S
Star Ghost
Guest
How to Make a Realistic Town
Hi guys, This is my first tutorial and I have decided to give a tutorial on how to make a basic and realistic medieval town in the WE.
In this Tutorial I will cover all the different steps required to make a cool and good looking town, from terraining to doodads. Hopefully by the end you will also have learned a little about how towns grew and looked in medieval times.
Contents
0.5) Introductory Statement
1) The Terrain
2) I) How a town grows
II) Starting Yours
3) Doodads
---
0.5
If you think about it, towns don't just grow out of nowhere, they start in certain areas for a reason. This reason could be an industry like fishing or farming, or because of trade (e.g. a town built at the crossing of two important trade routes). You have to think about this when you are designing your town. In this tutorial I will be creating a small town which began because of the big ole forest next to it, which was good for logging and hunting.
Section 1- The Terrain
As I said, we are going to be making a logging town. This means, naturally, that we are going to need a forest of some kind. Now I have seen some great tutorials about making forests, so if you find mine boring use one of these, but for the sake of this tutorial I am not going to make a really complicated one.
Start by making your map, I'm using size 64x64 but you can use whatever you want. I think the Village Tile set is good because it has some great medieval tiles like cobblestone.
Set your initial tile to "Thick Grass"
Got everything set up? (if a screen shot is needed here please tell me)
Good.
Let's make a medium sized forest somewhere on the map. I'm going to place mine near the top.
As you can see I have included a sky, you can get tis by going to Scenario>Map Preferences. I have used Lordaeron Summer Sky. Like I said, I'm not going to go into how to make your forest, I'm just going to leave it at trees
Since this is a logging town, there should be some tree stumps laying around. You may want to delete some of your trees in one or two areas so it looks as if the loggers are pressing into the forest.
You may want to add more or less stumps depending on how long your town has been here.
At this point you may want to add a few foresty things such as doodads or ideas from other tutorials. Heres what I added:
If you can see it, I also added some patchy short grass into the forest to make it look more realistic
Let's turn away from the forest for a moment and make some hills. On my map I'm saying that the loggers chose a relatively flat area of forest for ease of logging, so I'm not going to go crazy with hills, but the terrain looks horrible flat. Add some small foothills (in a hilly area, foothills come before the large hills and are small to medium size) behind, or in front of if that's how you look at it, your forest. Use the 'apply height' tool in the terrain palette to do this.
You may or may not want to keep a small area near the forest flat for your town's buildings.
Create one or two larger hills if you want.
It should look something like this:
Now you can extend you hills into the forest, make sure they aren't to big at the very start of your forest, but they can be bigger in the back. I have decided to keep the area with the stumps flat but the rest of the forest hilly.
I think the forests looks a lot nicer and scenic with hills in them, but if you don't like them then don't use them.
Well that about wraps up Section 1, on to 2
Section 2- The Town
I) How a Town Grows
When I say this, I mean a medieval town. As I said earlier, towns don't just randomly appear out of nowhere, they are there for a reason, but this doesn't mean that medieval towns were clean, organized, or anything like that. They didn't randomly appear but they randomly expanded. I mean that your average town wasn't planned out, they were "Do it as you go along".
That means that when you are making your city, while it may look nice, it's more realistic if you city isn't laid out on a grid and if you more or less do it as you go along. This does not mean throwing buildings onto your map with no regard to what your doing.
Most towns were divided into to general sections- Commercial and Residential. These names should speak for themselves. If you don't know what they mean, Residential is housing and places to live, while Commercial is stores, markets and inns.
When designing your map it will make more sense to divide your town into these sections.
Ok, now that that's said, I'll tell you how medieval towns grew. first they started out as a village, with maybe a small church, a few houses, an Inn (like a hotel) and one or two trading shops. If the village was prosperous, and if the inhabitants reproduced <3 then the village would grow. People would build more houses, shops, and Inns until the village became big enough to call a town. Once a village reached "Towndom" people from surrounding villages and farms would buy things from the town which would make the town wealthier than anyone else. This also meant that nobody else ever got any money so there were very few towns around.
If you don't understand this part it's ok, you don't absolutely need it.
II) Starting Your Town
Ok, it's a lumber jacking community right? So naturally we need some Lumber mills or something like that. I went to Scenario>Player Properties and made Player 12 (Brown) Neutral. I will use him to place any non-doodad buildings.
Go into the Object Editor, select Units, and find the Human Lumber Mill. Change the "Art- Scaling Value" to something larger and more realistic. I used 1.5
Place about two Human Lumber Mills near the stumps in your forest. If you want you can put a few workers or villagers and even order them to chop wood through triggers, but I won't go into that.
