I’m working on an underwater map for my game, and I’m starting to feel a bit unsure about the sense of scale of both the map as a whole and the deep sea in particular. Below are screenshots showing the deep ocean floor, as well as the entire map.
I’m thinking of carving out the area marked with red to make more room for the deep sea area, as it’s not being used for anything better at the moment, but I would prefer to get someone else’s input on it before making such a drastic change.
My ambition for this map is for it to be suitable for role play and exploration, and having a high level of detail across the entire map.
If you want to get a sense of the map scale from the perspective of a player, you can find a link to the game here: Life in the Deep [WIP] Hermit Crabs! - Roblox
I would recommend trying the game as both slow and fast species, I’d suggest the whale shark and the beluga whale.
As a reference to the actual scale, how wide are the docks?
I’m guessing they are only about 6-10 studs wide.
If so, this ocean seems pretty small. This would be small for even a lake.
I would suggest something at least 4 times bigger since you probably don’t want players having to swim for 1/2 an hour just to get to the other side.
I have a game where there are 3 large islands in the middle of an ocean that is about 4000x4000 voxels (16,000 x 16000 studs) at the edges. This hides the fact that the ocean just ends at that point.
Thanks for your input, the docks are each about 30 studs wide, which makes the entire map about 3 times larger than your estimation. The main surface part is 2048 by 2048 studs, though I’d say around one third of that area is blocked by terrain.
I figure I could increase the overall space of the map by moving pieces of the terrain, and putting more low density areas in-between.
My ambition for this map is for it to be suitable for role play and exploration, and having a high level of detail across the entire map.
In terms of optimal map size, I think it varies greatly depending on whether roleplay or exploration is your focus. For an exploration-oriented game like Isle for instance it’d be much preferable for the player to believe that the map is too large, as it’d be replayed frequently and thus the gameplay loop wouldn’t be as boring. However for roleplay, its usually detrimental for engagement to space out players a lot with a large map. If you’re more focused on the roleplay element of your game, I recommend waiting until you’ve fully hashed out the current deep sea area with high detail, as you said, only expanding afterwards. If you’re more concerned with exploration I’d recommend expanding it now. Best of luck.
Thanks! I should probably clarify, the main focus of the game is role play, but exploration is also intended to be largely in focus by gating access to most playable species, as well as some customization within species, behind it.
I decided to expand the map in a copy of the game in case I regret it or mess something up, I find it to be a quite enjoyable process, so I don’t really mind working on it even if it doesn’t make it into the final game.
