Iron Mapper Iron Mapper: Trial 1

[Arma]

Can you handle the cutthroat and perilous trials set forth by the judges?
This is IRON MAPPER: Relic Castle's mapping competition!​

Trial 1. City Life.
Deadline: Wednesday, May 22nd
SEASON 4 DISCUSSION THREAD​

Iron Mapper
Iron Mapper is a mapping competition on Relic Castle. Each mapping competition, otherwise known as a "trial", will have a deadline clearly stated, and you will have this time to complete and submit a map according to the theme and criteria of the trial. Once all submitted maps are judged after the deadline (this depends on the volume of entries, usually a few days), the judges will post the results, and prepare for the next trial.


For more information (overall rules, how judging works, a list of trials) please visit this thread.



Trial 1. City Map

Deadline: Wednesday, May 22nd 2019

To start of season 4 in a big fashion let’s map a city. Lots of people, skyscrapers and maybe a mall. It might even contain a park or an industrial district. There are many different cities and you’re job is to map whichever one you want to see.

Have fun mapping!


The following criteria must be met:

• Your map can be made with any tileset you want provided the tiles are public. You must include credits for the tiles with your submission if they aren't your own.
• Your map cannot exceed 120x120 tiles.

Your judges for this trial are:
-Arma
-Leilou

A tip from the judge:
"A city map is not defined by its size but by its feel! If the map is too big it’s usually not much fun to play!"


Submitting your Entry:

[b]Trial:[/b] I: City
[b]Map Name:[/b]

[b]Map:[/b]

[b]Critique Requested:[/b]

[b]Credits:[/b]

[b]Notes:[b/]

 

[Sturdy Ghost]

Trial 1: City Life
Map Name: Greenville City

Map:

Spoiler

Critique Requested: Sure, I can always get better! :)

Credits:

Spoiler

Calis Project Tileset - Alucus, Dewitty, EVoLiNa X, Minorthreat and nSora

Other Misc. Tiles - Magiscarf, Alistair, Trike Phalon,kymotonian,speedialga, Spacemotion, alucus, pokemon-diamond, kizemaru-kurunosuke, picday, thurpok, ulti remospriter, dewitty, minorthreat0987, tyranitardark, princelegendario, kaitodesign, wesleyfg, boomxbig, takaiofthefire, ThatsSoWitty, RedKnightX

Notes: It is intended as a school-focused area. The big dark blue building is the main administration building for the school, the two lighter towers to the north are intended as the various classrooms and such, the towers to the right make up the residential area with a large shopping tower/mall and recreational park nearby!

 

[WittyWhiscash]

Trial: I: City
Map Name: Oakmont

Map:

Spoiler: Map Image

Critique Requested: Always happy to receive criticism on my work. Helps me make better maps.

Credits:
Tiles: Blackvolution, Magiscarf (a little modification by me for transparent shadows)

Notes: This was a fun map to make! Made in Tiled, Oakmont is a hedge city in the forest of Oaksworth. A few people call home to this quaint place, including a few shops as well. Unfortunately, they are quite far out from civilization in a county, and the county isn't being funded well due to political tensions, so they don't have a Pokecenter. Thankfully, there is a healer who takes residence and heals weary travelers and trainers.

 

[kingpls]

Trial: I: City
Map Name: Briston City

Map:

Spoiler: Map Image

Critique Requested: It would be appreciated!

Credits:

Spoiler: Credits

Kyle-Dove, SailorVicious, WesleyFG, Dewitty, Zetavares852, XDinky, Newtiteuf, Alucus, Erma96, Hydrargirium, Poison-Master, Thedeadheroalistair, Shutwig, Asdsimone, Xxdevil, Steinnaples, Hek-el-grande, sylver1984, NikNak93, TeaAddiction, Cuddlesthefatcat, Magiscarf, Gigatom, The-Red-eX, ChaoticCherryCake, Phyromatical.

Notes:
This took quite the time to make, but was fun nonetheless!

 

[Poq]

Trial: I: City
Map Name: Mercandon

Map:

Spoiler: Map

Critique Requested: Certainly!

Credits:
Made using base Essentials tiles and OWs.

Notes: Mercandon is a city with a little bit of everything: a thriving commerce center, a residential district near a hillside park, a thriving manufacturing and shipping region, an arts and leisure district, a boardwalk beside the beach, and the headquarters of a business whose profit margins are just a little too profitable to be believed (or legal...).

This was a fun map to work on. I really wanted to push myself, both by using just default tiles and by packing as much as possible into one map. From the original games, I took inspiration from the likes of Lilycove and Slateport with a little bit of Castelia and Malie City for flavor.

 

[Scyl]

Trial: I: City
Map Name: Arkadiya Port Island.

Map:

Spoiler: Le Map

Link because I suck.

Critique Requested: Dex Number 360, Wynaut?

Credits:

Spoiler: Credits List

Ame and the Pokemon Reborn Team, Jan and the Pokemon Rejuvenation team, Leilou's Emerald Outside Tileset, Base Essentials Tileset(s).
And then for the Pokemon OWs:
-Sparta.
-princess-pheonix
-LunarDusk
-Neo-Spriteman
-MissingLukey
-help-14
-Kymoyonian
-cSc-A7X
-2and2makes5
-Pokegirl4ever
-Fernandojl
-Silver-Skies
-TyranitarDark
-Getsuei-H
-Kid1513
-Milomilotic11
-Kyt666
-kdiamo11
-Chocosrawlooid
-Syledude
-Gallanty
-Gizamimi-Pichu
-Zyon17

Notes: Arkadiya Port Island, a bustling metropolis where humans and Pokémon have come to enjoy the finer things in life, like overcrowded cities, Murkrow flying around everywhere, a vicious, blinding fog, unconscious old men, and, the pinnacle of luxury itself, standing on benches. So, like, I started this a week back or so and stopped for reasons I do not know. I got bored on this faithful night...morning, when I'm uploading this, and decided to finish it. I would have made the island a bit more complex in layout, but like, shore tiles hate me and I hate them, so like, rip my island. The darker color scheme for the tiles was selected to give the map more of that modern urban city feel. Anyway, gonna go pass out now, laters.

