Showcase: Downtown Prontera of CGRO

[Parachute]

"Downtown Prontera" - Custom Prontera Map. Original Work by Olrox, Modified by Parachute.

This map is a modified version of Olrox's Victorian Garden Prontera. If you want to buy the old version of this map, credits had been given in the link (Hope you don't think of the link as advertisement as I only credit the original work).

I really liked the map, but it feels like it needed some remake. After acquiring the blessing from @Olrox, I finally gotten the permission to modify this map and added features for my server. And Oh, credits to @Haziel for my Server Flag Design (aka Prontera Flag). I named this map as "Downtown Prontera." Here's the same graphics I had in my server ad. The highlighted areas are the following:

• Mall / Shopping Area
• Cafe & Restaurant
• Prontera City Hall
• Prontera Plaza
• Prontera's Party Area

Here below are the extra map edits included:

• Middle Prontera from "Fountain Area" to Nice Garden Roundabout.

 

• Prontera Events Area - Portals that warps people to event areas.

 

• Prontera Vending Area - Vending Area for specific tiles

 

• Vending Area Portals - Leads to vending areas in other maps
• Police Department Building - Building for all Support/Moderation utilities

Edited December 17, 2017 by Parachute

[Sage]

This map looks alright, though I can't really tell where Olrox's work ends and yours starts. The flower bushes/hedges in the town square and event area look nice, and I always like to see people include benches or chairs for players to sit on, like in the event area.

My main criticism of the map is that it sort of seems like you tossed every model in the game in there, along with custom ones, and they don't necessarily mesh together very well.

In the restaurant area, there are two different types of walls that surround the area, a mix of Olrox's custom trees and a default one from Gravity, a mix of modified Prontera buildings and Amatsu ones, and red pillars everywhere that look a bit cluttered. You could probably remove every second pillar aand it would look better- They've also all been copy/pasted with the same rotation and height, so it looks repetitive. This entire area is also completely covered in shadows, which is a common problem that appears on a lot of peoples maps.

Here's a handy tip for shadows: The light that casts the shadows across an entire town/field (any outdoors) map seems to be placed all the way in the southwest corner of the map, when really, you should place it just a little bit south-west of the center. I've made a picture to help explain this:

When you place a shadow all the way in the corner, the objects furthest away from it will cast an extremely long, big shadow that makes most of the northeast part of the map completely dark. The shadows close to your light (the blue circle) look decent, and everything outside that circle looks stretched out and shitty.

By placing it closer to the center, you increase the total area of the map where shadows look good. You can also make the shadows even shorter by raising the shadow-casting light higher: In browedit 1 (I don't know browedit 2, sorry), when you select a light, you'll notice a vertical yellow line that goes up and down out of the light. Keep raising the light up until you find the end of that yellow line- This is generally a good height, as it'll make most shadows on the map be placed directly under the models, and objects near the edges of the map will have a shadow length that's 'close enough' to actual RO.

I'd offer other suggestions, but there are 10,000 different versions of Prontera already. If you want to make a good looking edit of it, I suggest picking a theme and sticking to models/textures that fit, rather than using a bit of every everything in the game.

[Parachute]

Awesome constructive criticism! One of the reason why I put those in here to hear insight from the best and veteran mappers. Just what I need to get better.  

You know what, you are probably right. As I launch my first pserver, I just had the idea for my main town. A "themed park" or "themed areas" in Prontera. There is no single theme in the Prontera map, but plenty. Of course, I have zero knowledge with Browedit. Thus, I contacted Olrox to make a custom map for me. However, he seem to have plenty of ongoing projects and a few more people are on his waiting list. I do understand if Olrox a lil busy, I contacted him again after a month, but I could not delay my server's progress any further as I needed my server to be ready/be shared with close friends for bugs/exploits checkup. If i wanna be an RO Admin, though initially i had doubts, I had to learn the basics of map editing. I ended up studying Browedit myself.

I understand the importance of unity in design, but my idea creating this map is a "themed park" in prontera town. Not only a single theme, but different in each areas. The map idea is necessary as it matches with my server features as well. That explains why there's a lot of different modules added in that map. Thanks to Syouji's browedit tutorial in YT, i was able to study the basics of Browedit in no time. I was able to finish this Prontera Map in a week. I have not fully developed my shadow rendering skills, that explains the shadows in my map (and i love your tip, would def help me a lot in the future). Shadows & Lighting are still by far my weakest. Not to mention, I gave up adding custom 3D modules, as I was already on a rush and I thought that part would require me a lot of time. That explains why I pretty much copied the official modules. I do admit having limited understanding with browedit as of now, but this is my first map edit and hopefully I can get better in the future. Your insight will sure help me a lot in my future designs.

My only background before doing this map is Architecture and Interior Design, AutoCAD, detailed floor plan design of both interior and exterior building perspectives, Ergonometrics and proper scaling - but applying it in RO is a little hard and yet fun. It takes time to learn Browedit.

[Olrox]

Nice map man, nice feedback by @sage btw

I like the distribution of the models, not a big fan of the model choice, but as a first map very nicely done