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United (micro)States of Merica


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Didn't wanna call this USA since its tiny compared to the real US but I found some cool minimal maps thing that mapped out the different types of forests and water bodies and grass cover of the states so I edited them into pixels and recolored them to the PZ palette then I resized them so that they fit into a mainland USA I worked on here's the result:

http://imgur.com/a/AWm7S

Ive been on and off working on this map for the past 4 weeks mainly editing some shapes on it because of the resizing I had to do to make it big and playable the edges were all weird looking and  I smoothed them out and added sandy beaches on most of the corners along with adjusting the rivers to be denser and more noticable, I also spent weeks making buildings for this map so that I can place stuff like craftsman homes prominently into the west coast and cape cod style houses largely into the east coast along with thinking of how I can do indiana farmland buildings vs for example nebraska farmland buildings which I found to be a bit easier to do as I can't find the roof accents for the 45 degree roofs that are found here for example http://map.projectzomboid.com/?#0.46611062331493297,0.16197466571656363,492.2235242952022 the ones in tilezed (atleast the ones i got in roof_accents) dont line up correctly like that

Ive also made some cool midwest buildings and rundown ones for detroit, I'm trying to figure out how I can make decidious forests appear on the east and evergreens on the west right now then I'll look into making more buildings and starting the road layouts.

This wont be 1:1 or 10:1 or whatever I'll allow myself a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT of creative freedom on this dude to the map scale I won't be able to map out new york correctly with its boroughs so Imma see what I can do with it.
I also deleted a lot of water especially in the desert to balance the gameplay and make the player move a bit more around the states and not camp out in the east which had A TON of water compared to the west when I started ou t.

Canada, mexico and alaska didnt make the cut cause I didnt find cool minimal maps for those places that have decidious and evergreens and shrublands and farmlands and urban density and all that mapped out on single images that can be pixelized recolored and overlayed, I may include rough lesser accurate versions of those later on so I settled with making it look like a giant island in the middle of water it has a GTA feel to it like that.

Edited by zoeyflower
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14 hours ago, zoeyflower said:

its 9000x7000 if i remember correctly, if my calculations were correct it would cover a few cells more than the entire current map

wow 30x24 cells

your worldEd is gonna have  1 fps lol

Keep up the good work and have fun :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Your project looks amazing too + if I recall correctly you were also planning to do Canada and Mexico?
I had the original idea for this after feeling emotionally obliterated from beating the last of us and seeing my dad play the crew a lot so I started taking notes and reference pictures of all the places in the last of us and making mockups of the crew style city and small town layouts + regional and state zoning.

My first Idea was pretty much every location of the Last of Us recreated into PZ and then laid out more or less accurately on the USA mainland.
I never really started working on it until I saw your thread and I thought that it was a great idea and I was bummed out to see you suspending it so I thought in your honor I'd take on this huge project of mapping out an entire map of the USA like that and since I had a lot of american houses and such done for my previous Yukon project, lastly found the "Minimal Maps" project that mapped out different grass and trees growths on the states so I redrew and edited those to PZ's map style and colors and finally decided to merge it all into the USA.

 

I have been hard at work every single day ever since the announcement, I'm at the point where I can call the Building Editor my home/dojo, I spend most and sometimes all of my computer time on it designing Buildings.

I got custom categories with the tiles in them all the way with folder like structures that categorize things, such as an empty tab saying "--- H O U S E S ---" with all the seating, tables bedroom and kitchen stuff etc.. under it, and it helps me a lot as I no longer have to browse through the entire list for minutes to place down a table now, I noticed you found the building editor pretty hard to use (it is at first) but all the above ^ helped me a lot and I can now shovel out fully furnished building after building within an hour or two.

 

Its really hard work and I dont think its anywhere near finished after like 2 weeks of nonstop work but its getting there.

---REGION BASED BUILDINGS---

 

Ever since beginning I wanted to make sure people know what part of the states theyre in, as such buildings will be different across zones.

I have a lot of craftsman style homes for the west coast area of the map, made ranchhouses and am still figuring out pueblo type architecture for the southwest and mexico border, cape cod houses for the east coast and the north, several typically general american homes for the midwest along with special detroit ones for detroit and special indiana ones for indiana (worked on some barns and farmland stuff too) and I will soon start work on some mountainous looking houses for the mountain states area of the map.

