BUILDING THE NEW MAP: Layout

Now that I have finished the planning I can move onto building the map. The first thing I’ll be doing is the layout.

I have created a brush build based on a rough size of the character in-game. Changing the dimensions of brushes can be changed through right clicking on a brush. The size for the X and Y axis are 32 and the Y axis is 96. I have created this brush build as it will be used as a reference to make sure everything is to scale. This will help ensure that I won’t have to rescale everything later as this can cause problems for some of the blocks that I have built.

Using the brush build tool I will be constructing the layout based on the overhead map.

The maps layout will have more additional structure once certain sections have been finished.

In some sections water will be used. The water will be seen in areas around the walkways. This will help give players a clear look at where paths are. The water will sit on a brush build made lower than the walkways. The water will be shallow yet reach the height of the paths making everything look even.

Once the layout has was finished I applied a texture to the grounds. As in the design seen in the concept art I produced I will be using a black patio tile styled texture.

After finding my texture I went into the ‘Content Browser’ and imported the image. I then created the texture by right-clicking in the browser and selecting ‘New Material’.

A window is shown with multiple options and next to it a blank space. I dragged the image in the window and then dragged from the black square on the side of the image to the ‘Diffuse’ option. Once this is done, the texture will be made.

The texture had appeared too large and so I made it smaller. I did this by double clicking the texture which then brought me to the 'Surface Properties' window. From there I can change the size along with various options such as the alignment.