76 replies to this topic

[Kyle Wright]

So I had made a post a while ago: http://mwomercs.com/...61#entry3617261

So I decided to play some War Thunder and try out the tanks. THEIR MAPS ARE BEYOND GORGEOUS. They have destructive terrain and elevation change throughout the maps.

Example 1:













One of the guys from MW:LL who created two maps responded. HE DID THEM ON HIS FREE TIME!!!
Kyle Wright, on 07 August 2014 - 12:21 AM, said:[/color]


Now I found this video take from inside MW: LL. How is it they were able to get these really well done maps and from what I hear they had the same if not more then we do currently using the same game engine? There is really nothing Fancy PGI, You dont have to get super elaborate with map designs. Not all battles have to fight within a city or around one. Give us non-populated terrain with random hills, mountains, sunken valleys, bodies of water, and forest. Throw in weather for effects. These super elaborate terrain features you come up with dont need to be. As a geologist canyon network would never be how it is in real life unless it was the remnant of river mouth dumping into a ancient ocean. And even then you would find hundreds of meters of sediments deposited in alluvial fans.

https://www.youtube....d&v=ce6EVhEXfAo


https://www.youtube....d&v=LebvKcWOujM





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Edited by Iron Frost, 07 August 2014 - 03:43 PM.[/color]
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Then look at this map in this training match... Look how big it is. Notice how people cant be spotted from super far away... These guys are talking in Russian and all I understood was blah blah Fafnir ( think he said shoot the fafnir). They have some structures, but the rest is non fancy terrain really.


I dont have much to say other than - Thank you OP and some others in this thread for speaking highly of those maps. I was the original creator (Linkin Frost) of two of the maps being talked about in this thread (the ones from the first video) called Dustbowl and Ring of Fire. Ring of Fire was my first map (volcano map) which is why the texturing and everything looks pretty amateurish By the time I started Dust Bowl I'd learned of world builder tools and a lot more about lighting, etc so things look more put together. If you compare the scale of MWO maps to MW:LL it's pretty amazing - at 1:35 in the video there is a shot of mountains in the background of Dustbowl... those were in the map and you could wander (or fly) over to them!

Speaking of amateurish - I was not a member of the MW:LL dev team until the very end. I had never created maps before and just got interested in the CryEngine editor. Figured out how to put all that together over a few months. It was a super fun hobby and eventually they rolled my community created maps into the official map pack for the game.

Something to think about - I was some random guy, building them in my spare time, with zero art experience before the project and hammered them out over the span of a few months each. Given that, I'm not sure what to think about the MWO team's velocity of map creation.

So thanks again for making my day. I'd never seen that tribute video and it was incredibly nice to see someone turn my maps into map-porn
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Edited by Iron Frost, 07 August 2014 - 03:43 PM.[/color]
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Edited by Kyle Wright, 17 August 2014 - 04:49 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Given that, I'm not sure what to think about the MWO team's velocity of map creation.

Pretty much. Based on the mediocrity of MWO's maps, we should not be seeing less than 1 new map every month.

Although I wouldnt mind waiting 2 months between maps if they were much larger and much higher quality.

Also it would be nice if the community could somehow contribute maps if thats an area PGI is struggling in.

Edited by Khobai, 17 August 2014 - 01:52 PM.

[Sephlock]

Map Department?

[Turist0AT]

every time i see these threads i just get sad over what we could've had if PGI were competent :'(

Have war thunder and MWLL installed, think ill go and play those for a while.

Edited by Turist0AT, 17 August 2014 - 02:20 PM.

[GG Unit]

PGI does not, and never will have the resources for those things. If rumors are to be believed, they can't even make the maps they have been making up to this point anymore.

[Mister Blastman]

Dustbowl and Ring of Fire are two of my most favorite maps in MW:LL.

[Namouche]

New maps?
it's one of those many things that makes me feel sad about how PGI handles this game. It just could be so beautiful and full of immersion, instead it's just launch-fire-win/defeat-relaunch.

Vast maps, aero-fighters, boats, tanks, infantry, motherships, goals as many as one can imagine!

Somewhere there must be a guy, waged by an investor, that just can´t see how much money PGI could be churning out with this license. That guy should be (flogged?) fired asap.

[Kyle Wright]

GG Unit, on 17 August 2014 - 04:01 PM, said:

PGI does not, and never will have the resources for those things. If rumors are to be believed, they can't even make the maps they have been making up to this point anymore.

The guy who did 2 maps on MW: LL did it on his own for fun. Gaijiin who does War Thunder I believe is the same size of PGI.

[BARBAR0SSA]

Really wish they would contract these guys to help with the maps etc. They used the crytek engine on both so :|

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Three words:

Maps aren't sellable.



And if they tried to sell map packs, the outrage would be tremendous. So PGI would rather avoid the issue altogether and avoid map making and just focus on things they can sell. So until they figure out how to make money off maps with little community backlash, don't expect new maps.

[Kyle Wright]

Lord Scarlett Johan of Yazoo, on 17 August 2014 - 04:46 PM, said:

Three words:

Maps aren't sellable.



And if they tried to sell map packs, the outrage would be tremendous. So PGI would rather avoid the issue altogether and avoid map making and just focus on things they can sell. So until they figure out how to make money off maps with little community backlash, don't expect new maps.

Id much rather buy map packs then friggin hero mechs. Or better yet pay a monthly subscription and make sure my money is going to maps and content to make this game a full BATTLETECH style game.

