All Things Art: Building Edition

My idea is for Galaxy City and ties in some work for Doc Aeon as well.

There needs to be a butcher shop called Galaxy Chops. The Chops stands for Covert Hero Operations. When you enter the shop an NPC says "Welcome to Galaxy Chops. Our meat is out of this world." Another NPC would tell you your order is ready for pick-up and direct you to an elevator that leads to Chops HQ where an NPC contact gives you covert missions to the Rogue Isles and eventually to all parts of the world, if we ever get global city mission maps. You could even have Galaxy Chops franchises in a couple zones but they all lead you to the same HQ.

Something like this that adds a little depth instead of having every NPC contact standing on a street corner would be nice.

Some of these are more "zone" ideas than "building" but I am going to post them anyway.

General: Slow down the day night cycle. Having sun move at visible speed looks really weird (at least to me) and with the new shadows it is even more obvious.

General: Is it technically possible to have the skybox vary depending on where the player is within a single zone? If yes, use that to make areas more distinct/immersive. If no, get the tech guys to add this functionality, then use it.

Redside - general: Redside needs more contrasts. It has really well made slums and dystopias but it there is nothing to compare them to. You know, the nice parts of town where the rich, powerful and secretly villainous can afford to live.

Redside-zones:

Mercy: clean/brighten up Upper Mercy, the area within the walls. Arachnos cared enough to fortify it - it is not a slum and should not look like one. Ideally when a new character gets Big Time badge they should feel that they've climbed out of the gutter and into Bigtime.

Villa Montrose (Port Oakes) and Villa Requin (Sharkhead): these are the places where bosses/executives live and they should really look the part. Shiny, colorful, luxurious etc. Perhaps steal some art assets from New Overbrook - they arent used anywhere redside so it would be almost like new stuff. Also add/move at least one contact/more missions there so players have a reason to go and see the places.

Aeon City (Cap au Diable): make it live up to its name. Aoen City! The city of the future as designed by a genius and/or mad scientist! Steel and glass, forcefield fences, holo billboards, 20th floor loading docks (for flying cars), glowing bits and metal structures, walkways between buildings (covered and not covered), and so on. Perhaps steal some art assets from the new hightech place in Praetoria?

St. Martial: move the ferry to around the southwest corner of Jackpot. A resort town should at least try to look welcoming to visitors.

I have a couple of photos that I'm planning on uploading as examples of what I'd like to see added to the game. Namely memorials for the First and Second World Wars. Considering the number of heroes who lost their lives in the Rikti War and other incidents, an out of the way, but still visible, (in other words, subdued) memorial with all the names of the fallen engraved would be a nice touch.

Also, given that the background of Detective Frasenbacker in Faultline establishes the likelihood of a Canadian Consulate in Paragon, I'd love to see a building with the Canadian flag added to reflect that.

A Paragon Museum – a building that anyone could enter and look around, this could contain artefacts from COH lore and dev statues etc – you could even run a huge competition the feature a player or two in there.

A Paragon Art Gallery – similar to the Museum, again you could run a competition to feature some fan art in there.

More interesting billboards – perhaps with heroes advertising products, e.g. “Positron loves Arctic’s Ice Cream” or “Synapse says slow down when attempting to cross the road”

Newspaper HQ – something along the lines of Daily Planet/Bugle

A Zoo – busy with citizens with an occasional mob entering there could be fun

A high security prison in PI, this could house the most dangerous villains, not sure if it could be done but a game mechanic where an AV breaks out from time to time could be a lot of fun.

honestly theres very little need to revamp zones. Jack 'i smoke rock' Emmert's vision of getting everyone into an instanced mission as often as possible leaves little time for people to appreciate zones, but utterly detest the huge and largely superfluous skyway and Ip maps since that gets in the way of getting to a mission.

Come on devs, you have to give away merits for people to get all the zone badges multiple times....

I'd like to see the return of the Tabitha Fabish Magic store signs in Talos Island and Independence Port.
They were changed to swinging "El Super Mexicano" signs when Physx was introduced, and then [incorrectly?] replaced with "Pandora's Box" signs. The employees inside are still referred to as "The Mystic", "The Seer", etc. and not "Pandora's Box employee", so I would think this was an oversight.

Lots of good advice in these posts. I'm actually an architect in my 'day job', and as you might expect the office interiors bug the livin' fire outta me. As for the buildings themselves, more variety and realism would be an improvement, though I agree that Faultline is *much* better than the older zones. More mixture of architectural styles, and how about sloped roofs on something besides warehouses? How about other large 'public' buildings - certainly a city the size of Paragon has a football stadium? A racetrack? A bus depot or train station (besides the Yellow and Green lines of course)

Feel free to PM me and I'll drop you my email address. I'd be happy to give specific advice almost anytime.

Who did design the office interiors? M. C. Escher? They're just bizarre sometimes.

Someone else suggested street signs, and I love the idea. Names for all the streets and being able to actually learn your way around or give directions would be lots of fun.

