35 replies to this topic

[Lefteye Falconeer]

Here it is. I apologise for the horrible background chaotic noise, but that's how they presented it at the Launch Party exctly 10 minutes ago.

[stinkypuppy]

looks neat. a 2nd city map with some open terrain. i hope they dress it up some more though the color of the terrain is another ugly shade of colours used in other maps. would be nice if it was a tropical city and the brown water is just really ugly. hope its fun though, would hate to have a second map as terrible as terra therma.

[Praehotec8]

Not sure how it plays yet, but it looks a bit bland. Was hoping for some more unique landscapes. Hopefully it will be fun to play on.

As an aside, I don't get the hate for terra therma. It looks unique, plays decently, and actually makes one think about heat levels and manage them appropriately.

[Bilbo]

Praehotec8, on 26 September 2013 - 07:48 PM, said:

Not sure how it plays yet, but it looks a bit bland. Was hoping for some more unique landscapes. Hopefully it will be fun to play on.

As an aside, I don't get the hate for terra therma. It looks unique, plays decently, and actually makes one think about heat levels and manage them appropriately.

The hate is because it drops entirely too frequently at the moment. I like the map. I'm just tired of seeing it at this point.

[Booran]

Nice with a more open city map. River city feels too compressed..

[aniviron]

I look forward to this map playing exactly like River City and Frozen City- all the combat will take place in one of the few open areas, and the city proper will never see any fighting.

[Bullseye69]

If you don't cover the city route then they can tunnel push.

[MustrumRidcully]

It looks interesting. I hope they don't add some filters to wash out the colors and stuff like that.

Also, MW:O battles sure look good from a bird's eye perspective. A good spectator mode would be neat.

[Johnny Z]

Great map, wouldn't be so bad with blue water. If they are saving blue water for another map, its not bad if a nice blue ocean was on more than one map. Makes sense after all.

Either way cant wait to give this map a try and it sets a new standard for Mechwarrior maps.

Next map is rumoured to be a moon base, and is well under way, again cant wait

[RickySpanish]

I've always loved level design in fps games, especially design that blends indoor and outdoor environments as more than just prefab structures copy-pasted throughout a campaign. I started mucking around with level editors when Doomcad came out, and made levels for Duke, Quake, Half-Life and even a (terrible) HL2DM map. I've always been a bit of a snob when it comes to level design in games, so seeing this beautiful map previewed, with its railway tunnel, multiple levels of fighting and mix of city / mountain terrain got me far more excited than 100 Eckman presentations ever could

Good job to the team who designed this map, your efforts were (for me!) the best part of an overall quite entertaining launch event.

[theta123]

Yeah we need way more maps like this. We also need a pure brawler city map in the future. it might give mediums finnally a place to shine

[Ngamok]

Need my Urbanmech !

[Johnny Z]

RickySpanish, on 27 September 2013 - 06:16 AM, said:

I've always loved level design in fps games, especially design that blends indoor and outdoor environments as more than just prefab structures copy-pasted throughout a campaign. I started mucking around with level editors when Doomcad came out, and made levels for Duke, Quake, Half-Life and even a (terrible) HL2DM map. I've always been a bit of a snob when it comes to level design in games, so seeing this beautiful map previewed, with its railway tunnel, multiple levels of fighting and mix of city / mountain terrain got me far more excited than 100 Eckman presentations ever could

Good job to the team who designed this map, your efforts were (for me!) the best part of an overall quite entertaining launch event.

I am not sure how much more complicated the Crytek engine is than say the GECK(Fallout 3) or Creation kit (Skyrim). Those are not that tough to master other than the scripting parts.

This is Crytek Engine teaser.
http://www.youtube.c...e&v=aseq4T81P7g

Edited by Johnny Z, 27 September 2013 - 07:06 AM.

[RickySpanish]

Johnny Z, on 27 September 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:

I am not sure how much more complicated the Crytek engine is than say the GECK(Fallout 3) or Creation kit (Skyrim). Those are not that tough to master other than the scripting parts.

