Map How to Make a "Good" Region Map?

[Phye]

This is the map of my region that I made in the style of the Unova Region map and you'll probably go holy hell that's a lot of spaghetti in the middle! and you wouldn't be wrong. I turned this auto-generated region:

Into a town map with the extra island on top and some added locations on the bottom. But I'm right now having second thoughts once again. :'D Like that map looks too much of a mess and I have no idea how to go about making a region. I mean I even made all temp maps in rmxp itself to see their connections:

And even this looks like a massive mess... Urgh, how do you even make good regions? This was just a test to see if I'm even capable of creating a region.

The goal of the region is to have the starting town central and then allow the Trainer to access most of the map in any order they want. I want to have gym leaders use different teams depending on how many badges the player has. The story part of the region would probably be dealt in 'side quests' or discoveries they personally make along the way. I haven't come up with much of a story yet and it's just in early production/hell. (Hell as in may never even come to fruition and lies in the piles of other projects I start and quit)

 

[LinKazamine]

Well, the only region I have made has Kanto and Johto as a sort of base. By that, I mean seeing the number of towns and cities they have, the points of interest, how they connected, and all that. I chose Kanto and Johto since they would be the closest regions and I wanted them to be sort of similar.

Maybe you should take the existing regions, look at the ratio of towns/cities/islands, which points of interest there are and where, how everything is connected, etc. and make your own region with all this info you got. Maybe it won't be the region map you dream of, but it may be a good starting point and a good practice in how to make regions.

 

[Phye]

When I look at other official regions I get stuck at figuring out "Is this enough for all the encounters I've planned for?" Like I'm not going to have all the Pokemon in my game but I also want it to make sense to find a specific Pokemon in that area.

This then turns me away from the whole region-creating process altogether and then go off on a tangent of planning all the routes I need but then it just becomes a jumbled mess anyway! Hahahaha!

And I've tried different styles of region map designs. This was my attempt at a Unova map and I made the numbered icons from scratch just to have something more visually different to look at other than just routes going here and there like the spaghetti mess it was before I added those icons and then cleaned it up. :'D

 

[LinKazamine]

As I said, you should make a basic version of the region map that has the minimum you want in your region in terms of interest points, towns and cities as well as the number (or the minimum number at the very least) of connections going off from them. Once you have that, you can check if it has what you need for the region and add from there.

For the encounters, you can add more routes, or make the existing ones smaller so there can be more diversity of encounters. For example, you can separate route 1 into two or three parts and have some pokemon that appear in all the route and 1 to 3 extra that are exclusive to each part of the route.

You can change the style at any moment so I suggest making first the region in a simple way (lines and squares hand drawn, for example) and when you are satisfied you can decide which style you prefer to make it.

 

[Phye]

Hmm... sounds reasonable. How would I go about the biomes of the maps? I'm sadly not knowledgeable enough to know if a desert shouldn't be possible in an area more than it probably shouldn't be followed up with a swamp or something similarly wet. But then it comes to the issue if that's what I really want my region to look like.
Do you really need a desert in a region for desert-dwelling mons or can you throw them into caves like Sandshrew? But then your region needs more mountains, but how much mountain is enough?
Biomes is a whole other beast to deal with that I'm stumped about.

 

[It'sYa1UPBoy]

I find it easier to base it off a real place and then just fill in a certain number of towns from there. For example, you need 8 Gym towns, the League, and at least two or three small towns. Things like caves, deserts, and lakes go adjacent to or directly in routes and towns.
As for biomes, you can sometimes put Pokémon in multiple biomes. A lot of desert-dwelling species can also live in caves, unless they're something like Cacnea. An icy area can be on top of a mountain instead of placed as a separate area.
But also, Pokémon doesn't always have realistic biomes. I mean, look at Kalos! Seriously, even when I played it at release I was struck by how strange the biomes were! And Kanto has a got-dang FENCE MAZE. If you wanted truly realistic biomes, the types of Pokémon you could actually have in your Pokédex would shrink dramatically.
And to solve the "spiderweb issue" it may behoove you to remember that, ultimately, every single town doesn't need to be connected to every other town. Connect your towns in progression order and then resolve any dead ends that aren't islands or other isolated/secret areas. (And if the game is open-world, then just connect everything in a "circle" or "square" of sorts where, by following the roads, you can make a full lap around the region and don't end up in any dead end areas.)