Another poster didn't like Skyway - I must respectfully disagree. Skyway is my favorite zone. Having multiple levels with things happening on them is great, and makes you look up. Of course, I'm from Seattle where the freeways look much like that.

While not technically buildings, I would like to see an organic landscape along the lines of Charnel's lands from the game Sacrifice.

http://ene3.com/wp-content/uploads/2..._screen031.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xiyGLWjkNc (I suggest muting, as the guy 'offering commentary' may be NSFW)

Obviously don't just rip them off, heh. But I think it would be great if you could try Sacrifice, and let its surreal style inspire you!
At least for a few art assets for a zone or two.
Perhaps the CoH / CoV Netherworld?

Sacrifice is available through Steam and Good Old Games for a very reasonable price, and well worth it. The gameplay is a lot like playing a Mastermind, heh.

Would it be possible to create 'skins' for the buildings? Especially for events?


Rikti Invasions - buildings and roads are skinned to look like they've taken blaster hits/burns; at least upon the Rikti bomber travel path

Winter event - rooftops, sidewalks and roads get a layer of snow or ice (seasonal skinning in general; Spring Fling)

Zombie Apocalypse - buildings and/or roads are skinned to look more morose and/or decayed; more flies and sewer roaches topside

Deadly Apocalypse - randomly burning buildings (like the blueside firefighter mini-event) and patches of ground fires (could also do this along Ghost of Scrapyard's travel path)

Eternal Night - Less outdoor lighting; while providing faux light from lamposts, streetlights, windows, spotlights, Arachnos/Longbows with flashlights, etc

...and similar skinning for other GM and misc events

A few things that come to mind:

Parks that are more parklike, rather than just random bits of greenery. Playgrounds, picnic tables, washrooms, barbecue pits -- something to indicate they are used for recreational purposes, not just random green places for villains to hang out.

An old "downtown" district. Storefronts on older buildings, narrow streets, narrow sidewalks. An area that is old but well-maintained and high-traffic. Port Oakes would be great for something like this, it could be near Marconeville.

Hopping through Steel Canyon, it is far too open for a "big business" district. Those places often have a claustrophobic air, property costs are so high that empty space is minimized. There isn't any grass, there are maybe some deliberately planted trees in planters along the narrow sidewalk, and that's it. Steel Canyon currently looks more like "skyscraper park" than a true canyon.

I agree that the train stations need more variety. Look at real life transit systems. I'm thinking of the Toronto subway system because that's the one I'm familiar with, and I could tell what station I was in without looking at the sign, because they all had a slightly different layout. Even just adding different skins would make for some variety.

And update the billboards already! "Earth for humans?" Seriously? How un-pc is that? I'm surprised Kheldians aren't up in arms over those. Add some less controversial Vanguard recruitment billboards, and there should be some for Longbow too, along with the usual business advertisements.

Being from New England and having traveled much of the country, I've always noticed Paragon City looks more like, say, San Fransisco than Boston or Providence. New England cities (especially older cities like Boston) almost have more in common with Mercy Island or Port Oaks or Sharkhead than Paragon. The labyrinthine parts of Brickstown is similar to parts of Boston. But New England cities and towns are rarely laid out on a grid pattern, and have all kinds of quirks of architecture. It's joked that H.P. Lovecraft came up with the insane non-euclidean angles of R'yleh after dealing with Boston's bizarre layout.

Though the pushy pedestrians and oblivious drivers... yeah, that's pretty dead-on for New England (especially Massachusetts). :P

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Originally Posted by Night_Hornet A Paragon Museum – a building that anyone could enter and look around, this could contain artefacts from COH lore and dev statues etc – you could even run a huge competition the feature a player or two in there. A Paragon Art Gallery – similar to the Museum, again you could run a competition to feature some fan art in there.

I'd love these, especially the Museum/Gallery, as mission maps too. Robbing the Museum is up there with bank robbery for supervillain stock schemes, and it would really suit a lot of missions. "Stop Barracuda from stealing the Eye of Tim from the Paragon City History Museum!" That sort of stuff. With, you know, dinosaur skeletons and stuff.

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More interesting billboards – perhaps with heroes advertising products, e.g. “Positron loves Arctic’s Ice Cream” or “Synapse says slow down when attempting to cross the road”

More Chris Jenkins!

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A Zoo – busy with citizens with an occasional mob entering there could be fun

The zoo... there's kinda sorta something redside with that already in Nerva that I stumbled on to yesterday (I'm sure the rest of you know about it already) at the Longbow base with their secret labs holding Devoured and the Crey base full of critters (everything from Devouring Earth to Red Caps).

An idea I've had for a while is to give Boomtown the Faultline treatment. Not rebuilding it per se, at least not by the good guys. Right now, as I understand it, Boomtown is the center of the 5th Column's resurgence into Paragon City, with their portals and staging areas as they invade and battle both the heroes and the Council. It'd be neat to make Boomtown the center of that conflict, with the rising 5th Column terrordrome or whatever. The anti-Striga, if you will. Gives the zone a purpose besides being 3 square miles of blighted wasteland.