Please note that according to my writing in I), this is going to be a village. I am making it smaller because there is no need to make a massive town just to teach you the basics.
Now let's make us some houses. I'll use the "Small House" doodad but you can use whatever you want. Think about how many Lumber mills you placed when you make your houses. Let's say that there are two men in each house who can work in the mill, and let's say that one lumber mill requires 10 workers. That means you need at least 5 houses for each mill. I made 2 mills so I have 10 Houses.
But wait... That doesn't look so cool... Yeah well the WC3 house doodads leave something to be desired, you might be better off with a custom one. But there are a few things we can do to make this look better.
Let's add a road using the "Stone Path" tile. Make it go along through all your houses and to the mills. Also add a little area like the one indicated by the red lines (more on it in the Doodads section).
Now go over to the right (or left if you want) of your town and let's place a few things.
First let's make a church. The only church doodad is a cathedral, and that doesn't work for a small town. I am going to use the Town Hall but you can download a custom church if you want. I also changed the scaling on the Town Hall to 1.75. You can rename it to Church if you like.
If you want to, you can put some shops or an Inn of some kind in this area now, I will not take a screen shot of it though.
Well this tutorial is getting pretty long, I hope you're not bored!
Section 3- Doodads
Now the more fun part, doodads. Open up your doodad palette and set it to Village and Props. I'm not going to add a screen shot for every step but I will for the finished product.
Our poor villagers have no lighting, so let's strategically place some lanterns around the village.
Next, we need a well or a fountain for the poor guys to get a drink from. A well doodad can be found under structures. You can use that little area we made with the red lines around it to put a well/fountain in, and you can make more of them if you want.
Place some fences around if you want to.
Make a little graveyard away from the main part of the village with some peasant graves and one or two regular ones. Put some flowers around the graves like memorials. Now that we're on flowers, put some flowers around your village to brighten the atmosphere. Also add some shrubs. Angled flower beds and potted plants are good too, but if this is a poorer village don't use them.
I also put one or two benches around the village.
For the final touch, put in a few Neutral animals and a few Villagers.
Here's the finished product:
Happy Mapping!
P.S. The last two screen shots are attachments because PicTiger is down for maintenance :banghead:
Hi guys, This is my first tutorial and I have decided to give a tutorial on how to make a basic and realistic medieval town in the WE.
In this Tutorial I will cover all the different steps required to make a cool and good looking town, from terraining to doodads. Hopefully by the end you will also have learned a little about how towns grew and looked in medieval times.
Contents
0.5) Introductory Statement
1) The Terrain
2) I) How a town grows
II) Starting Yours
3) Doodads
---
0.5
If you think about it, towns don't just grow out of nowhere, they start in certain areas for a reason. This reason could be an industry like fishing or farming, or because of trade (e.g. a town built at the crossing of two important trade routes). You have to think about this when you are designing your town. In this tutorial I will be creating a small town which began because of the big ole forest next to it, which was good for logging and hunting.
Section 1- The Terrain
As I said, we are going to be making a logging town. This means, naturally, that we are going to need a forest of some kind. Now I have seen some great tutorials about making forests, so if you find mine boring use one of these, but for the sake of this tutorial I am not going to make a really complicated one.
Start by making your map, I'm using size 64x64 but you can use whatever you want. I think the Village Tile set is good because it has some great medieval tiles like cobblestone.
Set your initial tile to "Thick Grass"
Got everything set up? (if a screen shot is needed here please tell me)
Good.
Let's make a medium sized forest somewhere on the map. I'm going to place mine near the top.
As you can see I have included a sky, you can get tis by going to Scenario>Map Preferences. I have used Lordaeron Summer Sky. Like I said, I'm not going to go into how to make your forest, I'm just going to leave it at trees
Since this is a logging town, there should be some tree stumps laying around. You may want to delete some of your trees in one or two areas so it looks as if the loggers are pressing into the forest.
You may want to add more or less stumps depending on how long your town has been here.
At this point you may want to add a few foresty things such as doodads or ideas from other tutorials. Heres what I added:
If you can see it, I also added some patchy short grass into the forest to make it look more realistic
Let's turn away from the forest for a moment and make some hills. On my map I'm saying that the loggers chose a relatively flat area of forest for ease of logging, so I'm not going to go crazy with hills, but the terrain looks horrible flat. Add some small foothills (in a hilly area, foothills come before the large hills and are small to medium size) behind, or in front of if that's how you look at it, your forest. Use the 'apply height' tool in the terrain palette to do this.
