How do you plan the layout of your island?

[Plum Pudding]

Hi, I have a question as I realise I'm going round in a circle and not making any progress.

Basically every day I pay to build infrastructure of move a building only to change my mind and destroy it the next day. It's such a waste of time and enjoyable gameplay.

I just want things to flow, how did you plan your island? Did you put your shops together? Are they close to the plaza or the beach? Did you modify your rivers a lot to get more space? I'll be grateful for any tip you are willing to share

 

[Crowsie]

I don't. As I played, I'd just build/place things where I thought they'd look nice. Do it like me and you too will have a weird-looking island with awkward dead zones that're big enough to be noticeable but too small to turn into anything appealing.

Landscapinging is my passion.

 

[Sara?]

Same as the person before me said, I know there are pp who meticulously plan their island terraform but I just go along and at some point when i feel inspired or the need for change i terraform my island, I must say i do take it slow i dont rush or tt to achieve a look faster. I am currently trying to terraform some areas once more but i feel its gonna take a while and probably it won't be my definitive layout .

Otherwise what i think pp do is take a screen shot of their map or just draw your map in paper/paint program and then from there decide how you want things to look.

 

[_Donut_]

Same advice here as Crowsie gave, I completely filled up my island and my friends always tell me it must have taken a lot of planning... well I never plan anything I do. I just started with my island entrance at the airport and worked my way backwards. Whenever I get some inspiration or see a cool video of someone doing something I just add it here and there wherever there is room

 

[nightglow]

On my first Island I flattened everything and rebuilt it a million times before I was happy. I don't recommend flattening because redoing the rivers to look natural is really tricky in my opinion.
My current island I don't have terraforming unlocked yet, but the plan was to leave most of how my map came alone. I decided for my layout, my ncp buildings will be kinda grouped together around RS. My Villager houses I haven't decided yet fully, but I do want them together off to the side of the npc buildings to where it looks like a neighborhood. I am not sure how I will do their yards if they get them.
I plan on editing a cliff and a section of the river as well as add/to cliffs. No huge changes but alot of small ones.

 

[6iixx]

ooooohboy. for my island, i kind of went all over the place - i didn't have a set base plan, and i still don't. so i can definitely see where you're running into that construction annoyance.

my plaza isn't too far from my airport, and thus, it isn't too far from my beaches. as a result, i made my shop area to the left of my airport, on the ridge of beach line. nooks cranny and ables are side by side, with a little shared space in between i filled with some decorations. there's a little 'plaza' area between the two of them that i'll be using for seasonal things just to spruce things up, and make it seem more on par with the seasonal holidays (like christmas, etc.)

my villager houses are definitely all over the place. i wanted them to feel like they had their own sanctuary's, depending on their house exterior. but some of them, like olive's current location, is set up on the beach. (ref one, ref two - that's when Sandy was living there, but you get the idea) not all of them are placed in their "permanent" locations, however - i still have gala and hans who have houses literally smack dap in the middle of areas because i haven't moved them yet. i don't plan to keep either of them, so that's also putting a little bit of a damper on where i want to put them for now. so it's okay to take your time with figuring out everything. you might get a new villager that really inspires you to cater to them, and you could end up taking up a good chunk of space just for a personalized area for them down the road.

i have general ideas of what i want, and then i try to work them in. i never flattened my island once i got the terraforming option, so it's been a bit of a pain here and there, but in the end, i think it's pushed my creativity to broaden in how i build my island up from here on out. sometimes it's best to leave things unfinished for a few days and come back to it with a new perspective.

 

[Pintuition]

I took a screenshot of my map and sent it to my phone and drew on it. You can just take a picture of your switch as well. I really crudely (no artistic skill required) started to mark on the map where the buildings could possibly go and filled in the space inbetween. I started on my entrance area first and zoomed in and decided how big it would be and how you would get to the other areas of the island from there, then built my way back through the island.

I think focusing on small projects can also be helpful. Instead of doing the whole island at once take it bit by bit. It's okay to tear down things and tweak areas if they don't turn out the way you wanted. At the end of the day realistically I probably spent two hundred hours or more and millions of bells on failed construction projects. Start small first, get comfortable with a direction, then go for a bigger project.

