It should look like what it is...
By
AzureSkyCiel,
Posted on: 2011-06-24 21:54 in Suggestions and Ideas
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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1) There are a lot more warehouses than there are mansions. If one warehouse is discovered, they can abandon it and move to another. If a mansion is discovered, it's harder to abandon. It'll likely be ceased by the police and any assets linked to it will be frozen.|
Originally Posted by Cptn_Courageous
Fast forward to tonight. I went to rescue some people from the Carnival of Shadows. Unfortunately it was in a warehouse decorated up with Carnival of Shadows decorations.
Good for the decorations, bad for the warehouse. Why are they in a decorated warehouse? What carnie worth their salt would be living in a warehouse. I mean, they are supposed to be wealthy. Why aren't they living in a mansion? You know? |
2) There are, in fact, so many more warehouses than mansions that it would take a very long time to search all the warehouses. It's harder to find a specific warehouse. Mansions are much easier to find and search.
3) Warehouses are open spaces that you can do just about anything with. An area can be a dance floor or you can put up some cubicle walls and have a bed room (as long as you're mind controlled and you don't care about the lack of real privacy).
Not that I'm opposed to a mansion map, but I don't think it's as applicable in many situations. I suppose a Penthouse could be used as a place to encounter Countess Crey, if they create a mission in which she isn't on the run. People trying to avoid arrest tend not to live in the obvious places.
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Those are what I would go with. There simply are no mansions in the Paragon City area, and anonymity is key with the Carnies since their parties tend to get good and raucous, even before the soul stealing starts.
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Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
1) There are a lot more warehouses than there are mansions. If one warehouse is discovered, they can abandon it and move to another. If a mansion is discovered, it's harder to abandon. It'll likely be ceased by the police and any assets linked to it will be frozen.
2) There are, in fact, so many more warehouses than mansions that it would take a very long time to search all the warehouses. It's harder to find a specific warehouse. Mansions are much easier to find and search. 3) Warehouses are open spaces that you can do just about anything with. An area can be a dance floor or you can put up some cubicle walls and have a bed room (as long as you're mind controlled and you don't care about the lack of real privacy). Not that I'm opposed to a mansion map, but I don't think it's as applicable in many situations. I suppose a Penthouse could be used as a place to encounter Countess Crey, if they create a mission in which she isn't on the run. People trying to avoid arrest tend not to live in the obvious places. |
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The truth is that making unique instances takes time, and I personally feel it's time not worth spending. I'd rather prefer the developers to make more reusable tilesets.
A mansion tileset would be a nice idea, after all, as would be one in an apartment building and one in a school and one in a museum. I'd also like to see some more of the old "Rikti base is actually a cave" instances changed to use the actual Rikti base tileset.
Some missions make more sense to be where they are. The Carnival of Shadows don't have a base of operations. They just pick a large empty space and throw a party in there. The Carnival mission in particular isn't Vanessa's hideout, it's a random warehouse where she was throwing a party.
We need more tilesets, and we need more care taken with both which is picked for what mission and what the entry popup tells us when we go in.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I agree with some of what the OP said. Personally I HATE getting a cave door and winding up in a 3-story office building.
Some of the unique maps can ONLY be found in TFs or the AE. Why spend all that art time making some really cool maps only to limit their use. Yes, if you overuse them the wow factor goes away, but I don't see a problem with getting a little more play time out of them.
One thing I've seen in recent years is entering an instance from a new door. IMHO many of the old maps would look fresher if we started the mission at a different point on the map. This should be easier to program than drawing up whole instances.
A way to randomize enemy spawn points a little wouldn't hurt either. Having the mobs spawn at the same point on the same maps all the time is one of the things that makes old missions feel old.
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I iterate for purposes of clarification:
1. General Rule: a mission should look like what it's about.
2. warehouses should not be used for non-warehouse missions, office buildings should not be used for non-office building environments...etc.
3. We need some new tile sets.
4. A good idea for a new tile set would be a mansion, private school, hotel, etc. set adaptable to various missions.
5. A good idea would be to make some static reusable environments for public locations which would be in place all the time similar to City Hall and available for missions. These would include: An Airport, A huge public library, A huge Museum (Art /Natural History/ etc.), the Opera House / Performing Arts Center...