You may or may not want to keep a small area near the forest flat for your town's buildings.
Create one or two larger hills if you want.
It should look something like this:
Now you can extend you hills into the forest, make sure they aren't to big at the very start of your forest, but they can be bigger in the back. I have decided to keep the area with the stumps flat but the rest of the forest hilly.
I think the forests looks a lot nicer and scenic with hills in them, but if you don't like them then don't use them.
Well that about wraps up Section 1, on to 2
Section 2- The Town
I) How a Town Grows
When I say this, I mean a medieval town. As I said earlier, towns don't just randomly appear out of nowhere, they are there for a reason, but this doesn't mean that medieval towns were clean, organized, or anything like that. They didn't randomly appear but they randomly expanded. I mean that your average town wasn't planned out, they were "Do it as you go along".
That means that when you are making your city, while it may look nice, it's more realistic if you city isn't laid out on a grid and if you more or less do it as you go along. This does not mean throwing buildings onto your map with no regard to what your doing.
Most towns were divided into to general sections- Commercial and Residential. These names should speak for themselves. If you don't know what they mean, Residential is housing and places to live, while Commercial is stores, markets and inns.
When designing your map it will make more sense to divide your town into these sections.
Ok, now that that's said, I'll tell you how medieval towns grew. first they started out as a village, with maybe a small church, a few houses, an Inn (like a hotel) and one or two trading shops. If the village was prosperous, and if the inhabitants reproduced <3 then the village would grow. People would build more houses, shops, and Inns until the village became big enough to call a town. Once a village reached "Towndom" people from surrounding villages and farms would buy things from the town which would make the town wealthier than anyone else. This also meant that nobody else ever got any money so there were very few towns around.
If you don't understand this part it's ok, you don't absolutely need it.
II) Starting Your Town
Ok, it's a lumber jacking community right? So naturally we need some Lumber mills or something like that. I went to Scenario>Player Properties and made Player 12 (Brown) Neutral. I will use him to place any non-doodad buildings.
Go into the Object Editor, select Units, and find the Human Lumber Mill. Change the "Art- Scaling Value" to something larger and more realistic. I used 1.5
Place about two Human Lumber Mills near the stumps in your forest. If you want you can put a few workers or villagers and even order them to chop wood through triggers, but I won't go into that.
Please note that according to my writing in I), this is going to be a village. I am making it smaller because there is no need to make a massive town just to teach you the basics.
Now let's make us some houses. I'll use the "Small House" doodad but you can use whatever you want. Think about how many Lumber mills you placed when you make your houses. Let's say that there are two men in each house who can work in the mill, and let's say that one lumber mill requires 10 workers. That means you need at least 5 houses for each mill. I made 2 mills so I have 10 Houses.
But wait... That doesn't look so cool... Yeah well the WC3 house doodads leave something to be desired, you might be better off with a custom one. But there are a few things we can do to make this look better.
Let's add a road using the "Stone Path" tile. Make it go along through all your houses and to the mills. Also add a little area like the one indicated by the red lines (more on it in the Doodads section).
Now go over to the right (or left if you want) of your town and let's place a few things.
First let's make a church. The only church doodad is a cathedral, and that doesn't work for a small town. I am going to use the Town Hall but you can download a custom church if you want. I also changed the scaling on the Town Hall to 1.75. You can rename it to Church if you like.
If you want to, you can put some shops or an Inn of some kind in this area now, I will not take a screen shot of it though.
Well this tutorial is getting pretty long, I hope you're not bored!
Section 3- Doodads
Now the more fun part, doodads. Open up your doodad palette and set it to Village and Props. I'm not going to add a screen shot for every step but I will for the finished product.
Our poor villagers have no lighting, so let's strategically place some lanterns around the village.
Next, we need a well or a fountain for the poor guys to get a drink from. A well doodad can be found under structures. You can use that little area we made with the red lines around it to put a well/fountain in, and you can make more of them if you want.
Place some fences around if you want to.
Make a little graveyard away from the main part of the village with some peasant graves and one or two regular ones. Put some flowers around the graves like memorials. Now that we're on flowers, put some flowers around your village to brighten the atmosphere. Also add some shrubs. Angled flower beds and potted plants are good too, but if this is a poorer village don't use them.
I also put one or two benches around the village.
For the final touch, put in a few Neutral animals and a few Villagers.
Here's the finished product:
Happy Mapping!P.S. The last two screen shots are attachments because PicTiger is down for maintenance :banghead:
Last edited by a moderator:
