A walk through the Wayback Machine

Atlas Park

Did you ever wonder where Atlas Park got its name? Sure, there's a big statue of Atlas prominently displayed, but there isn't really much in the way of park land in the zone. There's Lake Prometheus and some lawns with walking paths around City Hall, but otherwise there's just not much you could really point at and call it a park.

Come with me through this convenient time portal I have set up (there are a dozen or so methods of time travel, you know). We'll visit 2003 and I'll show you why Atlas Park was given it's name.

Before we begin, I should note that the pictures in this posting are downsized from the originals. I did this to avoid breaking the forum as well as cut down on the downloading time. Each of the pictures should have a link attached that will take the curious reader to the original "photo". For convenience, you'll find that nearly all of them can be reached at the "classic" CoH website screenshots page.

Paragon City in 2002-2003 was a somewhat different place than the city we all know some ten years later. For starters, there actually WAS a park that lent its name to the zone and acted as its "anchor".

Here is our first look at it:



Two things stand out right away.

The first is: No city hall! There's a big skyscraper in the plaza where city hall should be. Where is city hall? We'll get to that shortly. It's not actually missing but it's not where we're accustomed to finding it.

Second: There's a park! Yes, at the base of the statue of Atlas (some ten or so feet below the level of the statue base, actually) there's a sizable park area, complete with it's own plaza, a couple of (virtual) acres of walking paths and trees and generally park-like open spaces. With Atlas towering over it's terminus, it certainly deserves to be named "Atlas Park".

So, there's our answer. At some point in time, there was an actual "Atlas Park" for the zone to take its name from. There's more to learn about this legacy zone, though. Let's take a closer look.



This screen shot was released to promote Nvidia's new Geforce 4 line of video cards. The Geforce 4 was released in April 2002 according to Wikipedia, so what we have here is one of the earliest screenshots of what would have been an preliminary alpha version of the game.

The most striking thing in this photo, though, is not the detailed textures being shown off on this varied group of heroes. It's the location and the detail of the setting. For one, we get a close-up look at the park itself. More importantly, though, we see that the sculptor hired by the city to create the statue must have been a Star Wars fan because he put the frickin' Death Star on Atlas' back!

Seriously, I have to wonder what the deal was with that early Atlas. Maybe the modeler was going for the "steel plates bolted to an iron framework" look. Whatever it is, the one thing it does not much resemble is a globe. Still, we can't judge it too harshly given that it was probably intended to be a placeholder for a later, more detailed version of the statue.

On a tangential note, given the resemblance of the gold-armor-suited bald fellow to the fellow who currently stands in the middle of Steel Canyon, I suspect that he may actually be one of the first iterations of Positron, before he eventually got his signature look.

Moving on: let's follow our group of erstwhile heroes to a higher vantage point:




From this vantage point we have a much better idea of just how huge the park actually is. The plaza we saw in the first screenshot is not even at the halfway point of the total length of the park. If the building providing the perch for the heroes is as close to the war wall as the buildings at the opposite end are to their respective war wall then the park is taking up roughly 75% of the total width of that portion of the zone. It really is a major geographic feature.

Not only that, but look! There's City Hall! It's situated more or less at the center of the park but well outside of the boundaries of the park proper. It's not in anything like the position it occupies in current-day Atlas Park.

To get an idea just how different Atlas Park 2002 was from Atlas Park 2012, I went into the game and attempted to recreate this screenshot. Here's the result:



The fog is, unfortunately, the fault of my currently crappy Intel generic graphics. What you can tell in spite of that is that Atlas park 2012 has almost no actual park in comparison to its 2002 counterpart. I couldn't get the really long shot of the original. Skyscrapers aside, the war wall was just a few yards behind my character. The zone layout is different enough that this is the best simulation I could achieve.

In some way, it seems less that city hall was moved behind the statue, as it was that the statue was moved in front of city hall, the entire area paved over, and the small sliver of remaining park rotated ninety degrees to fit the new layout. In reality, of course, the entire layout is changed enough that it should be considered a different map altogether.

There were several iterations of the design, of course. Here's a closer look at the city hall in its original location and an updated design of Atlas:



The notable things are the graffiti on the wall surrounding City Hall, signifying the urban decay afflicting the city, and the globe that Atlas holds now looks like a globe, but a hollow stylized framework rather than the solid one that we know now. I'm actually partial to this design. I wish we could have had a chance to see it live at some point.

