City and Building tile set request

[wektis]

Introduction

I am working for myself in an attempt to enter indie game development, currently I am developing a browser based zombie survival game.

Reference Picture

The main game screen will be of a town or city street view. I have found some tile art online that accurately reflects the style and feel I am after.

Assembled map

The above image is obviously an assembly of tiles, it is both the style of the art, and the modularity of a tile system I am looking for to allow the creation of a more varied map system.

Style of Game

This is a post apocalyptic zombie survival/horror game.

There will be world; country; state; zone; and city maps required for its completion. (at this time I'm only looking at the tile sets where the majority of game time will be spent)

Time Period

Modern, i.e. the world as you see it today or the very near future (minus the zombies of course, but with the associated destruction)

Interior / Exterior

For now I am not looking for maps to display the interior of buildings, if you already have something like this perhaps you could also provide a roof overlay so the full building may be used in future.

Content

The bulk of what I'm looking for are external top view tile sets. These tile sets will be assembled to produce maps that are around 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Don't be afraid to get dirty and gritty with submissions, if you think a ripped apart body is needed in super high resolution on one of your tiles than thats fine. The only real rule we are working by here is that it needs to be similar in artistic style to the provided sample.

I would like to hear from you if you can provide anything from a simple single grid of a footpath tile to a modular building tile set, or to help with the whole project.

Please note I don't want images on which you can see a grid, just the content.

To a lesser extent I'm also looking for cartographer artists for world; country; state; and zone maps. (the satellite maps that I'm using now are nice and all but don't fit in with the artistic style wanted for town views.)

Scaling

As I'm developing for the internet image size isn't a huger issue.

Size of images are very much open at the moment. Once I have confirmed an artist or group that is able to contribute a set that allows me to begin map construction, based on their methods we will establish standard image height/width measurements and scale for things like cars, people etc.

Colour Scheme

Provided submissions are appropriate to the required artistic style and match the post apocalyptic zombie survival/horror genre they will likely be included.

Further Information

The website for the game is SurvivalCrisis.com

The project started in earnest only around a month ago, however I have been developing the various mechanics, systems, and scripts needed to complete the project over a much longer period.

The basic map scripts are 90% completed using images found on the internet (which is why I'm posting here to ensure anything used is with permission upon release).

I am able to provide a link for those seriously considering contributions so you may see the direction that is being taken. I would like to see examples of your work prior to providing the link.

In Conclusion

I am looking for either donations of artwork; collaborative effort or barter exchange to complete the project from individuals or groups.

Contributors will be given credit on the game site with a link to any profile/gallery/website they wish.

By the way of barter exchange I mean that if your work is of a high enough standard I would be more than happy to provide website development in return for your contributions such as my skill allows. Being unemployed I am unable to pay what high quality work is worth, so a skill exchange is all I am able to offer.

By collaborative effort I mean I hope to one day make money from the project either via sponsored add links on the site and possibly in game, if things are successful enough possibly a mini transaction store or membership based system. Meaning we could negotiate based on future income potential.

Thanks for your time.

Wek.

[wektis]

Wow, I was just reading through my post again and I guess staying up late looking for resources makes you sound like a robot with a stick lodged some place ><

Just a quick post to clarify some things because it seems like I'm asking for help to map the surface of the world right? But no.

I would like to see a continuity in the artistic style of the world and country maps assuming I have any takers, but this doesn't mean they all need to be done by the same artist. It would be nice if regional maps retained the same loose style but its not absolutly necessary. Town maps - an effort will be made to get the basics of each town correct. However as you can see on the town map example above it will be made up of modular sections for faster development, as this is the main playing map its desirable they be done in the same style.

The sample shown above would allow me to model an entire regional town (population around 50k) to an good standard for my game, each quarter of a block takes a mere 4 tiles (including foot paths and half the road), its variety between towns that I can see being a problem. I guess with vehicle over lays and some mini scene type stuff this can be avoided.

Also nothing was mentioned about copyright, so far as I'm concerned it's your art you can do what you like with it, I would ask for exclusive use in web based format but ultimately that's up to you. In fact I would encourage people to post the maps up for sale on sites like RPGNow.com, at least that way your likely to get some sort of payment as opposed to my proposal :S

Finally, looking over the site every single one of you that has posted any sort of map have more artistic talent in your toenail than I do in my entire body... its true!

[eViLe_eAgLe]

You could use The forest generator for random encounters in the woods. And there is CC3 which does that kind of suff easily. Look it up.

[wektis]

Thanks for the tip.

To show the type of development I can offer in return for any ones help I have decided to upload a demo of basic game functionality involving the maps. All .php coding has been removed so this is purly .html and java script, and could be used to show of your maps. I am also able to integrate zooming functionality ala google maps type stuff if needed.

I could provide it in .zip format if you want to play around with it yourself, or develop it further with your maps to get what you need.

For a closer look go to the demo here.

Wek.

[Gandwarf]

Hi Wektis,

I can't help you with your request, but I hope you are able to finish this game. I love zombie movies and games
Very interested to see how this turns out. Bookmarked your site!

[ravells]

I've looked at the demo, that is a huge amount of mapping required for the finished product, Wetkis. It looks like a great project and I wish you the best of luck!

At a conservative estimate:

World x 1
Countries, say x 150
States per country, say x 6
Regions per state, say x 4
Towns / Cities per region, say 4

= 1 X 150 X 6 X 4 X 4 = 14,400 maps.

Tiling maps for the cities is a good way to go, but I think you might need to look at automating the process somehow.

[wektis]

Hi Ravells,

I made another post that hasn't yet been approved by a moderator, I guess because it had another link in it? It was to the map demo you mention which wasn't up previously. (if anybody wants to see it go to the development blog on the site.)

The basics of that post was that I realised pretty much what you did, I'm going to use maps in the style that are currently there for world, country and state courtesy of screen shots from a site called Map Box. The regional maps I'm still not sure about, for the Austrailan based maps of zones I'll be using maps from each of the Departments of Main Roads (per the demo).

Also in that post I mentioned that for anyone that is able to contribute to the project I can modify the demo script to display their maps on their site, and can include zoom functionality similar to google maps.

So basically:

World Map: Completed (happy to take a contribution if somebody wants their work on there)
Country Maps: Completed (see above)
State Maps: Completed (see above)
Regional Maps: Not happy with what I got, but useable (contributions welcome)
Zone Maps: Australia is Completed (courtesy of Main Roads Maps)
Town Maps: 0%

I should probably share my intentions for how the game will develop so it doesn't put off potential contributors because it seems like such monumental task.

The materials to produce just one town map (the tiles I'm requesting in my first post) are more than sufficient to produce the entire game. Once I have some town tile contributions and I'm able to set some standard Image sizes all town maps will be procedurally built via .php scripting.
I will be developing a web based editor where people can manually assemble those tiles to more accurately reflect their home town or one that is not yet available to play in and submit them for approval for insertion into the game, or to play as a custom map.
I am considering including some sort of gallery system where anybody can upload maps for states/regions for approval and inclusion where non are currently in place.

So basically I'm trying to put as much control into the players and contributors hands to make a zombie style game they want to play, its all depending on the town tiles at the moment.

There is so much extra "stuff" going on with this project feature wise it's hard to put it all into a forum post (and most of it doesn't relate to cartograpy) but I hope the above info was helpful!

Wek.