I have had several people ask me about PUD design and the process of making a PUD which is both evenly balanced and fair but doesn't give the impression of looking too symmetric. Since I liked the PUD LandSea, but thought it needed to be rewritten due to its simplistic look, I thought that it would be interesting and kind of fun to make a movie of the process I used. I hope you find it both interesting and helpful.
MugWump (aka Bill Wright)
| This is the original PUD which features four starting positions connected by narrow paths which are adjacent to the sea. The only expansion mines are on the four center islands. The premise is good, the the aesthetics are poor. |
| I start most of my PUDs with a map which contains a grid of walls. This allows me to place mines at equal positions and make areas on the map equally sized and spaced. The editors, unfortunately, don't really help you with this at all. |
| Since we need four equal land masses in the corners, the next step is to cut them out with water in the proportion we need. |
| After creating the corner islands, we need to carve out the four center islands as well. |
| Now that the basic islands are all defined, we fill in with water. |
| Still using the grid lines as a reference, I place all the mines and oil patches so that they are exactly in equivalent positions. Once this is done, the basic map is complete so the grid lines can be eliminated. |
| The next step is to connect the corners by land bridges. To help keep them about the same distance from the edge, I draw lines of oil patches for reference. |
| Using the oil patch reference lines, I draw the paths of uniform width but not exactly straight like in the original version. |
| It still looks pretty ugly, so it's time to contour the coastline while preserving the original land sizes. |
| Now we randomize the islands. Here we want to allow two town halls to be built on each island, but make them vulnerable to direct attack from the sea. We actually put halls on the islands and work around them. |
| The next step is the addition of some mountains. These are mostly for aesthetic purposes. In addition, we allow each position enough interior water to build a foundry which will be safe from sea attack. The positions for building these foundries are shown. |
| Time for trees! To begin, I randomly place the same number of large tree blobs around each starting position. The player starting positions are also placed at this time. Each starting postions is exactly four squares from its mine. By placing them in this way, in a game started on low resources with one peon, the peon can see his mine and also a complete clearing to build a hall after doing the lumber cheat. If any other distance is used, either the peon won't be able to see the mine or will have to walk away from it to 'see' enough land to build a hall. |
| The tree blobs are connected and their edges are smoothed to give a more natural appearance. I also make sure that every start position is within three squares of a tree. This is so that the player can see his mine, a tree for the lumber cheat, and a clearing large enough and far enough from the mine to build hall when the game starts. This is a small detail that most map makers neglect and, admitedly is not critical, but very helpful to people playing the map for the first time. |
| To make sure that the lumber is distributed evenly (not to critical here, but on some maps with less lumber, very important) I set up a 'chop' test. To do that I make a copy of the PUD; set all default resources to zero; delete the mines; set up each colony with three halls and 15 peons; and sever the land connection between positions so the peons will only chop their own lumber. I play a single player game against computer players who have nothing else to do but chop all their trees. I use the 'hatchet' and 'on screen' cheats and set speed to maximum and wait till all trees are gone. Then I surrender and look at the lumber amounts. If these numbers are not within 2-3%, I make adjustments and repeat. |
| The only remaining details left are to add some trees to the islands for looks; dress up the ground with some dark patches and random fill; assign default resources of a peon, a town hall, and a farm; and move some of the oil patches which are too close or far from the shore. With these final details, the map is complete and ready for play testing. |
| Play testing revealed two flaws:
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Well, I hope you enjoyed the show. As you can see, it takes a lot of thought and time to make a good map. It took me about 6-7 hours to make this one and there may be some additional minor adjustments as a result of play testing. Here is the before and after:
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