 

[AngelusMortis]

Trial: I: City
Map Name: Gardenia City

Map:

Spoiler: Meow

Critique Requested: Any/all critique allowed/wanted.

Credits: Made using the Base Tileset and OWs in Essentials.

Notes: Decided to support this event and map the next city in a fangame I am working on. Gardenia City is the hometown of the Professor of my region, as well as the region's main police branch office and the 3rd gym in the game. Y'all can tear me apart as you see fit. Cheers!

 

[TheLightSword]

Trial: I: City
Map Name: East Doneun city

Map:

Spoiler

Critique Requested: yes please!

Credits:
BoOmxBiG: https://www.deviantart.com/boomxbig/art/Custom-Tileset-288009217
ChaoticCherryCake: https://www.deviantart.com/chaoticcherrycake/art/Pokemon-Tileset-From-Public-Tiles-358379026

Notes:for a while I've been thinking of creating some custom tiles in a GS kinda style but never got to it. This trial motivated me to do so, but because of the short time we've got i didn't make that many diverse building and such.
Here is the tileset i used:

Spoiler

 

[NoodlesButt]

Trial 1: City
Map Name: Nerium City

Map:

Spoiler: Map

Critique Requested: Yes

Credits: Spherical Ice and Alistair for tiles

Notes: Nerium City, is home to the region's Poison type gym and Experimental Potion Laboratory. The city sits high up on a cliff that looms over the sea. To the north, lies a forest that houses poisonous wildlife, like Pokemon and mushrooms. The darker shade of trees seen around Nerium get more and more common, the deeper you go into the forest.

Tiles:

Spoiler: Tiles

 

[Arma]

Alright, since we're well past the deadline, I'll be closing this thread for now! We're going to review all these lovely maps, amd the results in a few days!

 

[Arma]

Trial 1. City Life
RESULTS
Submissions: 8
Deadline: Wednesday, May 22nd
SEASON 4 DISCUSSION THREAD​

Thoughts

---

Thanks for your patience, and sorry for the wait. This never should have taken as long as it did, but I'm glad to finally be able to present you the results.

Even with a smaller number of entries, I'm really happy with the variation of maps you all posted! Cities are usually among the more difficult maps to make, and so I hope our is useful to you all!

Trial Champion: kingpls!

Spoiler: kingpls

This city absolutely blew us away! Despite using a simple layout with little room for exploration, you managed to make the city look really interesting. The river does a great job breaking up the monotony of the snow covered map. It looks amazing too.
Congratulations, we hope to see more from you in the future!

Critiques

---

Spoiler: Sturdy Ghost

-The layout of the city looks really nice!

-The right side of the city could use a little more decoration though, maybe add some flowers between the buildings there.

-The park on the bottom left looks really messy, it’d look a lot better if you’d focus on one thing there. Like either flowers or the lake. There’s also too many random items lying around.

Spoiler: WittyWhiscash

-The layout of the city is quite good, however it feels like you could compress it a little bit and remove empty spaces.

-While the parks are nicely decorated the streets look quite barren, especially the area around the well. Try keeping consistent density of decorations throughout the map.

-The houses on the pavement look a bit off, the added contrast from the grass would make it look a lot better.

Spoiler: kingpls

-While we don’t judge maps for the tiles used, it does feel weird that the special buildings have zero snow on top of them.

Spoiler: Poq

-The different districts of the city look amazing! Especially the skyscrapers on the left side.

-The route on the top right looks a bit empty, there’s a long path seemingly without any events.

-While there’s more than enough decoration on the map, we’d feel that compressing the map would make things much more clear to the player, after all there’s only so much that fits on the screen at once.

-The one tile wide paths looks really awkward.

-While we understand you’re using the default tiles, we think you should consider recoloring some of the buildings so they’d fit better together.

Spoiler: Scyl

-NPCs and Pokémon and also the little squares are placed in a way that tell individual stories. of life in the city contrasting the overall layout of a dark boring city.

-Every generic building being the exactly the same makes the map a bit monotonous, even by doing little things like making some of them a bit taller, or removing the ventilation unit on some of the roofs would make it look more diverse.

-While we get that the Pokecenter is placed close to the gym, it’s quite a walk from the map’s exit on the left and the interesting buildings near the top. Perhaps consider swapping it with one of the generic buildings.

Spoiler: AngelusMortis

-The main segment of the city looks really cluttered. If you were to have more well defined streets, you’d be able to both remove all of the clutter and get rid of of the empty spaces between all the buildings.

-It’s nice how you can reach the park pretty easily from all 3 of the map’s exits.

-The lack of structure really makes this feel more like a maze than a city.

-There’s too many types of special buildings. There’s only so many features you can pack in your cities, perhaps it would be a better idea to distribute them more equally throughout the region?

Spoiler: TheLightSword

-Nice usage of buildings as borders and the organised roads to sell the big city image.

-The map is too big for what it offers. There's about 4-5 entrances in each quarter of the map. Ending the map at right of the park and moving the entrances to the other parts of the map would have made the map easier to traverse, harder to get lost in and would feel a lot livelier.

Spoiler: Noodlesbutt

-The city is really well decorated!

-However the three horizontal streets really make the map a bit boring.If there was a bit more variety with the vertical placement of buildings the maps would look a lot better.

- The top street looks quite empty, we feel like you could decrease the width of the city a little, and add some features to that street instead.