Map ideas/theme help Thread - UT40K: The Chosen mod for Unreal Tournament 3

Hey guys, as you can see in my other thread in this forum im making the huge imperial fortress as seen here: Forgeworld.co.uk

Now ive successfully made the two larger gate towers, the bridge between these two towers, and most of the wall. The only thing i havnt made yet is the two slanted supports which the auto turrets sit on, and the two lesser flak towers. All of it so far has been made with BSP in the Unreal Editor, except for any decorations which i have made in 3ds max. Ive also made the lifts to get up onto the walls, and have hollowed out the larger towers so you can actually walk inside them and be transported to the sniper rifle on the top.

Now what i need help with is deciding on a theme/story for this map. So i was thinking some sort of tyranid or ork invasion, with a dry riverbed and a single bridge crossing this river bed. The tyranid army or ork horde would then spawn on the opposite side of the riverbed, have to cross it without getting mowed down by the imperial fort's multiple defences, and successfully assualt the fort. Thats just some simple preliminary ideas i have though. Anyone else got any ideas? I have never played the tabletop version, so maybe you guys can think of some better ideas.

I also have an even larger fort behind this one, to act as decoration. You cant actually access this larger fort, and is just there as a block for the end of the map, and to give it a bit more story. Say the orks or tyranids are invading and first have to overwhelm this gatehouse, then continue on to assualt the larger fort. So yeah, any help is appreciated guys.

I think geodav is the only one to have played the actual tabletop game, so I have no idea as far as the story goes. The first thing I'd like to say, though, is post pics of what you have now.

I've played TT before. In typical gameplay (and tournament play), the missions tend to be focused around controlling objectives and/or table quarters. Gameplay is attempted to be kept fair, both in terms of objectives and terrain. That's not to say that you can not play a game where one army defends a heavily armored and armed fortress while the other army tries to assault it. But these kinds of games tend to be "just for fun" or as part of an ongoing, large scale campaign.

So for the theme of your map, you have to keep the gametype in mind. This is difficult to do since we havn't really defined our own gametypes yet. It sounds like it would be a great Assault map, but they combined Assault with Onslaught and now we only have Warfare. Warfare, similar to capture the flag, needs to have both teams on even ground. Having 2 of these fortifications in a map (one for each army) would be fare, but it wouldn't make any sense.

Here's what I would do. Make the map's theme to be Chaos vs. Imperial. The Imperial side of the map is your fort, and the Chaos side is a ruined temple (of similar size and defendability to your fort). This makes sense from a story-driven point of view as well.

Faced with an overwhelming Chaos assault, the imperial soldiers pull back to defend from inside the fortress, abandoning the temple. Chaos take the temple and spend a few days desecrating it and changing it into a temple to the dark gods of chaos. They turn it into a an outpost and command center from which they can launch their siege upon the fortress. The Imperials learn of Chaos' desecration of the temple and now they want to take it back.

In this way, both armies have very clear motivation for wanting to come out of their own base to try and take the other. Additionally, both armies have a large defendable structure without any definite advantage to one side or the other. This would be an ideal setup for capture the flag or warfare gametypes.

Alternatively, the fortress itself could be in no mans land. It, by itself, could be an objective for each army to attempt to control. Holding it is not the main objective, but the fortress spawns some powerful tanks that will give an advantage to that team.

The only way that your scenario would work (where one army attempts to siege the fortress) would be if we can bring back the Assault gametype. In that sort of gametype, the defenders can (and often do) have major advantages over the attacking team. But it is fair because after the first round, the teams switch places and try to do better than the other team.

Alternatively, your fortress could be the centerpiece of a Deathmatch map. However if you do this, make sure that there are PLENTY of ways to enter the fortress from all sides. This will prevent one team from camping by the only door, destroying the other team as they try to come across the bridge.

Just remember that if a map is not fair for any reason then people will be frustrated with it, no matter how cool it is.

Yeah well i was thinkin id just make it a one-sided VCTF match until we can incorporate our own sorta Assualt gametype into the mod. But it wouldnt be too one-sided as the attacking team would get lots more vehicles and powerups.

I do like the idea of the chaos assualt, though in my eyes a tyranid army would be more fun, although we do have a lot more chaos content. Dont really like the idea of the neutral fort though, as the fort is backed onto a much larger, in-accessable, Imperial city for decoration and for a map boundary.

@micah, if you were paying attention, you could look at the other thread for what i have already done.

didn't know if that was the same one or not.

Thats ok man, im actually gonna start workin on this map again, ill just let someone else do the BSP materials as im terrible at them lol

Heres the biggest trouble im having.

Im having trouble just decorating my floors, walls and ceilings of the fortress. I just cant seem to get into the Warhammer 40 000 flow when it comes to decorating, and as a result my floors look boring and plain. As you can see in the first pic, i have a balcony, but have no idea how to decorate it. Can anyone help me?

some1 gave me a copy of one of the dawn of war games, games are all based around control points, not alot of original map ideas from the game, just all open terrain with trees and stuff. well i didnt play too much. this is ideas right?

i uploaded a couple screens from 1 map, the wall seems to run around most of the map
Moddb.com

Edited by: Freeranged

kid, once we have some materials you can apply to your BSPs it'll look a lot better. After that, you just need to sprinkle some decoration meshes around to make it look more natural. Things like Barrels, Ammo Crates, Lights, Maintenance Equipment, Power Generators, Wall Switches, stuff like that. Just use your imagination and try to imagine how a balcony on a fortress would be used if it were real. The first thing that comes to my mind is that they would certainly want to have plenty of weapons and ammo nearby.

Freeranged, the dawn of war maps are good to indicate general decoration, but the nature of the game requires more open space than a FPS would have. Also, most of those decorations are just impassible, where in a FPS you should be able to go inside of the ruined buildings. The idea is much the same though, and I think taking those same elements and pulling them closer together would make a fine map.

Hmm ok i see what you are saying, but this balcony is more of a platform sorry, inside a tower. So there is no way to shoot from it unless you go through the teleporter to the top of the tower or run out onto the walls. With this in mind, how could i decorate it?

yeh i posted the pics for just a general idea and i plan to post more.

anyway uh, whats it gonna be made from, add most things with static meshes like pipes, wires, consoles, does the floor to the wall taper out anywhere or ground goes in our out in certain area, i duno if im helping if so ill spam some random stuff.

oh yeh btw those room in the map do look kinda small, its a mistakes ive made before from working in the low res editor. Ingame it might feel more squishy. but should be alright just dont have much room forstuff.

Edited by: Freeranged

Hmm yes i guess i could chuck some computer consoles there as part of a sort of automated defense system, keep the ideas coming guys