(Note that there should be underground entrances and exits to the sewer system or gaslight town under the city in the basements of the above.
6. It would be cool to have a Gaslight Town under the city somewhere... could connect up to the sewer network somewhere.
7. There should be specific non-linear maps: shops, restaurants, supermarkets, elementary schools, high schools (skip middle schools--too dangerous), dance clubs, health clubs...
(The above could serve as an entryway to an outdoor instance, sewers, or gaslight town.)
Obviously the above would require some time and art assets to put into play. Obviously it's not going to be coming into the game anytime soon because the team's focus is elsewhere. However, I think those new tiles and location maps could add a lot to the game.
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This is the biggest difficulty you're running into - we can't have a unique map for every mission, or we'd get one mission per Issue. We need resuable, multi-purpose tilesets, so sooner or later, some missions will end up not having a perfect setting, but will instead be put in the closest possible tileset.|
Originally Posted by Cptn_Courageous
General Rule: a mission should look like what it's about.
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Would you prefer that we simply never have missions written that don't take place in one of the existing tilesets? Because I think that may be an option.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Y'know what's really weird? No windows in office maps. Not one. Granted not every room or corridor needs a window, but perhaps a room with view (or just generic sunlight) might be nice every once in a while.
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I've actually suggested adding "fake exterior windows" to instanced maps, like what you have in that one Dr. Aion lab in the future in Time After Time. These wouldn't see out into the actual overworld, but into instances of it with limited view distance. Essentially, you'd have one large "room" on the other side of the glass that has a chunk of an existing zone in it, or even has a rearranged zone like what we got for the old outdoor instances. Essentially, just stick an outdoor instance on the side of an indoor instance and put in a few windows, if that makes sense.
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Originally Posted by OminousVoice
Y'know what's really weird? No windows in office maps. Not one. Granted not every room or corridor needs a window, but perhaps a room with view (or just generic sunlight) might be nice every once in a while.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I agree with Sam. Reusable tilesets are superior to one-offs.
I do wish there was more variation within a tileset. I'd love custom "decoration" to appear in maps depending on the enemy that occupies it, such as "doors" being covered in "spider webs" when Arachnos is around. Changes to global lighting could also create some really interesting effects. For the Carnies, I've always wondered whether a pink-ish global light mixed with a very light yellowish fog overlay (not as strong as Dark Astoria) wouldn't convey a very different feel on their missions. Missions involving "cold" types of creatures can use a blue-ish global light, etc.
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A possibly better way to do this is to create skyboxes of the major landscapes in various regions so the exterior doesn't add to polygon count. It does raise the question though of why if there is an open window we didn't just climb/fly through it instead of fighting all the way through the map. | I've actually suggested adding "fake exterior windows" to instanced maps, like what you have in that one Dr. Aion lab in the future in Time After Time. These wouldn't see out into the actual overworld, but into instances of it with limited view distance. Essentially, you'd have one large "room" on the other side of the glass that has a chunk of an existing zone in it, or even has a rearranged zone like what we got for the old outdoor instances. Essentially, just stick an outdoor instance on the side of an indoor instance and put in a few windows, if that makes sense. |
BTW some specific map types that I think might work well are malls, hotels, power/water plants, space stations (planned at one point supposedly), and abstract maps.
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Please note that I do not require a 'perfect' match or a special map for each mission.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
This is the biggest difficulty you're running into - we can't have a unique map for every mission, or we'd get one mission per Issue. We need resuable, multi-purpose tilesets, so sooner or later, some missions will end up not having a perfect setting, but will instead be put in the closest possible tileset.
Would you prefer that we simply never have missions written that don't take place in one of the existing tilesets? Because I think that may be an option. |
Close enough is good enough. But, in some cases too far off is not good enough. I used to belong to a medieval recreation society where people obeyed the 10' rule. I.e. if it looked OK from 10' feet it was good enough.
The point I'm trying to make is that for 7 years there's been surprisingly little addition of variety to the tile sets.