 

[JellyBeans]

I didn’t really plan my island at first, then after I kept moving things around and being indecisive I came up with a vague ‘plan’ but it was definitely not as detailed as I’m sure a lot of people do. I decided to have one neighbourhood area (which started out all on one level and then I changed it to be multi layer, which took time + money!) and I decided to put my shops together and have a kind of ‘plaza’ near them. Other than that I had no set plan and did things as I felt I wanted to. I definitely also recommend doing small bits at a time - it can be a lot less daunting to say ‘today I’ll start to decorate the upper left bit of my map’ than ‘today I need to build all this stuff to fit this and that project’.
But most importantly don’t be afraid to move things around! yes it takes time and is expensive, and yes it can seem like a waste of time to undo hard work, but ultimately you may we’ll be happier with your final result. good luck!

 

[Imbri]

I laid my island out to be most developed near the airport, villager houses on the other side of the river (I have 2 southern mouths), and my house up in the top corner.

Nook's is right across from the airport dock, and Ables and the RS are on either side. The museum is up in a riverbend on the other side of RS. I have open space behind the shops, so if another building is added, I can place it there. For now, there's a fenced area for hybrid breeding.

Villagers are in 2 neighborhoods across the river. They sit between the river and cliffs. Up a level is my house, as well as a fairy village and sanctuary.

I tried to place things so that the most urban (and that's sort of a stretch, on my island) area was where the first accessible region was - the airport and RS. Villagers settled in the next area, once bridge access was established. That is almost as built up, but still has more natural elements. The top level is the least developed. The sanctuary is surrounded by trees, a forest covers most of the area, and my house is nested. The path is broken and made up of several different tiles, to suggest old ruins.

It didn't all happen at once, but I found that working on one area at a time helped. I got the first settled, then began moving my villagers in. Once that was well on its way, I could transition to the upper levels. It was a matter of getting the bones in place and giving myself time to gradually add the decorative parts. A year in, and I am still making tweaks with it.

 

[Matt0106]

I just do stuff as I go; I find it's less pressure that way and I get my best ideas from just testing stuff out.

 

[Jam86]

i kind of go with the flow, like i didn't have a plan at first but i got really inspired by pinterest and my sister's island

so i basically just took in loads of ideas then just kind of threw it all onto my island in one go to get a layout plan and every now and then i just add more detail to each area

 

[SlEEPYTEARRS]

i take a screenshot of my island map and put it in my art program, then i just sketch away on top to make another map until im happy with it, then i start to make it reality in game

i had flattened my first island down and then got stressed out when i kept getting no ideas, i didnt even want to play at that point. so i made a map and now i feel like i cant actually get the island up and running again

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2021

for my second island i did the same thing, but my new rule was dont demolish anything from the natural starting island; expand upon it

 

[pikajuanca]

I had the same problem than you, and now I am feeling much happier with my island. What did I do?
-Decide what YOU want as a theme. This I find is the most difficult thing to do. I always hesitated between different themes (cottagecore, city, cute) but ultimately I decided recently to go cottagecore with simple paths. Just do what you feel more as a home, don't follow what is trendy by now on instagram or other places because trends just come and go

-Try to embrace imperfection. This is a problem a lot of people have (including me), as we see all these posts with perfect filters and very calculated angles and we feel bad about our islands. But sometimes your island and how you locate places feels bad because you see every day, and you become tired of it

How I am planning my island now? Just decided to go for a more classic layout (south part of the town is flat, then the middle part is level 1 and i will add some level 2 parts but very few, the island now is looking similar to an original map you can be given at the start of the game). Then I use the dirt path for paths i want to appear in the map and the path qrs for some parts that are more natural (the forest, the lake). And the location of buildings? Just decided to put them together but with enough space for them to not feel cluttered (some houses up the cliff, some houses near the Plaza...)

Hope this can be useful!

 

[Plum Pudding]

thank you all so much!! It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one with these struggles LOL

I don't TT and I only use terraforming to create mini island to hop over the rivers. I've modified some waterfalls (I have 3 south facing waterfalls) to add a cliff in the middle. I like that look

I want to place my shops near the airport, the plaza is a little further back. I just want things to flow between my beach, the shops, the plaza, and then my house which is on the second level near a waterfall and surrounded by pine trees. Villagers houses are all over and I'm fine with that. I'll fill spaces in between to match their personalities.

