Designing a REGIONAL MAP for the Mazah Region!

all right guys we're back or i'm back long time no see or speak whatever hi guys claire here and i'm back today with a different kind of maza content i know it's been a while since i've made a solo video here on this channel recently i've been working in a more behind the scenes sort of way for subjectively focusing on our patreon thank you very much patrons my personal etsy shop and another project which is what today's video is about subjectively has been working on the maza fakiman region for over a year now jack has designed more than 50 unique and exciting pokemon who call maza their home many of which take visual cues from elements of mexican culture and geography regardless of all this visual development the actual details of maze itself are a little murky so far maza has been kind of an amorphous amalgam of land defined mostly by snippets of world building sprinkled across a number of pokedex entries for example rotitona the calendar pokemon alludes to an advanced ancient civilization amongst its jungle home and perizodal the cenote pokemon directly references cenotes a water-filled sinkhole sort of geographical feature that is specific to the real-life yucatan peninsula despite these tantalizing tidbits maza on the whole remains rather vague outside of our initial gym later video jack and i have yet to take time to hammer out the broader details of the region we know the first gym will be a ghost type gym and decided on an overarching theme of tradition versus modernism especially as it affects young people just coming of age obviously the theme of the game is crucial to developing meaningful plot progression and character development but it's also very important to consider when world building so that the setting will support the story think of a series like portal wherein the player character chell is tormented via increasingly dangerous platformer logic puzzles by a rogue eye glados the setting of the first game is an incredibly sterile testing facility it's all white and chrome hard edges and precise angles this reflects the ai's lack of humanity total control over the situation and the player's need to comply with arbitrary rules to survive and progress in the second game that same sterile environment is degrading and being reclaimed by nature as child progresses through once pristine environments that now support life even finding evidence of the human workers who once operated the testing facility glados is humanized and becomes sympathetic the evolution of the setting complements and elevates both the characters development and the game's story obviously pokemon games are typically less story driven than my portal example but it's equally important to develop a setting that supports the content as well as the plot so what are the most important features the setting of a game like pokemon needs personally i think a good collectible monster game needs a wide range of environments that can each believably host a diverse assortment of monsters as well as a feeling of progression between each subsequent locale with these two gameplay goals in mind i began actually planning out my map so far in addition to these two broader objectives we have a general geographic reference an overarching theme and then the specific bits of lore jack already established via pokedex entries taking all this into consideration i decided the best way to begin constructing moz's map would be to hammer out the pokemon league gym sequence first the zones surrounding pokemon towns that host gyms tend to have geographical features that correspond with the gym leaders type specialty for instance in gen 3 flannery the fire type gym leader resides in the actually named lava ridge ridgetown named for its proximity to a nearby active volcano in order to design around this tradition i felt compelled to finalize the rest of the eight gym types in the mazo league after our initial ghost gym if you missed it jack and i talked in depth about how we designed our first gym leader in this video there's also a link in the description anyway together jack and i compiled a list of types that have been underrepresented among gym leaders in recent pokemon games as well as a couple of types that seemed particularly fitting for certain motifs we already knew we wanted to include from that list i ended up with ghost normal ground flying poison electric water and steel in that order obviously mexico was my baseline template as i began to sketch out my map however i really didn't want maza to just be a tracing of a real-life country with a couple extra things awkwardly tacked on i'd much rather curate a specific and unique space more designed than simply translated from real life consequently we ended up narrowing in on the yucatan peninsula as a good place to start with the starting town located in the maza equivalent of yucatan itself from there we'll have the player progress clockwise through what's essentially the equivalent of cancun and then up along the gulf coast keeping the map coastal was an important decision since by this point we had already decided that water environments would be important later in the game especially once the legendary siren design process began each gym city is associated with a unique themed zone that more or less corresponds to a real-life geographic feature or terrain type though perfectly matching real-life geography wasn't my primary goal with this map i did want maza to feel informed by reality that said there are several locations within the final map where you'll notice i took some small liberties in a handful of places i invented features that correspond only to my artistic license or borrowed imagery from either a different part of mexico or another latin american culture maza is not and was never intended to be a one-to-one translation of mexico just like the main series pokemon regions are never exact copies of their source material for each area i made a mood board with a handful of specific visual references to help inform my rendering of the zone i also looked at some mexican folk art as well as official maps from previous pokemon games for additional color and style reference first i sketched the rough outline of a map that emphasized the shapes of the yucatan peninsula in gulf coast from there i divided and labeled the land mass into zones with each zone corresponding to a gym type in associated terrain or geographical feature predetermined by my research for the initial starting zone associated with the ghost leader i looked to spanish colonial revival style architecture and yucatan farmland conversely the normal zone was most strongly influenced by cancun area luxury resorts and vacation towns next the ground zone was based on the volcanic activity along the ring of fire and especially the peak of el chichon in chiapas after that the player travels through the flying zone an area of towering ruins influenced by mesoamerican pyramids progressing along we arrive at the poison zone which is defined mostly by jungle along the sierra madre occidental mountain range the electric zone is next dominated by maza city which loosely corresponds with the location and size of mexico city rounding out the terrestrial zones is the water area ironically enough where the player would traverse through a series of connected cenotes like el zacaton finally the last zone features a sub-aquatic area and highly advanced city which makes up the steel zone from there i sort of just went freestyle adding in more details as necessary around the focal points i initially planned for eventually mazo took form [Music] [Music] no [Music] [Music] uh [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] okay [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign so there you have it maza draft one i say draft one because it's very likely that things will change in the future as we further develop maza and its story one thing i know for sure we'll have to revisit is the number of cities and towns because i really only plan to run the gyms in this iteration real pokemon games usually have a number of towns that don't host gyms in addition to those that do usually designing those locations around story development eventually we'll figure out that stuff too but for now this is what we're working with anyway thanks so much for watching i really hope you guys enjoyed watching my map making process and listening to me probably way overthink the concept and development process for a pokemon fan region regardless now that we have a map we have a pretty clear path for developing the rest of moz's gym leaders so please look forward to that and feel free to share any ideas for upcoming gym leaders now that you've seen where each gym resides also we were considering designing the player character slash trainer soon please let us know in the comments if you'd be interested in watching a video on that design process too again thank you so much for watching and for being so supportive and enthusiastic of the maza region as we continue development none of this would be possible without fans thanks so much guys and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: Subjectively

Views: 96,903

Rating: 4.9847116 out of 5

Keywords: pokemon, fakemon, nintendo, mazap, map, region, subjectively

Id: urW7lfdOBS8

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021