Mapping the Star Ship Dungeon Levels

3D Model of the "Destroyer" star craft I made several years ago.

I need to map the star ship interior. I made a generic fantasy dungeon map at first, and it did not resemble a space ship in any way.  I found my old model of the Ta'ak destroyer ship and figured it makes sense to base the map on the thing I am supposed to be mapping.




Originally this thing was supposed to be gigantic, housing thousands of aliens. Since I am scaling down the scope of the dungeon, I can scale down the size of the ship itself.  One way to do this, aside from saying "It's much smaller now" is to limit the areas that are accessible. This makes sense too, since portions of the ship likely sheared off, or were destroyed during the crash.

The section I am working on is part of the "command deck" which is the disk in the illustration above. This section of the "tech level" is connected to the "fantasy dungeon".  The map will likely be in three parts, with a separate portion of the ship connecting to the prison pit, and a third section that connects all three, and offers access to the deeper portions of the "fantasy dungeon".

Starting with a rough sketch

Rough sketch of central command portion of the ship

I made a quick sketch of the command level in Manga Studio. I imagined the bridge to be in the center, with weapons stations around the perimeter.

Heading over to Photoshop

"Inking" it in Photoshop

I brought the image over to Photoshop and used the pen tool to "ink it, and thought I might play around with adding some textures and a square grid.

Staying in Photoshop too long

Getting carried away in Photoshop

As usual I started noodling around with textures and layer settings.  I was really liking the look of the map until I remembered that this is a retroclone adventure, and this map does not exactly scream 1974. I stepped back to the solid black fill I had created earlier in this process.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Back in Manga Studio. Feels like coming home.

I love using Manga Studio. It just feels right for me.  Even though I used Photoshop for years, I have quickly assimilated to Manga Studio, and Photoshop feels unwieldy by comparison. Now that I was back in Manga Studio, I had to "destroy" my level, or at least parts of it.  I started filling in sections that were filled with chunks of mountain and bits of dungeon. This left me a manageable area to work with. This certainly is not enough space to fit in all the "tech stuff" that I want, but as a part of three such areas it works well.

Adding some details

Some small modifications and room numbers.

Now I can add room numbers, doors, and really start to think about what elements of the adventure I want to include in this map. Assassin droids and cultists probably wont get along very well in the same space.

-Aaron