As I mainly play in the weekends, I spent about 1 hour per day this week moving one shop and one bridge at the time to have it all set up to start decorating this weekend and now I'm not happy with it Thanks for your tips !!

 

[Pyoopi]

By taking screenshots and drawing over the map and testing it out in another program. I'm big on planning and it can take me a week to months to figure out what goes where.

From #2 to #3 that took 5 months because I didn't know what I wanted to design. Then on #4 I took another big break.

Last month, I began on the middle area and this is a sample of how many times I redid the area in-game and in this program.

Tbh it just depends how much you want to drive yourself crazy and if you're willing to sacrifice your sanity. Like despite how grueling it can be, this is still fun for me. While for others it's not, lol.

 

[Sara?]

By taking screenshots and drawing over the map and testing it out in another program. I'm big on planning and it can take me a week to months to figure out what goes where.

From #2 to #3 that took 5 months because I didn't know what I wanted to design. Then on #4 I took another big break.

Last month, I began on the middle area and this is a sample of how many times I redid the area in-game and in this program.

Tbh it just depends how much you want to drive yourself crazy and if you're willing to sacrifice your sanity. Like despite how grueling it can be, this is still fun for me. While for others it's not, lol.

Where it says "large land mass" in the last picture in the left side i love the bone shape piece of land and how the inside of the bone is water and the length is land . Otherwise great in takes for pp like me who just break and do things lol, this really helps to plan things ! thumbs up

 

[azurill]

For my first island I didn’t really plan that much. I just put house plots down and worked around them. Now that I’m working on my second island I am planning it out. My villagers houses are on the beach or left side and working from one side to the other. Right now I’m figuring out where I want to put the villagers houses. I’m placing all the fencing before I move anyone.

 

[meggiewes]

I would say I don't plan that much anymore, but I just spent around three hours figuring out how to get my idea of a calm, vintage-inspired neighborhood on my island. I use Happy Island Designer when I get frustrated and want to figure out layouts. I never really went into this much detail when I used it before.

​

This is my current plan. I had some features I really wanted to keep from past versions of my island where I just winged it. I wanted to keep my jump-off point on my peninsula, my "secret beach" near the peninsula had to be accessible, the actual secret beach had to be accessible but not by walking around the entire island, there needed to be cliffs behind my resident services, there had to be room for my one of every flower garden, and I had to fit in a canal somehow.

Really, getting it into my head that I wanted to go from a more natural town to a town with a canal sent me off on this whole design process. And my husband wanted a house on my island, so I had to figure out where to put him. I also didn't want my island to feel super crowded even though I was going for a more neighborhood like design with bigger yards. I will admit that I took a lot of inspiration from this YouTube video, but I wanted to make it my own and not just directly copy. Mostly because direct copying was not fitting anywhere on my island!

This is the third major time I've planned out my island. I never know if my island layout is going to be "the one" until I've played on it for at least a month. That's how I discover what I really like and really don't like.

And for the curious, the map below is what I started with.

 

[LeenaM]

I think flow is also my biggest problem, it's something I'm really paying attention to now that I've reset my island. What I'm trying to do is lay down paths to get an idea of how different parts of my map connect, and then just lightly decorate all around the map to make it feel cohesive. Then later I can go back and fill it in. It's probably going to feel a bit awkard and empty, but at least it'll make the island prettier when playing on the daily, and I won't get overwhelmed as easily if I need to move stuff around. Not having terraforming yet limits what I can do but also means I don't have to worry about making drastic changes to my map yet.

 

[moon_child]

In my first island I went all out. Used an island designer app and planned every bit of detail meticulously and followed it to a T. It ended up looking too planned for my tastes. Very unnatural. Especially the rivers. Something about it bothered me so much that I just, didn’t even play for quite a time. So I reset and started a new island (it was the easier option than redoing everything). For my current island I didn’t plan and didn’t make very drastic changes. I kept it close to the original map except for a few terraforming here and there as and when inspiration strikes and gave in to the fairy/cottage core theme. I stuck with this island for the whole time I’m playing the game and I’m still using this. So I guess not planning at all worked for me better?