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That's actually a pretty neat idea. They've done something like this before, but it's always been by manually editing specific rooms and entering them in as unique maps, like the three or four Freakshow maps we have. I like your idea better, but I'm not sure what the tech could be to make this happen. If it's something as simple as 5th Column logo crates piled in the corners or Nemesis boilers on the walls or Hellion logos sprayed on the walls, they may get away with a system for props that enable themselves dynamically. In general, though, having instances be slightly different based on the faction in them is a good idea.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I do wish there was more variation within a tileset. I'd love custom "decoration" to appear in maps depending on the enemy that occupies it, such as "doors" being covered in "spider webs" when Arachnos is around. Changes to global lighting could also create some really interesting effects. For the Carnies, I've always wondered whether a pink-ish global light mixed with a very light yellowish fog overlay (not as strong as Dark Astoria) wouldn't convey a very different feel on their missions. Missions involving "cold" types of creatures can use a blue-ish global light, etc.
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Varying lighting levels in an instance is another good idea. I fear that their lighting rig for instances... Doesn't exist, however. I'm not sure how their light sources are hooked up and if it's possible to just change colour and level on the fly, or if there are zillions of little light sources that have to be adjusted by hand. Still, I approve.
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Originally Posted by Cptn_Courageous
The point I'm trying to make is that for 7 years there's been surprisingly little addition of variety to the tile sets.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I would like a Mansion in a more outskirts zone. Maybe have it be the Sinclair Estate.
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I was puzzling over this until I realized we already have a mechanic to modularly swap out mission geometry - glowies. There may be some further technical hurdle due to spawning the decorations as entities rather than baked-in geometry though.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's actually a pretty neat idea. They've done something like this before, but it's always been by manually editing specific rooms and entering them in as unique maps, like the three or four Freakshow maps we have. I like your idea better, but I'm not sure what the tech could be to make this happen. If it's something as simple as 5th Column logo crates piled in the corners or Nemesis boilers on the walls or Hellion logos sprayed on the walls, they may get away with a system for props that enable themselves dynamically. In general, though, having instances be slightly different based on the faction in them is a good idea.
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Actually a good model for a hotel lobby can be the Vanguard lobby area. (Or at least the one in Atlas Park.)
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Most of the carnies aren't. You've got Giovanna Scaldi, a 17th century peasant from Venice, Vanessa DeVore, an Art History graduate student, and the legions of people Giovanna/Vanessa has seduced and/or mind controlled.
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Originally Posted by Cptn_Courageous
What carnie worth their salt would be living in a warehouse. I mean, they are supposed to be wealthy. Why aren't they living in a mansion? You know?
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Years ago I was in the Beta for Star Wars Galaxies. Many people like that game or liked it before the major rewrite. We're not going to get into that much except to say that playing that game left me with a basic design rule: Whatever the environment is, it should reflect the mission given.
Example: SWG--you were given a mission to rescue a group of people from a mad scientist's lab. However when you got to the 'lab' it was basically a few guards and a power thingy. The power thingy was a sort of portable generator. In reality the mission was to go take out the guards and then shoot the power thingy until it exploded. No mad scientist, no lab, no rescue, no prisoners.
Multiply the above by a thousand mission descriptions and occasionally substitute a nest and beast thingies for guards and power thingies. I.e. the mission never looked like the description.
Fast forward to tonight. I went to rescue some people from the Carnival of Shadows. Unfortunately it was in a warehouse decorated up with Carnival of Shadows decorations.
Good for the decorations, bad for the warehouse. Why are they in a decorated warehouse? What carnie worth their salt would be living in a warehouse. I mean, they are supposed to be wealthy. Why aren't they living in a mansion? You know?
OK Design Team: Time to start making some new interiors & maps. For seven years we've had warehouses, office buildings, caves, sewers, arachnos bases, and science 'lab's. Time for something new.
Let's have some Mansion-- marble floors & columns, billiard rooms, conservatories, libraries, huge dinning halls, big kitchens, wine cellars, fancy bedrooms, indoor swimming pools, studies, trophy rooms, vast reception halls, ballrooms, etc. This could also double for private schools as well as hunted mansions.
I loved the Tiki Lounge-- why can't we have some other restaurants, stores, shops, etc.?
What about making a Paragon City Library, or Museum of Natural History?
Where's the Paragon City International Airport? The big train station? (not talking about the PTA) but AMTRACK. The Bus Station?
How about hotel lobbies (the mansion maps can supply the rest of the rooms)?
How about an underground Gaslight district?
Please, let's not continue overuse warehouses for stuff they're not.
*By the way the new warehouse maps with the elevators etc. are great. (love it)