This tutorial will show you how easy it is to leverage the power of Bryce & Explorations FULL Map Import routines to create very professional looking game maps. The example map shown took approximately 15 minutes to create. I am not a professional artist so graphics quality will vary with time & skill.



Above is the Bryce5 elevation object editor. This interface is simply a bitmap editor that uses grey scales to specify the height of a 3D object. WHITE being the highest, BLACK being the lowest.

The above elevation map was created in a matter of minutes. I simply chose a nice middle grey color, and creating the cave paths and rooms. I trimmed the back of the rooms in WHITE to symbolize walls. I then clicked the "erode" button to apply a natural looking cavern terrain.

Afterwards I added light sources to enhance the shadows of the rock texture.



From within the Bryce editor the elevation object looks like this 3 dimensionally. The map is then  rendered to disk @ 3,200 x 3,200 pixels.



Explorations can currently import a FULL map of 100x100 cells. My game is using 32x32 pixel tiles so a 3,200x3,200 pixel image will import perfectly into my Explorations map.

Once imported, the map is ready to be blocked off for movement and used within a game.

Final Screenshots :

Below are the screenshots of the final render after it is imported into Explorations.








Explorations constructs & manages tiles from the rendered image. This gives you maximum quality within a simplistic 2D engine. And the best part about Explorations, is the ability to share your work.


This Tutorial was created in v8.9. Explorations v9.0 does not use TILE importing. It simply manages the entire map after it is rendered in Bryce.

Explorations Forever!