This isn't going too well at the moment. I've sunk over 10 hours into this monstrosity already, and I'm still working on the first (and biggest) map. It's taken a LOT more work than I anticipated, even with careful planning.

Fortunately, I'm over the worst part now - defining the locations for everything - and I can get on to the serious business of decorating. My plans for this are simple: render large chunks of the map inaccessible using Undulation, then decorate everything the character can actually see. All I need is the tile radius of the play screen (which as I recall isn't too big - you can't even see all the stuff I've put into the map), and fill out the map accordingly.

I suppose this is what I get for doing a 181 x 300 tile map.

Still, I am confident (or at least, hopeful) that I can turn this around. As I've said, the other maps will be much smaller and easier, and a lot of copypasta can be used. The rich guy's house and the mine will be the worst; I can probably expect those to take another ten hours. By the time I get the maps done I probably won't have any time left for programming. :P

Even so, I've learned quite a bit from this - including, most importantly, how to create canyon walls from a traceline. It took until my second go to figure it out, but the results show - the first side of the canyon took over an hour to finish, while the second took just over twenty minutes. Using this technique, the mine's outline should be a snap.