ID:2206773
 
Ok so you all know how you got a million and one turfs and you got those nice lil edges on the pathways scattered all over and its a hassle making em for each turf? well you can skip doing that with this trick.

req:32x32 or bigger icon, and photoshop

1. make a new document 32x32 or whatever size you need

2. copy paste the icon in then goto define pattern under the edit menu give it a name and save the pattern if you wish. (repeat this for grass,dirt, whatever ground textures you need)

3. open a new document make it whatever size you want but id go with say a 96x96 for a nice lil dirt patch.

4. goto the pattern stamp tool it right under the paintbrush tool and select the pattern you made.

5. paint a nice like random shaped thing you want but if you want to take it up a notch with randomness mess around in the brush preset are to add scattering dual brush etc.

6. right click on the nice lil dirt patch you made and click blending options and add a nice inner shadow and tweak the opacity so it looks like the edge of the shape is kind darkened by the grass.

7. Wala now you can paint away nicely preset preshadowed dirt patches or grass patches or whatever and make nice paths and dirt mounts and dunes etc. Do note you could technically do huge chunks of predesigned map this way, but if you do might wanna break it up otherwise massive lag will come when opening the map and possibly when hosting the game as it will have to load up this huge image for the map.

8. You can add new layers and paint more stuff on top and go nuts

So hopefully this trick helps make some people awesome dope maps.
Nothing like a little bunch of screenies to not be here and help spice up a tutorial
A graphics tutorial to boot.
Ok so you all know how you got a million and one turfs and you got those nice lil edges on the pathways scattered all over and its a hassle making em for each turf?

http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=2195575

Draw 11 tiles.

Generate the other 36 tiles automatically.

1) Draw your two tiles to create a transition.



2) Create the autotile blank:



3) Halve the space around the edges:



4) Draw your transition anywhere in the purple space:



5) Prepare two blanks. One from each turf you are trying to transition:



6) In MSpaint, copy the edge blank. Set your selection to be transparent. Now, use the eyedropper tool. Set the background color to red. Paste over the inner blank.



7) Deselect the blank you just pasted. Now select it again. Copy it again. This time, set the background color to purple. Paste over the outer blank.



Delete the other two blanks. Now you have your 11-state autotile blank.

8) Use AutotileLib to generate the 47 unique states possible from the 3x4 blank:

it can come out looking like this
http://imgur.com/xEBSn1B
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/xEBSn1B.png">

^do that. Direct link to the image from imgur. Imgur is over capacity like, 80% of the time and fails to load during peak hours. Direct linking almost never fails even if imgur is crashing and burning. Plus you aren't making people look at their ads.

In response to Ter13
Ter13 wrote:
Plus you aren't making people look at their ads.

imgur is one website where that is not necessary a bad thing. Ads are annoying, but remember what filehosting sites were like before imgur, e.g. Photobucket. Imgur, for its flaws, is a god damned paradise by comparison.
My personal favorite method of doing maps is to actually paint the terrain in large sections. All of the little decorations like rocks, trees, etc are rendered right onto the map. With this design, you have to manually draw and place the collision boxes for each obscure object, but I still find this method to be the best presentation.

You just get a much higher quality map when it actually feels hand drawn. And it's an actual painting, so you tend to not do large tracks of empty space. When you treat it like a painting, you start to make sure that no space is wasted and that something interesting is always in view.

Now, this method is EXTREMELY cumbersome and doesn't lend itself very well to changes if/when they need to be made, even if you save everything as its own layer in Photoshop or gimp.

This method is also generally much more time consuming. You basically have to already have a model of the landscale finished and satisfied before you even begin working on the piece as a whole, because changing just one part can be a royal pain in the ass to edit later.

I don't recommend this method for anyone who doesn't really feel like a hand-art aesthetic will add anything meaningful to their game, but it's always an option.

There's a clear difference in the drag-and-drop aesthetic of something like Campaign Cartographer and a hand painted texture