The 3rd Age

Wars of the East

Wars of the East

A mod for RotWK that adds new factions, units, heroes, stuctures, powers and more.

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How to Make an EA Quality Map

Avatar of m@tt

m@tt
Category: Worldbuilder
Level: Intermediate
Created: Thursday April 10, 2008 - 6:06
Updated: Sunday February 6, 2011 - 17:28
Views: 35351
Summary: A huge Worldbuilder tutorial which takes you through the basics to making EA quality maps

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4.9

Members say

4.8

Average

4.9/5.0

39 votes
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PREPARATION & CONCEPT

Inspiration

Some people map random, generic places or gladiator types maps, others map proper Middle-earth locations, like me. For the latter, drawings, maps, photos, descriptions etc are incredibly useful in deciding what your map should look like. I am making Mountains of Mirkwood.

Image and description courtesy of Tuckborough.net, map is from the film:

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Quote

Range of high hills in the great forest east of the Anduin. The Mountains of Mirkwood were north of the Old Forest Road. The Enchanted Stream sprang from a source in the Mountains of Mirkwood and flowed north to join the Forest River. Another stream, whose name is not known, flowed east from the mountains into the River Running.

When the forest was known as Greenwood the Great, the mountains were called Emyn Duir - the Dark Mountains - because of the dense woods of fir trees on their slopes. At the end of the Second Age, Oropher, who was then the king of the Wood-elves, lived in the glens of the Emyn Duir.

Around 1050 of the Third Age, Sauron built a stronghold on Dol Guldur and a shadow fell over the forest. Evil creatures came to live there, and many of most terrible dwelled in the mountains. The forest came to be called Taur-nu-Fuin, "forest under night," or Mirkwood in the Common Speech. The mountains were named Emyn-nu-Fuin, "mountains under night," or the Mountains of Mirkwood.

After the War of the Ring, the mountains became the southern border of the realm of King Thranduil. The shadow was lifted from Mirkwood and it was named Eryn Lasgalen, the Wood of Greenleaves. It is not known whether the Mountains of Mirkwood were then called by their original name - Emyn Duir - or given a new name.


Concept:
Always draw a concept so you know what you’re mapping. Here is my concept:

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Green = trees, Brown = mountains, Pale brown = passable mountain, sort of like a hill-side, Beige = paths, Black = plots, big circles are castles, small circles are economy plots, Red = RA Mini-faction plot, you won’t have this though

I’ll probably add some small streams as well, and possible change the southern pathing into the Old Forest Road just to make a bit less symmetrical.

When designing a map, you have to consider several things.

1. Balance – this is a two player map that is symmetrical, neither player starts off with an advance so it is balanced.

2. Space – you need room for battlefields, for pathing (paths must be two hordes wide).

3. What is it going to look like? You need to appreciate the visuals, such as trees, pathing, small rivers. Your inspirations (drawings, photos, maps, descriptions etc” will help a lot with this.

Comments

Display order: Newest first | Page: 1, 2

Harrylotr - Sunday December 19, 2010 - 2:12

You're awesome!! Thanks...

Yiio - Friday August 20, 2010 - 15:53

rom were can idonload this worldbuilder?

Lord Eniam - Monday February 22, 2010 - 20:06

Very well explained. Thank you.

m@tt (Team Chamber Member) - Sunday October 11, 2009 - 15:06

It's a castle for BFME 1. The smaller one is a camp, the even smaller one is an outpost/expansion.

The direction refers to where the gate is.

Windrider - Saturday October 10, 2009 - 14:07

the large black circles with the directions - what do they do? How about the smaller black circles with the red font and the 3 meshed black circles?

{AE}Manveru - Thursday September 3, 2009 - 6:32

@militaryman: That's part of WB. It only shows some tiles in an effort to cut down on the resource usage. If you want to enable the full map even when showing many tiles, go to View -> Show All of 3D Map (Or press Ctrl+A).

militaryman - Sunday August 23, 2009 - 14:47

Ok. i have a problem with world builder. when i go to zoom out i cannot see the terrain in some parts. an example of this is on page 4 of this article(where it tells you this "When everything's added (screenshot doesn't include creeps for some reason):" the picture bellow this is my problem

{AE}Manveru - Wednesday April 1, 2009 - 17:46

Thanks SO much! I can finally make maps that actually work!

tank_builder - Thursday March 19, 2009 - 18:36

Arg!!! i dont have the player list and team!!! please help.

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wait. found it. it doesn't have the shortcut, though.

Ridder Blauw - Saturday December 27, 2008 - 9:17

This article is really helping me out, thanks ;)
Hope my new map I am making will be really nice!

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