How do you map out your town?

[IndiaHawker]

Getting back into AC, I always used to map out my towns with pen and paper on squared paper, however I don't think I had a laptop back then and now I do it'd be so much easier to landscape and relandscape digitally (yay to no rubbing things out)!

So I'm wondering if there's some sort of simple program I could use to do this? I've found a few but they're really confusing to me. Otherwise I might just draw a grid myself and map it out my way - if I do this how big should I make my grid, to account for beaches and stuff?

Please and thank you! And also, please feel free to show me your mappings, I'd love to see what others do!

 

[DORITO-SAN]

I'd be very interested in finding a program for that too, I used to map out my city folk town on lined paper lmao
Right now I'm trying to be more relaxed about how my town looks since I'm not sure what direction to go in but I would keep on using a grid.

Each tile in the game is 32x32 so I would say thats a good size to make your grid squares

 

[IndiaHawker]

Okay, thanks! What do you mean by each tile, like how big the town is?

 

[LadyDestani]

I just use Paint on my computer and this blank grid I found by searching for "ACNL town grid".



This is my current mapped out town, but I'm still tweaking little things. It's very busy because I found I got stuck on flower layout unless I mapped that out too. I didn't finish mapping the beach and ocean because I didn't need that to plan.

 

[Ellexi]

Oh LadyDestani that’s so helpful and resourceful, thank you! I, too, was looking for some ideas on how to fix up my town (and extreme lack of planning, lol)

I play lots of Stardew Valley and there’s communities on there who have made websites for basically the same purpose, of designing and planning your town. So I did wonder about applying that to my Animal Crossing, as well. Haha it’s just so fun! I love designing it

 

[2kimi2furious]

I just use Paint on my computer and this blank grid I found by searching for "ACNL town grid".

View attachment 219881

This is my current mapped out town, but I'm still tweaking little things. It's very busy because I found I got stuck on flower layout unless I mapped that out too. I didn't finish mapping the beach and ocean because I didn't need that to plan.

View attachment 219882

Oh wow. I never map my town, but I think I'm going to because of this. That's really helpful!

 

[IndiaHawker]

That grid looks helpful, thank you! Is there a significance to the larger squares? I haven't played in years but feel like there is a significance, can't remember though!

 

[LadyDestani]

That grid looks helpful, thank you! Is there a significance to the larger squares? I haven't played in years but feel like there is a significance, can't remember though!

Yes, the bigger squares are acres. I believe there are limits to how many major buildings can be in a single acre. If I'm correct, it goes by the center square/tile of the building and there can only be 3 per acre. Those are the rules I've followed anyway and never had trouble getting a villager to plot where I wanted them yet.

There's a very good guide that I followed when I was plotting out my town.

https://aforestlife.com/2014/04/07/a-post-featuring-my-gridded-maps/

It's tedious, which is why I didn't do more than I had to, but it has been so helpful.

P.S. Don't know why my map posted so small. Must be because I'm on my phone.