Good afternoon everybody. Or good morning. Or good night I guess? Whatever time it is where you are, hello! With Morpher, the guy doing all the code and version control, soon to be returning to the world of modding I've sort of put a freeze on creating too many new graphics. It'll take a few weeks to get him back up to speed, so I've been doing a bunch of mapping instead.
There's one piece of graphical stuff I've been doing. Working on the co-op map which I showed off last week, I've been hitting a wall in giving life to the Nod bases. With GDI it's not hard, you can plonk some containers down and suddenly it's a freight terminal. You can put in some civil guard towers and stuff and make it a city installation. You can put in some hangars and a runway and it's an airfield. Nod doesn't really have enough props at all.
This week I made a bunch of chemical containers and sockets and silos for all of Nod's dangerous tiberium experiments. I'm sure that they'll be of use the next time we need to make a Nod prison camp or missile launch facility. And I'm sure that this opens the door for me to make a bunch more Nod industrial assets.
The rest of the stuff I did this week is mapping. Last week I showed some WIP screens of a new deathmatch map called Pincer. It's a 4 player map, and I've been tweaking the layout and starting areas a bit since I showed it last time. This is the probably final layout:
(You can click on it for a full sized 1:1 image)
I might tweak the lighting, but it can be a bastard to get it looking like I want it to. Someone else might step in to do it, who knows.
I've also almost finished another 4 player deathmatch map, which will probably be called "Wasted". It takes place in a red tiberium wasteland and contains two Cabal Cores. One on each side of the map. This should allow for some cool Cabal vs. Cabal unit action, and should translate into interesting free for all and 2v2 matches. The map is pretty small, but the layout should offer rewards for most playstyles. The low value tiberium should restrict early rushes a little, and make infantry a worthwhile investment.
I've been working on something else but I hardly feel the need to mention it. It's only tangentially related. But it's kinda cool so here's a small shot of it.
Anyway.
...And that's what we did this week.
Oh, wow, those red cacti things really look great in game.
They really fit well with the otherwise barren desolation.
I love cabal forces to fight in battlefield.
I can't wait!!!
Philadelphia?
CUTSCENES *faints*
Potentially.
I'd love to do them, and as long as I'm waiting for non graphical stuff to be done (Code, SP maps, and testing), I might as well be doing highpoly models for potential cutscenes.
And anyway, it's exceptionally good practice and a fun way of learning further techniques.
Mac, you know what you doing, take off every Kodiak.
Pincer reminds me of Wake Island. Is this a correct assumption? =P
Had to go look Wake Island up.. Looks like a gorgeous place for a holiday. If I hadn't already used the layout for Pincer I'd be taking a crack at it! Maybe a 5 player map with tech buildings and less by way of cliffs. Thanks for the idea. :)
Nice Philadelphia.
Hey, idea about Nod bases: They probably still need all the standard military infrastructure, while maintaining a low-key status and stealth tech might be a bit over the top or ineffective in some cases*, so why not use (modified) civilian structures or buildings designed to look like them?
*I'm not sure if they can actually cloak a runway, for example, and once your sensor arrays pick something up...
So, Prefab Shelter with (a few subtle dabs of red paint and) some extra antennas sticking out the top on a hill overlooking a vital logistic vein?
Maxi-Shack Deluxe with an extra bit with rather large windows built on top, as some rather large antennas, all placed rather close to a particularly well-preserved, straight and flat stretch of an abandoned highway.
Might still need some work to actually make that work, so I'm not sure how useful it is, but yeh.
I think that there's a tradeoff though. Since this is a game, we've made an effort to give each faction a recognisable colour space and recognisable silhouettes. GDI is bulky and gold, Mutants have external scaffolds and are coppery, Cabal is sharp but flows in curves, etc.
The civilian rural structures are lighter grey and low tech, while Nod is dark grey, red, and somewhere halfway between dangerously hightech and dangerously cobbled together.
In reality it makes sense to co-opt existing structures, but in a game its harder to match the deliberately contrasting styles in a visually pleasing way. Perhaps at some stage I'll make some Nod styled rural structures, but I'd prefer to continue to use a consistent aesthetic for the most part.
Ah, good point with the aesthetic.
The way I'd have set it up if I really went to do something like it (Yeah right.) would probably be some sort of tiered system.
Say;
-Concealment (outwards identical, damaged state could show it to be a façade),
-Commandeered (same as original, but at least partially repainted),
-Constructed (Base design, Noddified blueprints/captured assembly line)
But yeah, at this point, I'm drawing it out so much, it's gone from "Potentially less work," to "Twice as much and a mess of assets."
I have begun work on a set of Nod prison camp buildings, which would give us a potential 'in' on how Nod prefabs would look. Though they are closer to featureless bunkers. I think this is as close to your suggestions as I'm going to get in the near future.
I think that Nod controlled hamlets will be easy to denote by the presence of Nod forces inhabiting them.