[Request]Adivce/Critique on map

[Shamison]

Hopefully I got this in the right section.

http://imgur.com/a/880XZ

Faded tiles indicate a map change can occur there.

The player will start near the center bottom and have to visit the small gaurdhouses to step on the switches to open up the main building. The player has multiple chances to deviate from the fastest course. The top left chest is one example. The grassy corridor area in the middle left will have a stronger enemy with a nice droppable so that space isn't completely wasted. Other than that would be the cracked wall for the chest. Once the player opens the chest the extra enemies on the left side will agro to make it the more dangerous choice.

Now that the general flow of the map is explained, hopefully critique is easier. I think I need to reduce tile spam, but am not sure how. Any other ways that I could improve my map would be greatly appreciated.

((and no I dont really know what is going on with the grass on the left side, but I was just trying to make it less plain))

Thanks in advance!

[blyegg]

Wellll, even though all your grass isn't all tilespammed, many clumps still have tilespam. Rather than placing down 1 tile in like a square, spread it randomly

the dark grass is very concentrated to one area, and cuts off suddenly

trees, iirc, have 3 tiles in this tileset? use all of them to vary it

to vary it more add some cliffs /paths in other places (but i dont remember if this tileset has cliffs)

all instances of this is missing shading

also, you may want to expand the throne room a bit, as the carpet is best left not touching the top or left walls, and in this case, it touches the left wall, however it has no shaded tiles

inside the main castle you kinda spam the rocky floor thingy as well, but there should be two of these tiles, use both randomly

i cant tell for sure but it seems all of the tiles below walls indoors ar emissing shading

havent mapped in a while but hopefully it was all pretty clear

Edited October 1, 2016 by blyegg

[Shamison]

Okay thanks!

Here is my updated version where I tried to fix most of those things.

http://imgur.com/a/97JOT

Not sure if I managed to fully fix the grass problem. I used Tiled's random mode and selected all the non shaded grass tiles so it would randomly select one of those when I placed a tile down.

I tried adding more paths, hopefully a few of them are good, but I havent really experimented with them before.

And for your first picture, I wasnt sure if you meant the grass out side needed shading(if so do I just use the fully shaded grass tile?) or if you meant on the inside, which I have now fixed.

[VROOOOM]

So my main critique of this would be that it looks very empty, in addition to it just being dull. My advice would be to work the other chest into the building somehow, and to move the throne over a bit.

I don't have words to express it, but just going to guard houses to open up the building just seems tedious. Try working them into the building somehow, and have a main part open up after visiting them.

That's all I got. Good luck with your future maps.