a26ff71fc27a426cbfd01c1f

It sucks, and I'm grateful that Grey Fox, greko, Carnivol, and Alzaire even entertained my attempt, but I also did it "free-hand" as far as MS Paint goes... no references (this was before I had seen the legitimate RPD 1F map... only Black~Crow's).

The first serious map that I had made for the community was of the Laboratory Chapter; I just took the retail RE2 Lab maps and modified them using MS Paint, so the proportions were already established for me.

[Guest]

Good job on the lab maps! I think I've got some ideas, I guess it's just going to take practice till I come up with my own methods and own standards on dimensions. Pixel by pixel seems the best way to go, I don't need to be really accurate although I'm trying to construct an overall map so I need to keep some level of consistency so things can fit together better.

[Guest]

Here's my first proper attempt at a map, not pretty by any means, but it gets the job done. Let me know what you think, it's a map for Sewer ROOM 201. It's just a basic map for now, I'm just trying to get some sort of method together and get to grips with pixel dimensions before I can start making them look more like the original maps.

[Enigmatism415]

It looks great! Keep up the good work and I'll provide whatever honest, constructive feedback I can.

The "Alpha Sewer" is actually the only area of BH1.5 that I'd never attempted to map out, so I am happy that you are taking on this challenge. The four rooms that you cited in the Sewer thread (or perhaps the first collection actually depicts two rooms?) are the only "green areas" we have to work with, so quite a bit of educated guesswork will be crucial to your map.

[Guest]

Thanks! Yeah, I noticed not many people were making an effort with the green sewers so thought I'd at least try and come up with something that might make some sense. Like you say it's going to have to take some guess work, but with such little information in the public domain right now that's to be expected. It wont hurt to have a little fun with it and try and come up with something that might work, even if it turns out to be wrong. It seems obvious that the running theme at the time was "L tunnels," it seems to be a complex of simple L and C shaped corridors and I plan to just mess around with shapes and see if anything pops out. It needs to somehow fit with the RPD, and perhaps even parts of the brown sewers as well, trying to understand the puzzle element that appears to be in ROOM 201 (it would be odd to have all those features without them actually being meaningful) might also give some insight into how the section is supposed to be played out, and ultimately laid out. My guess is that ROOM 201 is the central hub of this section, so all the adjacent rooms should have some revolving purpose around this room, giving meaning to the many doors in this corridor.

[Enigmatism415]

The low ceiling of the passage leading to the ladder tempts me to believe that Sherry was meant to explore this area first (similar to her playable quest in retail RE2); notice too that the ledge at the opposite end of this low passage would protect her temporarily from the wandering zombies. I wonder whether the ladder led to the Service Bay (positioned farther south in Era-2/3) or the outdoor alley.

[Guest]

That was my initial thought as well, although looking at the dimensions of the ladder, taking the real L Tunnel in Drains as an example, there might just be enough head room for Leon/Elza. The ladders look slightly different sizes, although perhaps with the dimensions of doors and some clever photoshop we can see just how high the head room is and know for absolute sure if adults can access it or not.





However, if that is actually the case, that the ladder is an access for Sherry, then understanding where and when Elza meets Sherry in the RPD might give us some clues as to where the ladder leads, and where Elza would need to access the sewers instead. It would give us a better starting point for connecting the rest of the rooms to the RPD and perhaps make it a lot easier to map out this section of the sewers. That is of course assuming this sewer is connected to the RPD and not another complex.

[Guest]

Let's just assume this is a puzzle for Sherry, I have a theory for this room. Sherry enters the room from down the ladder, makes her way down the passage and takes a right. As she ducks under and enters the small room, spiders crawl out the vent. She avoids the spiders and climbs up on to the ledge and finds a key (lets call it key "A" for example) amongst the trash. She heads back down the passage and climbs up the ledge, where she unlocks the door (door "A") next to the closed shutter. She enters the door and finds in a room with another obstacle that only Sherry can access. She makes her way up through this room to the next floor where she enters the door to the storage room back into ROOM 201. In the storage room she opens the shutter, and pushes a crate down allowing Leon/Elza to climb up to the next floor which would otherwise be impossible due to the obstacle only Sherry can access in the other room. She then climbs back up the latter and goes about her way.

This then allows Leon/Elza to come into this area and climb up the box to where they normally wouldn't be able to access and make their way round through the rest of this sewer system. They enter through one of the two doors (my guess is the one in the middle) and take out the spiders Sherry disturbed while finding key "A". They climb up the crate and go through the door in the storage room. Beyond the door they find various corridors, complete various objectives (what they are is anyone's guess) and possibly come across the Spider Tunnel. Once the objectives are complete, they come full circle around the sewer system and unlock the other door back into the central hub ROOM 201.



Who knows!?