Immersion and Theme

I had a lot of ideas for how to texture this map, but I wanted to go for a dark, lonely feeling for the map. I wanted the players to feel a sense of dread in the castle as they walk through the remains of the miserable princess' domain. I wanted to go for a medieval feeling as well since castles are often associated with medieval aesthetics.

Here, you can see the dark tone I wanted to go for with the black walls and grey ceilings. I didn't want bright colors to play a heavy role in this castle, so I kept them to a minimum if not to highlight the darker textures.

Guidance and Orientation

I didn't want the players to feel lost in the castle since it is quite large. Before this, every room had the same floor and ceiling, so to help the player know where they are, I changed the room height and floor color whenever the player entered a new room. In this example, the player is in the "Dining Room" heading toward the "Library".

As you see here, the floor between the "Kitchen" and the hallway are two separate textures. In addition, I added a small strip of a different texture in-between to further highlight that these two rooms are separate. Also, I added textures on certain assets like the chair to help the player know what it is and where they are in the map. I wanted to follow the first two rules of John Romero's rules for texturing:

1. Always changing floor height when I wanted to change floor textures and
2. Using special border textures between different wall segments and doorways.