Just to punctuate it, here is a closeup of the new statue:



The edges of the continents are obviously jagged and pixelated. One would assume that, again, it was due to placeholder graphics rather than finished graphics, but it may be that the "framework" style of globe was passed over because the open space would have made the edges too obviously "grainy". I'd be curious to find out just why the final design was changed to the solid globe that we all know and love.

One feature of note that is easier to see in this picture than in some others is the chain link fence surrounding Atlas. Presumably, it's there to keep passers-by from falling 10-15 feet down to the park below. Pretty ugly fencing, IMO. I think the city planners would have had to consider replacing it with a more aesthetically pleasing rail of some kind if they had decided to go live with the layout in the end. Certainly, the city architects that designed the final version of Atlas' dais seemed unconcerned about people falling off of it and cracking their heads on concrete!

That concludes this trip through the Wayback Machine. With King's Row ready to undergo its own makeover similar to that of Atlas Park a year ago, it's instructive or at least interesting to see just how much the game has evolved over the years as well as how much it continues to evolve. It will be interesting to see what lies in store for Issue 24 and beyond.

Until then, safe time travels!

I like that hover pose.

Nice flashback, SlickRiptide! Thank you for sharing!

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlickRiptide The edges of the continents are obviously jagged and pixelated. One would assume that, again, it was due to placeholder graphics rather than finished graphics, but it may be that the "framework" style of globe was passed over because the open space would have made the edges too obviously "grainy". I'd be curious to find out just why the final design was changed to the solid globe that we all know and love.

AFAIK, the globe was filled in for the same reason the original CoV Arachnos maps had to be updated with invisible walls. Players were falling through the holes. Or griefers were teleporting them into the geometry (this being before teleport prompts). Either way, players were getting needlessly stuck.

Do I wish the Atlas globe was hollow so I could voluntarily teleport inside for a player-hosted party? Sure! But I also understand that /stuck didn't work reliably enough and the simpler solution is to have a solid globe.

In the end I like the upgrades in places and story arcs such as Faultline and Atlas Park. It will be interesting to seeing how other zones evolve, too.

Hmm a very interesting and informative read.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlickRiptide Atlas Park The edges of the continents are obviously jagged and pixelated. One would assume that, again, it was due to placeholder graphics rather than finished graphics, but it may be that the "framework" style of globe was passed over because the open space would have made the edges too obviously "grainy". I'd be curious to find out just why the final design was changed to the solid globe that we all know and love.

Looks like they are using a form of "Alpha Transparency" to make the globe look like it is made of a framework. Meaning it would be a simple sphere polygon that uses a texture to define which parts of it are "invisible" and not. They do this to save polycount.

The game seems to have troubles with this from time to time... Even recent stuff can have ugly jaggy white/noticeable edges. The mane/hair of the new Liger pet springs to mind, as well as some capes such as;

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...oH/CoHToon.jpg

Notice the edges of the cape, which is supposed to be transparent, are well defined against the various auras of my toon.

I'm guessing the devs thought it looked too poor and just settled on the stone globe we have now.

I don't recall exactly where I saw this, but I remember a video of the early CoH. And there were a lot of cool things that they dropped. One of them being clouds or fog sitting around the top of the zone.

This wasn't a skybox like we have now, but rather.. real clouds.. that we could fly over and see the night sky more clearly.

Wish we still had that.

Excellent post.

If I'm not mistaken someone said they got rid of the hollow globe because people kept getting stuck in it.

Excellent post.

Why, I recall when we had to sprint to Atlas Park -- and it was uphill! Both ways! You kids today with your fancy flying jetpacks have no idea how hard it was back in the day.

Great post!

What I notice is how much their rear ends always stick out so much in those old screen shots. I never play female toons, is it still that bad?

Still it is awesome to look back like this.

That Atlas Park looks way better than most of the zones we have in Paragon City today, including the new Atlas Park. It looks like an actual city. Dapancaq happened?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72L0mSgzBOE

Well. It appears that building was originally considered the Freedom Phalanx headquarters. So, there's that.

And look at that! We're still using the same mission maps ten years later!
I have to admit, the map looks okay for being that old.

Fame = Statues? :O I want a statue!

The game seemed so much more... action-y back then. But the system they had for using your powers seemed a little clunky.

I wish we had kept the building interiors in the buildings. Darn griefers!

Original Costume Creator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...mSgzBOE#t=390s

Very interesting read. I've always been fascinated by early builds of games I enjoy, along with finding whatever leftovers of old builds may lurk in live games, so, this was right up my alley.