This is Crytek Engine teaser.
http://www.youtube.c...e&v=aseq4T81P7g

Easy to use doesn't mean that your results will be spectacular, in fact sometimes they can be remarkably unbalanced. Case in point: You can tell almost every time when a game is made in Unity3D: The graphics always use the latest bells and whistles because they're easy as pie to turn on, but due to the crappy engine and crappy design process Unity3D imposes on its developers, the games produced are usually lacking in other areas, especially if it's a 2D game as Unity3D has no dedicated 2D renderer.

Terrain is easy to paint on these days, especially compared to building it in a level editor for old UnrealTech or idTech games where you had to manually create the geometry, and the engines themselves weren't particularly well optimised for rendering expansive areas (especially the case with old idTech stuff like Quake and Half-Life). However this doesn't detract from the accomplishment of creating a well balanced map. Similarly, putting the tunnel and other structures into the new island city map may have been as simple as drag and drop for the level designer, but someone still had to build those structures, texture them, and make sure they fit together on the map itself - likely with input from a whole team of designers who made the vision of the map a reality.

[Rashhaverak]

OMG but that map looks like the most amazing thing ever! I can't wait to play it.

I hope that this is the standard that all future maps are set at. It's beautiful, huge, asymmetrical, has differing terrain types, and sets up for differing strategies depending on what you are running. Sniping from the hills and high buildings, brawling in the streets, different paths for capping runs, this map has everything.

Maybe we'll be lucky and eventually the old maps will be redone to meet the standards of Crimson Straits.

[Bhael Fire]

stinkypuppy, on 26 September 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

looks neat. a 2nd city map with some open terrain. i hope they dress it up some more though the color of the terrain is another ugly shade of colours used in other maps. would be nice if it was a tropical city and the brown water is just really ugly. hope its fun though, would hate to have a second map as terrible as terra therma.

I'm not a fan of the red water. When I was playing around with the test server version of it in training grounds I assumed it was just a buggy shader with the wrong reflection map or something.

Also, I really hope that they make a real metropolitan map someday with actual skyscrapers (i.e. buildings with 100+ floors). Most of the buildings they use for the "city" maps look like the types of buildings you'd find in a smaller town, not a huge metropolitan area.

Other than that, the map looks like it's going to be fun once it gets polished up and goes live.

[Sybreed]

looks too small...

[Dexion]

I know you should never bring logic into a MW or BT discussion... But doesn't it make sense that we are not fighting in the middle of the equivalent of NYC? A defender wouldn't want to fight the battle right on the doorstep of there civilian population, and the attacker wouldn't want to risk causing the level of damage to infrastructure a Mech battle would produce (unless it was some type of punitive raid). Besides, I think super-metropolis are fairly rare in BT, other then the core worlds.

Edited by Dexion, 30 September 2013 - 08:08 AM.

[Johnny Z]

Bhael Fire, on 30 September 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

I'm not a fan of the red water. When I was playing around with the test server version of it in training grounds I assumed it was just a buggy shader with the wrong reflection map or something.

Also, I really hope that they make a real metropolitan map someday with actual skyscrapers (i.e. buildings with 100+ floors). Most of the buildings they use for the "city" maps look like the types of buildings you'd find in a smaller town, not a huge metropolitan area.

Other than that, the map looks like it's going to be fun once it gets polished up and goes live.

I couldnt agree more about the very ugly ****** water coloring. Whats next purple snow? Also I thought this map was called Island City.

Edited by Johnny Z, 30 September 2013 - 08:54 AM.

[Bhael Fire]

Dexion, on 30 September 2013 - 08:06 AM, said:

Besides, I think super-metropolis are fairly rare in BT, other then the core worlds.

No, there's an entire supplement for urban combat in BattleTech called CityTech. More than half the games I played on TT were set in large urban environments. Large city locales are a staple of BT.

As for the logic behind attacking a large city, the goal most certainly would be to demolish their infrastructure to weaken the enemy, as well has capturing resources and technology. That's almost invariably the rationale behind attacking large cities in BT.