 

Some areas will not make it into the map sadly, I found new york to be way too difficult to get right so Ill put that on hold and it atleast wont make it into the first release, same for florida.

The map is really tiny compared to the real deal, the florida keys for example are literally just a few tiles in size and the entire peninsula of michigan is only like a cell big (less than west point) so michigan might not end up getting much nature and Ill have to redesign detroit to prevent the entire peninsula from just being a tiny city.

Some buildings in the colder areas like the north and the northeast coast will have enclosed porches while buildings in the south and west will have normal porches.

I also designed some general smalltown layouts which will be personalized to the region theyre in, for example a small town Ive been to in indiana when i was like 10 which is called Roanoke that I found really beautiful will be in the indiana zone of the midwest, and another small town I found pretty called Lake Geneva in Wisconsin will also be in the map (ofcourse both wont be 1:1 recreations, theyll just keep some key buildings and the general road layouts while the suburbs will be filled with the general modular american suburbans I been working on).

I'm also going to recreate the the last of us, I recreated some buildings of the pittsburgh chapter like the supermarket you crash into at the beginning of alone and forsaken along with the suburbs after the sewer chapter, also recreated the Ranch from the tommys dam chapter and Ill look into recreating the hydro dam from it too. Also got tons of reference pics from the mall of eastern colorado and the science lab + university and already started with designing some key road layouts and suburban + main street buildings from the Bills Town part. (Yup bills town will be recreated into a small town around the boston area.)

Also worked on Utah, mainly the whitefish lake area recreating some areas from the last of us and making those rural lakeside wooden buildings and planning out salt lake city.

 

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I have 42 different buildings including some others that arent in the map folder yet, mainly suburban homes that are all furnished and map ready.

Suburbs will be a big part of this map as one of my favorite things about the states are the beautiful wooden home rows with the front yards and the porches and all that, and I'm not really good at making stuffs like office buildings and warehouses and such.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

im mainly working on the suburban ones to get em done so I can start drawing up the city and small town outskirts and designs for the map and continue working on everything instead of just the buildings.

once i have a good feeling for the sizes of blocks and such Ill start work on the last of us' bills town high school and salt lake city hospital :) 

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3 hours ago, EUDOXIO said:

Marking the distances, but this project kinda reminds me to the Little States map from Pilotwings 64, maybe you can find some more inspiration with that clue :)

that map is so adorable and small i love it Ill totally take notes from it although my map is going to be way way bigger and requires bigger cities and cultural differences and all that so its gonna be much tougher

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

i just finished like 12 building replicas from a small town in indiana called "hope", 

im taking a different approach now and dumping the generic houses for more fleshed out and personal ones to the area theyre in (partly cause i released my previous usa map houses and since other people can use em now for their maps mine wouldnt be fully original anymore)

so i got this planned out at the moment

 

INDIANA
    Smalltown HOPE
    City INDIANAPOLIS

MICHIGAN
    City DETROIT

EAST COAST

MOUNTAIN STATES
    State COLORADO
        Gated Community HIGHLAND RANCH
        City DENVER
        Smalltown SOUTH PARK?

    State UTAH
        City SALT LAKE CITY

    State WYOMING
        Jackson?

WEST COAST
    State WASHINGTON
        City SEATTLE
        Smalltown

    State CALIFORNIA
        City LOS ANGELES
        Smalltown no idea yet, gotta look for one

 

cities will have smaller versions of their skylines, and all the big buildings will be unfurnished at least for the first release if i ever release this map.

as you can see, there arent a whole lot of locations. this map is way too ambitious to include tons of location with different regional and personal housing, so i reduced the mini USA to a few states 

for example, the entire midwest will basically be indiana (thats me pissed to everyone excluding indiana from the midwest in every game and such ever, my maps gonna be big and cool and not include any of the mainstream midwest states HAH) so it will be indiana, with indianapolis and hope and maybe roanoke, and the rest will be farmland with a few farm buildings scattered around. 

im including a bit of michigan because of my best friend whos from michigan and ill see about including a bit of his small town in it but it wont see detroit, atleast not in the first release either.

i will likely not be including new york and boston and such, atleast not for first release. i wanna get the map out before / shortly after the animations update.

if new york and boston and all those will make it in theyll be heavily downsized versions, with a lil skyline and a few big buildings.

thats it for now.

 

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