 

[It'sYa1UPBoy]

I'm glad you liked my advice, Phye! As an example, this is a region I made based on the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece. (Of course, to anyone reading, this is just a visual aide to my advice above; don't use this region in your own games.)
Something that helped me not have to make a whole bunch of ill-fitting biomes somehow fit together, was that I didn't use all 18 types in the regional Dex (the game is a gift to someone, so I'm just using a lot of their favorite species). However, you can see that there are certainly mountains on which I could add icy areas and dark caves if needed later on. I basically just took the idea of "Greece is warm and mountainous" and built the areas accordingly; this is why using a real-life area as a basis, like Game Freak does, can be helpful--- it gives you a foundation to work off of in arranging your biomes. Even if you can't go on research trips like they do, just knowing the general terrain and climate of the area you're working off of is helpful and easily accessible on Wikipedia.
Truthfully, that's why I wouldn't recommend making a randomly-generated region as you did in your leading post--- not only did the program generate an intimidatingly large one (especially for a beginner such as yourself), but there's no realistic foundation to work off of. Still, you can certainly give yourself a climate type and terrain type to work off of even with a randomly-generated map--- for example, flat and cold taiga, warm and dry mountains, or tropical and hilly islands.
Also, you can see that, although the route connections are minimal, you can still make a loop around the region and end up back where you started, for the most part. (The isolated area in the mountains is the League HQ, so it makes sense for it to be barred by natural formations, and the island in the bottom corner is a (currently unused) legendary island.) Less is more when it comes to paving roads in these kinds of games. When trailing off to side areas, like the lake or the crater, the distance traveled from the main road is minimal. Of course, there are areas where you have to turn around to get back to the main throughway, but there is a main throughway, which is the important thing.

 

[Phye]

Haha no worries, I took both of your advice to heart to make something that will probably feel more fluid... I hope at least. I am starting out with just a barebones template of a region. Does anyone think this is something that could work?

Super WIP atm just to see the layout of the routes and such. Pink dots are gyms, green dots are misc towns and red dots are special towns like "Pokemon League, Starting Town + The island resort thingie I felt I wanted to have still! Maybe could focus on having a battle frontier kind of place there!"
These I feel are like the region's veins, and then I will flesh it out with some extra paths that lead to landmarks. I'll probably stay away from completely using the Unova design but I could still find a mix between that and the Sinnoh/johto designs could probably work. I rather prefer the look of straight routes than lines here and there! But I also did like the button for the routes I made xD

EDIT:

Added some extra "landmark routes" to be like side routes. All yellow dots are places that probably can fit like landmarks. "Landmark routes" are probably forests, mountains, caves or what not.

 

[It'sYa1UPBoy]

I like it. There's no spiderwebs, and the side routes connect the arms well, making it possible to travel across the region without too much backtracking.

 

[Phye]

The new and improved... well in terms of routes at least haha. The first map's land mass layout turned out to be more aesthetic but This one works better as a Pokemon region I believe.
Any changes I should make to it?

EDIT:
While looking at it, I forgot one thing. Some kind of lake location! Maybe that will make it look slightly nicer, and I think I know where I want the lake to be!

EDIT 2 :

Slightly less empty! Woo! Now I believe I'm done with it! :D

 

[It'sYa1UPBoy]

I like it, Phye! Much easier to read than the one you originally posted, and the biomes seem well-balanced!

 

[safr]

It's hard to explain but for example one of the best map for me is pokemon eon guardian and pokemon opalo. But one thing i sure for me is the world need to be big with many area to explore so the game not easy to forget and only become one time sensation