Unity3d Hand Tour Map design of the four types of what kind of suit you?

It is reported/recently, small series of foreign media to see a blog about the design of hand-travel maps, English author Junxue Li (Li Junku) is the game Art outsourcing company Novtilus Art CEO, in his blog, he discussed four different categories of hand travel maps and their respective types of hand travel, And talking about the advantages and disadvantages of these map types, here to share to the industry's children's shoes, hope to be helpful, the following is the dog Planing Learning Network compiled blog content:

Our team for some casual games have done maps, including three, Bubble dragon, slot machine games and so on, in fact, these different types of hand-tour map is actually more similar, there are linear upgrade progress, and can be displayed in the form of a map upgrade process.

After finishing these projects, I also have some experience in hand travel map planning and art production, which I hope to share with the developer children's shoes, and I think my experience may be useful for developers who need to use these types of maps in the game.

Now, we can't tell what game we're doing, so I'll choose some games that everyone knows to corroborate my point. In this article, I will take my own views in some popular format of the opponent map mode to discuss:

Traditional style

Games that use this map include bubble Safari, the Bubble Witch saga

The world map of this category is very traditional, with land, sea, and roads. This type of map is actually derived from the old RPG games, where players can navigate freely through the map, allowing players to know exactly where they are in the map.

This kind of map inherits a lot of advantages from the previous works: players have a better understanding of the world and can combine well with the game story. But the current three-elimination, Bubble Dragon games have linear progress, and do not need to travel freely in the map, so this map may not be suitable for the above types of games.

In this type of map, the whole game world or part of the game world Seamless, a specific theme of the region, such as volcanoes, deserts, towns and so on, each area is a large level, each area is interconnected, such a map needs to be well planned, and make changes or level update is not flexible, This type of map is more suitable for games that do not require frequent level updates or do not need to be updated at all.

For hand tours, the user experience of such maps is not particularly good. Because the screen size of the phone is too small to see only a portion of the map, it is difficult to find other places, or to narrow the map, it is difficult to see the whole map of many details.
From the perspective of art production, this type of map cost is very high, in order to fit the HD device, you may need a large size map, because the player needs to enlarge the map to see more details. The size of a full map is likely to reach 3*3 times the full-screen size.

This map can be a budget issue, and if you're doing a triple-play or slot-machine game, you'll be able to put a lot of maps into the background of the level. For these two types of games, the center of the screen will always be occupied by the game map, of course, this method is not suitable for bubble Dragon game, as for the reason ... You know

Small Island Style

Games with this type of map: Candy legends, Bubble Blaze

This type of map inherits the overall pattern of traditional maps, and of course has some advantages and disadvantages. Unlike traditional maps, areas of the map are not interconnected, but are distributed on different ' small islands ' (sometimes not necessarily in the form of islands in the sea). Each special theme (Mark Card) will have a landmark, and there will be a way to pass. The advantage of this map is that it is very flexible to add or modify levels.

Many games that use this map pattern need to be updated each month for several levels.

Moreover, the art of this map is simple and inexpensive. Some games use a very simple background, the main expenditure is used in the ground marking of art production, but the downside is that we can clearly see that this map does not look like a traditional map cool.

And such maps can not be divided into many parts of the game background, because this kind of map is not rich in content.

Large Island Style

Games using this map: Cookie JAM

We know that the biggest drawback of traditional maps is the lack of flexibility in terms of modifications and updates. Large island maps can provide another solution, with each large level (usually with 10-20 small levels) that can be placed in the air or sea as a large island.

You can take this island as a microcosm of a traditional map, and when you need a new level, just make a whole new Big Island. and dividing the map into a background is also effective.

Vertical Reel Type

Games using this map: Bubble Witch Saga 2, Farm Heroes Saga

This map may be the most popular now, as many developers are looking to convert old-fashioned maps into vertical scrolls.

In this map, all the theme levels are vertically distributed, and one level is followed by another. This map cannot be zoomed in or out, or left and right, and you can only move up and down.

For the narrow screen of a mobile phone, this type can optimize the user experience, better than several of the above models, ideal for mobile screen size. And it's very flexible when you want to add new levels. As with large/small island maps, you can develop new levels independently, without worrying about order clutter.

The need to be aware of this map is that you need to seamlessly connect the roads between regions of the map. So between each area you need to pay attention to the design of the road import and export, do not let the road convergence derailment, of course, this problem can be solved with 2D art.

The connection of roads between adjacent large levels

Island map bodies are not connected to each other in size island maps, so roads connecting two of islands do not cause too much problem. In the vertical scroll map, the two adjacent areas are cohesive, the simplest way is, at the junction of two regions do not place too many elements, so that does not cause chromatic aberration problem, of course, you can also add fog or clouds and other elements of the junction.

In terms of cost, an area can usually occupy the entire screen, and the amount of larger island maps is almost the same as the demand for artistic quality. And the map can be split as a level background.

Of course, the type of map you use depends largely on the type of game you do and the resources and budget your team has.

Unity3d Hand Tour Map design of the four types of what kind of suit you?