[ShadowHunt]

Making Good Maps?

Housing has been around for a while, and I know at least a few people have been trying to help out by making new maps for the game. So I've been wondering just what makes a good map? People must have been at it long enough to figure at least some of it out, and with the advent of the looking for group tool, housing areas can be pushed as public within the game.

To that end, I haven't really done much myself but I think I've seen enough to get the basics, and that should be enough to get this discussion started.

Going in a hopefully useful order...
Chair and wall placement are probably one of the biggest factors in influencing where players will put their characters, since people tend to default toward either sitting on chairs or standing back to a wall, this should at least be considered when figuring out where players should gather.

Spacing places out is nice, but too much space in the wrong places can discourage interaction. Simply putting more space between everything isn't instantly better. I'd argue even that ideally public spaces pack players relatively close together. Which isn't to say there isn't a place for making more open areas, but rather that it should be more carefully considered.

Then it needs to be considered that a given location usually only has so many people at a time, and can rarely support more then one central location without starting to thin out players. Which is to say, any specific location should probably have one central area where people can gather, and the rest should be built off it with the expectation that it usually won't get as much traffic and tend to be more private usually.

This one is the most explicitly a personal opinion, sometimes it seems better to build an area as an "off-screen" area, such as kitchens. Most people are fine interacting with an npc or two, but sometimes it can feel a little awkward when a PC isn't filling an important role in RP, but if the role can be gently pushed off screen, it can stand out a bit less. Of course it should still be setup so a player could fill the role given a chance.

And as a final side note, making sure to add a few more or less private areas for private interactions of whatever kind generally is a good idea. These are the kinda places where spacing things out and putting less or no chairs/walls may actually help achieve the areas goals as well.

What Do you think?
But then I don't have experience in actually building maps for housing or the game, and
I would very much like to hear what other people consider when they build an area.