Construction Community Map Dev Thread

(WhiteAden) #21

oh woaw, I love the new atmosphere… the water looks way too blue now though, LOL

(light_sh4v0r) #22

Agreed, water needs to be grey, grass a bit duller as well. I really like this athmos though, in the screenshots the bright spots in the sky look like lightning, but I suppose you can’t make it flicker like that.

(Violator) #23

That looks really nice Donnovan :slight_smile: I’m sure lightning is possible with fx? It can do electric sparks which branch.

(light_sh4v0r) #24

Be sure to test the performance on that though.

(ducks) #25

Looking good, guys!

(SebaSOFT) #26

Don, that’s a great atmosphere! The only thing I would suggest (apart from the other suggestions) is to have a little more density to the overall fog.

Just enough for not distinguish if an anansi takes off from the fort (see in your 4th picture).

(Donnovan) #27

Seba, you say the fort must be into fog on shot 4?

(SebaSOFT) #28

Yes, Just a little more than it is now, what do you think?

(light_sh4v0r) #29

To be honest I think you should be easy on the fog. I think it looks cheap if you hide the surrounding mountains etc in fog, like you couldn’t do proper OOB or couldn’t fiind a way to increase performance. We have a pretty map, why hide it?

(hozz) #30

Don’t fix the fog, fix the gameplay :tongue:

No offense. I was amazed how much progress regarding gameplay was made in the consite area, when I played last time. And the dual level plant possibility is just genius.

But the rest of the map is just too big, with empty spaces making no sense:
strogg base to first obj
consite building: 1 m thick walls, useless rooms, no real sense in the architecture… nobody seems to be defending the gen
the “red light tunnel” is too long
the transmit distance is just ridiculous, people just speed with icarus and hope to catch GDF with pants down… no real strategic gameplay here. Imho the uni must become more of a defended “fortress” which should be quite close to the various subway exits. I’d also like the option for GDF to reasonably defend the brain itself rather than xmit.

IMHO the entire “city” area needs to be tightened. Which you seem to be doing atm anyway. So good luck and success with it :slight_smile:

(SebaSOFT) #31

Light, you are right, I agree, I just suggested 1% denser, that’s it. Also, that’s why I don’t recommend any kind of rain at the atmosphere. I’m sure Don will do a jaw dropping environment.

hozz, thanks for your comments, yes we are steering in that way.

(Stroggafier) #32

My two cents…

  1. Objective 2
    If Objective 2 for the Strogg were moved closer to the sand piles at about where the front loader is located. E.g. blow a control panel on a remote door control box for the tunnel door to open, as an alternate way of opening up the tunnel. Then, the fighting would be more around the objective and less in the open between the tunnel door and the ramp. You could keep both as objective 2, if you wanted more diverse play?

  2. University Gauntlet
    Lighting the run to the university and GDF hiding places
    Move the building geometry closer to the subway
    Spawn the Strogg closer to the databrain
    Spawn the GDF closer to the Subway entrance and/or University.
    Again this could intensify the fighting in the streets and buildings rather than creating the long gauntlet run and sniper spamfest.

(shirosae) #33

The problem with the university is that it has a huge open space in front of it. This is partially due to the huge expanse of nothing near the university, but also the fact that the courtyard is empty. The infantry fighting inside the building that was intended doesn’t happen, because there’s so little actual infantry area between the start of the university and the transmission terminal. The courtyard was always intended to provide that infantry area, but I left it out just to get a new release of the map out in time (remember that I took over from another member well after the project started).

My intent is to have a sunken courtyard with a few walkways, seating areas and roofs/walls to act as a semi-exposed infantry area all sunken down a floor so it’s harder for vehicles to get in and dominate, skinned up as a modern-art seating area urban garden thing.

The left side of this courtyard has a walkway that leads to some closed subway exits. If possible, I’d like those closed subway exits to run into the actual subway if it gets moved across, so instead of leaving the subway for a huge run to the university building through exposed roads you can use the subway exit right into the courtyard.

That way the subway and courtyard area ends up being two thirds of an almost-CTF style submap, instead of the huge open expanse it is now. The big problem is that individual objectives have been developed in isolation, rather than as a bunch of interacting entities.

I’m sure it won’t do anything to affect the rating and tagging jihad people are currently waging on every thread that happens to mention consite (btw, you can suck on my flange), but I’m currently working on the courtyard.

Note: picture is rotated 180 degrees from the command map. When described directions I always use the command map orientation, so left above in text = right in the diagram below.

P.S It’s spelled ‘tortoise’.

(SebaSOFT) #34

It’s nice to see that shirosae, I like the pictures, and will see with Don, I think we are going to move the university to the place you suggested, after we re-think the spawns all over the map.

(shirosae) #35

Make the areas work together first, and only then worry about where the spawns work. The spawns need to adapt to the map, not the map to the spawns.

BTW, I’m thinking that the exit from the subway next to where the databrain currently is - that could lead right up into the exits at this courtyard. How open are you to tweaking the subway layout a bit?

(SebaSOFT) #36

Not a lot, it´s just too mucho work for the time I have to spare, I can turn stairways a little more but not much. Need to think about that. Seeing the subway superimposed to the rest of the map gives me a better idea of where to move the entrances…

(shirosae) #37

In that case just move the subway near enough that it can be hooked up to the courtyard exit, but leave the exits as is above ground and build the city around them. If I get the time later I’ll do the adjustments needed to hook those together, once the layout works.

(SebaSOFT) #38

Build the city around them? that’s a lot of work and too much transformation to be calling it the same map, in my humble opinion. I believe that we can have a good gameplay without changing stuff to unrecognizable state. We are moving toward the concepts you described in your posts, but to take all opinions (even ours) into consideration, all of us have to give a little up.

(shirosae) #39

You have huge blocks of city already made. Position the important bits (objective areas, subway, university etc) first so they work with each other, then place the already-built blocks of city around those entrances/exits so there’s minimum work to be done fitting stuff together.

(SebaSOFT) #40

Yes shirosae, I know how to do it. It’s not a technical problem, but a conceptually. Also you didn’t mention Terrain and Megatexture changes.