The Dink Network

Personally I found two ways of making a map for a DMOD. The first one is the one I used when creating Quest for the Gems. I decided what I would want the player to do on certain areas and then build the map. (Or rather my little brother thought out the story because I suffer from a severe lack of ideas.) This method gives small maps wich are pretty practical decorated, they're also quite quickly to build because of their size. Another advantage of this method is that you can do your map piece by piece. So if you don't like mapmaking you could make one piece of the map, start scripting, and then make another piece of the map and so on. This provides for more variation during the making of the DMOD.

This method has two problems though... The first is that I had problems making the map feel like it is one world. This is not a very serious problem because most of the time it doesn't have to feel like one world. The second problem is that I often made only the minimum neccessary. This made that everybody had some kind of function in the story rather then be real person who helps you out. For some reason I found those two things missing in Quest for the Gems. (I don't know about you, but this is my experience.)

So for my new DMODs I use the same strategy but a lot larger. Now I create quite a large world at once, this creates better pieces of wilderness. I use Striker's method of drawing the map on paper and then in the mapeditor. I do use a fasing system in this method too. Because in these type of maps I create the hard parts (the ones with hardness, not the ones hard to make) the tiles and the houses first. Then I can do some scripting if I like and then I can do vegetation, enemies and so on.

So for me the secret formulary is: 'variation' Mapmaking and no scripting for some period can be quite boring and vice versa.