I seem to fail at making realistic looking rubble in maps. I can make concrete but something easier like a pile of garbage is hard. This is the first reason I decided to change the initial map scenery from destroyed skyscrapers to an industrial/factory setting. The second reason is that no matter how realistic an urban tower looks like it is ultimately boring and repetitive (although the concept of fighting in demolished cities is cool for me). I hope to have some new screenshots soon.
Written by MM. Posted at 2:56 pm on May 20th, 2010
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NOOOO the concept outweighs the boring/repetitiveness!! Keep the urban setting!! Or simply just have both settings.
Rubble looks the same everywhere. A jagged mess with everything covered by thick gray dust. It’s boring, yeah.
It’s not going to look real without scrubby, struggling vegetation of some kind.
Awaiting pictures to see if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Work on it. Cities may be repetitive, but I think it’s far more interesting than “grimy gray industrial region” that so many other games seem to have.
Factories are usually integrated around the edges of cities, so the two certainly aren’t mutually exclusive.
The interiors of the buildings certainly need more detail in any case. I’d add in not so much garbage heaps, but abandoned fixtures, furniture, appliances etc. which would be useless to anyone during or after apocalypse/war, but which do a good job of catching bullets and bringing the environment to life. The airports in MW2, for instance, have suitcases everywhere. No real reason for them to be there in most cases, but they do fly around nicely in firefights.
Most factories have pressurized chemical systems, various piping, lighting, machinery etc. which could certainly both bring things to life aesthetically and introduce new game play potential. Also, heavy machinery is nifty. Looking forward to it.
fallout 3 manages to make good looking rubble and junk, you could probably use that as reference, whilst enjoying the game.
>> I seem to fail at making realistic looking rubble in maps.
You shouldn’t even trying. This is where your “pixel artist Victor Rojo” come into play or am I wrong?
Meanwhile focus on more weapons. 😉
I actually happen to have pictures of concrete rubble – probably exactly what you’re looking for. The pics were taken mid day, so good light/shadow contrasts. I can upload them to my flickr account if you like. At the school I worked at we had 2 buildings and a parking complex get torn down, I took tons of pics of the demolition.
you should have:
1 multiple towers, with most of em blown in half by tank shels,
2 the fallen parts of the tower ( kind of like in a 45 degrees angle ) connect towers.
3 include streets, destroyed traffic, make it hard to go from building to building, this gives a squad the possibility to defend from the windows against an assault, and makes up for some competetive Middle-tower-ammo-depot-assault fun.( i assume this is what you are hunting for )
4. Give the players/teams/squads Reasons to go somewhere, capture/assault it and defend it. like bunkers, ammo depots, weapon factories, computer rooms, servers, fuel etc etc etc
well thats about it for my comment for now.
Make a mix of two, huge skyscrapers in the middle, with dirty industrial buildings on the outside and messy jungle, desert or mountains outside of that, then under the industrial and city could be huge sewer lines, and going even deeper, each enemy bases.
In Detail:
———————————————————————————————————————————
Skyscrapers: Giant multi-level buildings, with wires and light fixtures hanging lose, windows at the sides ensure some build to building warfare will occur. Space in between buildings acts as a no man’s land, made even worse by enemy gunships hovering above, burnt out cars and chunks of nearby buildings inhabit these spaces, and double as cover. Lightweight scouts can take advantage of their grappling hooks and scale these buildings.
Industrial: Huge warehouses, refinerys, depo’s and other buildings surround the city. Oil drums, heavy machinery, conveyor belts (Nice Ragdoll interaction), and other dangers guarantee explosive action.
Jungle/Desert/Mountain (JDM): Nice areas added in to mix stuff up, attacks against the Industrial buildings will often originate from here. The entrances to the sewers are at the ends of these.
Sewer: Dark winding grimy sewers fuel intense battles. These dirty tunnels act as the only way into the enemy base, and good defence will ensure the enemy stays out..
Base: These security covered networks of rooms, house the Main Server, and various Access Points.
Access Point: Hackers can hook into these to control elevators, doors and run UAV scans.
Main Server: Contains sensitive information, and spawn coordinates, without this your team goes into sudden death, and can only be saved if it is recaptured, or a hacker calls in reinforcments from an access point.
———————————————————————————————————————————
This is my idea, it mixes up city, industry, sewer and base. You can make sure people use this all up by pathing the map right eg. For the red team.. Red base > Red sewers > JDM > Industrial > City > Industrial > JDM > Blue Sewers > Blue Base.. I will draw a picture to show what I mean after.
=(. Keep going =D!
I have begun an ever-swelling wave of text blocks!
But yeah, the point that Victor Rojo should making your garbage made some sense. Is the problem that you are having more related to procedural construction of the trash, or is it that Victor is above such common pixelated riffraff?
In order to manage such versatile maps, you will need to extend the capabilities of your map maker as well as the procedural generation:
TLD proposed a “fallen” building. Can the present physics manage anything else than straight or 45° floors? (e.g. can you choose any angle for a wall? Does the mapmaker allow it?)
having no varied environments is a nail to game’s coffin. the artist should worry about the environment types. hell, if i want i want to make a fucking rain forest with the editor. you should only focus on proper tools.
cant you use something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6stHi1u-pRg to simulate a pile of garbage?
You can have a few blocks on the top that will use the 3d engine and the rest will stay static.
gawdammit, give us some screenshots of the classes : | im sooo looking forward to that, and i think im not even close to being the only one.
WE WANT SPRITES! ( lets combo this )
WE WANT SPRITES! Also, I think that is my biggest wall of text ever.
Sometimes, thing doesnt works first time!
you friggin combo breaker..
WE WANT SPRITES!
*breaks new combo and runs away*
Very fun, very exciting. Woohoo!
Okay, enough fanfare. Warehouses are, well, big, open and squarish… eh, so are a lot of things.
http://subvein.net/?ref=Ragnaros
Thanks for all the comments, I’ll definitely use those ideas at one point or another.
It’s not a matter of painting the rubble but rather placement of it.
this page was exactly what i’ve been looking just for! I found this blog bookmarked from a friend of mine. im going to also share it. thank you again!