[PANZERKAT]

Release actual Solaris content as an MC subscription, but release as many normal game maps available to everyone alongside it. You make money if you design a functioning ladder system, Solaris specific decals and camo etc.

There are things to be done, but I feel mediocrity will steer this game down a "blah" path. PGI will have learned what they need to learn when they decide to work on another title and leave this behind or sell it to someone else....

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Kyle Wright, on 17 August 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

Id much rather buy map packs then friggin hero mechs. Or better yet pay a monthly subscription and make sure my money is going to maps and content to make this game a full BATTLETECH style game.

Those of us like you and I that are willing to spend money on this game wouldn't have too many qualms about buying map packs (within reason, of course).

[Max24dj]

War Thunder maps might look cool but some of them are so much unbalanced towards one side or the other that you can tell who will win just by knowing which side they spawned on and be right 90% of the times. Just as an example on the jungle map one side has to cross a river in the middle of a beach with close to no cover to get to a capture point (which might be the only one depending on the mode you got) while the other can just sit in cover on the other side blasting you to pieces. On the carpatians map the 2 side of the field are actually not on the same level compared to the cover in the middle, so while one side can reach the cover showing only the turret of the tank the other has to completely expose to get there.

I'd rather have maps that look a bit worse but that aren't so much one sided, the fact that on river city you can be mercillesly picked off if you spawn in the wrong place with a slow assault it's already bad enough.

[El Bandito]

I'd pay money to get Terra Therma off my map rotation.

[Kyle Wright]

CAN A MODERATOR COMBINE THIS WITH THE OTHER THREAD OR CLOSE IT OUT. DIDNt notice i made a dual post

[PANZERKAT]

They should pay attention to their decal system and rewards as well, but we'll probably have it being more of the same we've seen so far. Extremely high priced images, only for MC and MAYBE tons of loyalty points.

[Turist0AT]

We can dream :'(

[Anjian]

Terra Therma is one of the reasons that turned me off from MWO. After it came out, I felt like I wanted to play MWO less and less. It wasn't a concious thing, it just gnaws away at the mind and at the pleasure centers of my brain, turning fun into disgust. Like a cancer, it poisoned my passion for the game before you know it.

I didn't realize how important maps are before this happened to me. The emotional, gutteral impressions it leaves on your psyche can permanently damage your love of the game. That is why the first thing I want from PGI now is maps. New maps, Hopefully loads of them. Because the current ones are so bad and boring, they trap your feet, and so freaking muddy. (The only ones I like are Alpine, HPG Manifold, Canyon, and Crimson.)

War Thunder and its competitor, World of Tanks, are constantly introducing new maps. Not just making new maps, but constantly revising old ones for balance and improved visuals. The maps are not perfect by far, but they fix it. PGI seems to think their maps are some kind of ego matching masterpiece, which they spent a whole amount of money on it, so they don't fix it. The only time they revised a map was Caustic. They should have done the same on the other maps that are crying for it, like River City and Forest Village.

Since War Thunder Ground Forces went open beta in May, they have revised Jungle, Karelia, Kuban and Ash River at least once or twice, while introducing a new one, Carpathians. They are set to introduce a new map once more.



I don't mind have Battlemechs fight in War Thunder's maps. Its a thought that always crossed and rolled my mind as I drive out my Panzers. I thought, hey this is a perfect place for my Mad Cat to leer out of the trees.

One more thing. War Thunder's game engine, called Dagor, runs rings around Crytek. The planes and tanks have so much detail that include rusting fenders, as well as sheer imperfections of hurried wartime workmanship, like the creases in the wings and fuselages to dents, welds and casting in the tanks. You can even regulate the amount of weather wear in the tanks. Its one reason why War Thunder's maps looks good. I think it not only looks better than Crytek, but also Unreal (used in Hawken) and Source (used in Titanfall). They really mean it about the next generation monicker.



I always wonder like wow, what if you do Mechwarrior using this game engine. Gaijin actually licenses the game engine should any desire.

Edited by Anjian, 18 August 2014 - 01:38 AM.

[Alistair Winter]

Let me just debunk a few myths in this thread:

• "Other games have destructible terrain". False. Destructible terrain is impossible with today's technology, otherwise we would have it in this game. We used to have 1 destructible tree, but it had to be removed because it crashed the servers.
  
• "It's fairly easy to make maps. Many amateurs have made great maps on their spare time, as a hobby." False. Maps are extremely complex and mysterious. It costs $250,000 to make a map, and it will be full of bugs, broken geometry and places where you will get stuck.
  
• "Many fans would be happy with simple maps with nothing but hills and trees." False. MWO fans would rather wait 1 year for every new map, as long as they have the same quality as recent maps, such as HPG Manifold and Terra Therma, with volcano platforms and underground generators.
  
• "Cryengine was made for games with beautiful, lush forests and jungles". False. Cryengine can only be used to make maps with snow, sand, rock and mud. Any trees will be brown, half-dead, acid-burned husks, with pine needles. Green leaves are impossible.
  
• "Cryengine supports maps with random and changing daylight settings, different weather conditions, etc." False. It only supports daylight and some kind impossible dusk seen in River City Night, where everything is dark up close, but relatively bright far away, to the point where it's easier to spot enemies if they're hiding further away. Random weather conditions for every match is also impossible.

I hope this clears things up.