A question about sprites and maps in this community

[Leifinator]

Why do so many more people make mugs and sprites compared to maps? Is there a specific reason to it?

It feels like there are only a handful people who try making maps while pretty much everybody has their collection of mugs and splices.

Also I noticed mugs and that stuff getting way more "attention" (as in responses & helpful criticism) than for example my map topic, where I posted more than all the people who answered me combined >_>

.. or at least it seems that way to me.

[47948201]

Part of it might be that portraits/sprites in general are much closer to the kind of thing most artists do in whatever other medium they have experience in, and since we know what people look like and have much experience seeing art of people as opposed to really taking a look at landscapes or game areas.

[Eliwan]

Maps are hard to make good

But there's also less to say about a map than a sprite

Maps can be designed with gameplay in mind-- therefore that is an unknowable variable when commenting upon it.

Maps can be designed with a specific start and end point in mind that is not obvious to begin with.

Frequently I put enemy / ally positions on my maps for exactly this reason (not that i've uploaded them)-- to give at least an initial impression of how the map is supposed to flow.

But, on the other hand, you may have a map like one of FE11's prologues-- with the two columns of silver lance knights as reinforcements--

Those knights are not obviously part of gameplay from the initial setup of the map. There are a lot of things that you may build a map around that you can't see.

So maps would best be given with a text wall explaining the purpose of the map.

But another thing is that the way to do a map "wrong" is mostly tile errors? If the gameplay offered by a portion of a map is tedious/frustrating/generally annoying, that doesn't reflect the totality of the map (for example, it may be really thematically appropriate, like in FE8 Ch 9 Ephraim: you have enemies on either sides of a wall pelting you as you charge into a fort). There are plenty of variables that you can't know with a map.

On the other hand, with any sort of sprite, it's a picture, not a component. The sprite is the sprite and that's that. Yeah, animations are things, but animations also require knowing how long each frame will display so you can't know that from a sheet (thus judging how good an animation is from a sheet is just as impossible as evaluating a map's flow from just the tiles on it).

... Does that make sense?

[47948201]

Actually that kinda reminds me, maps without unit placement are in a way sort of incomplete, whereas a portrait is a portrait and stands on its own? (I mean not really but I kiiinda get that impression)

[Leifinator]

hm, that makes sense. sometimes I try to explain what I think how a map could be used when I post it but still, it would be nice to get some more criticism on how to improve my maps, even if it is just tile errors. or even positive feedback so I know what I'm good at.

[Eliwan]

Explaining a map does not always do the intentions justice. The more details you add the more likely it is that somebody will get lost, but the fewer you have the more impossible it is for somebody else to figure out what your intent is.

Look at the Demon King's map in FE8, or the map for the chapter with Lyon.

In the case of the one with Lyon, it's perfectly conceivable that you'd actually start at the top and not the bottom; the Demon King map could easily be imagined as a defense mission with your team on the central platform.

But explaining how the Lyon map works is not in my opinion the simplest--

You start at the bottom, breaking into enemies. You have a few really tough enemies on each side, overlapping in the middle. There's a set of guards on the staircase, "forcing" you to go around-- going around causes enemies to spawn on the other side of the map than the one you crossed. After you advance into the final room, enemies come in until you kill the boss.

And the same with the Demon King. That map is entirely made because the Demon King has the summon command; and spawns a horde of enemies that you then have to work around in order to actually clear the map.

It's easy to grok in-game because the way the enemies are positioned and the player's experience with FE8's map design at that point allow you so much comfort in what tricks they'll throw at you that you can anticipate them.

Admittedly that last point may be a bit of a stretch considering I played FE7 to death before I played FE8 so I'm almost certainly biased in that regard. :V

-originally i was going to post this:

The thing with maps in particular is that you can have things that look like tile errors that are intentional.

Like...

this map that I have relatively handy. Most of the thickets on it are "wrong", but they're there because of their gameplay purpose as opposed to "looking right". So as a result it looks worse than it would be if it was made "correctly" (looking natural / blending well), but then it would create the wrong gameplay.

So maps are harder to critique except with regards to height/tile errors, but even those can be hard to parse if intentionally done-- and with most people you just can't tell if they're done on purpose or not.

The problem with just explaining how a map is used can be demonstrated using that same map.

If I said "you start in the top-right and advance towards the castle", that's accurate. But it isn't the entire story behind what I'd want to have happen in that map.

For, if I leave it at that, there's no apparent purpose to the bottom-right half of the map besides spacing (as you would always go for the village, if it is actually evented: thus only the top and left portions of the map see full gameplay). But based on the enemy placement and AIs of those enemies, then the bottom-right half may become very important as a staging area or something to keep attention towards or some kind of shortcut or otherwise be an optimization point for players who want to show the game that it poses no true challenge by having it be beaten as fast as possible!

etc etc etc.

Or, I could just show you where those enemies actually ARE, and then you can intuit to some degree what those optimizations and chokepoints or bloodbaths will do to the game flow and where they will occur and how far into the chapter they will happen.

And then that's not even counting events like reinforcements; recruitments, rewards present for village visits-- subobjectives if extant, such as green units that need be saved...

If I were to talk about all of those various variables, then by the time you finished reading it all, you'd have to scroll back up to look at the map again, right?

(well, I guess it depends on the size of the map and the number of events on that map.)

... Pretty sure I'm not helping here nor even making sense, though.

[Leifinator]

... Pretty sure I'm not helping here nor even making sense, though.

you do make sense :)

well, I will keep making maps and honestly I don't know if I will touch mugs. maybe at some point. I just like the huge diversity you have with maps, with even custom tilesets and all.

[VROOOOM]

As others have said, it's a matter of mugs being easier to critique. That's not to say I don't have a collection of maps, but for a lot of people making portraits is easier to do since you can put them in a little collection and have others use em. Which can't really be done with maps.

I myself will always be #teamaps since I learned how to do that first.

[Primefusion]

I always thought it was because people preferred saying "I'm an artist" over "I'm a cartographer" :V

[CT075]

people who make sprites have actual artistic talent to be proud of; mapmakers are just freeloaders who stitch tiles together

[Lamia]

as an artist it takes more effort to design a map than draw a head and shoulders

a 'realistic' visual design for whatever locale you've chosen to help set the mood helps sooo much (nothing turns me off more in a map than a ton of blank space or stretches of straight lines)

you also have to consider how player and enemy units will progress, perhaps impeding or assisting those that cross lines of trees or rivers

terrain advantage is something to consider in war, and you need to design something to challenge whatever faction, like being a reverse tactician, and make something that looks pretty enough to impress the gods

I got my start on making maps in starcraft and boy did I suck balls, thankfully fire emblem is less complicated

Edited April 7, 2016 by Lamia