9 replies to this topic

[Stovebolt]

Hi all,
First post. Anyway, I have no idea how the dev team is going to handle the battle space. If it does turn out to be maps that are limited in area, I'd like to mention that I suffer from something I like to call Map Fatigue. Pretty much every game I've ever played multiplayer on I've quickly become bored by the limited amount of venues, no matter how fun the actual combat is (I'm looking at you, Space Marine).

Perhaps I've been spoiled by WWII Online's giant combined arms map, but I'd love to see something that will provide enough variety to induce combatants to vary their tactics every time I fight. With limited maps, people quickly learn them to the point that every battle repeats itself.

My idea is in the title. While the game may not be able to support great planetwide maps, maybe maps could be created procedurally in some manner? At least it would mix things up.

Edited by Stovebolt, 08 December 2011 - 11:15 PM.

[Halfinax]

There are pros and cons to both hand made maps and randomly generated maps.

Hand Made maps: have lots of detail, and each is very unique other than some general textures, but you can only make so many available in a given time frame.

Randomly Generated Maps: No two maps are exactly alike, but they end up pretty generic as they all have more or less the same basic tiles to work with.

I don't have an exact preference, but I would like to see some combination of the two. If you can have generic randomly generated streets and city blocks, but with a few key buildings that are unique to each planet (i.e. Downtown area, government building) that would be awesome, and then somehow make those maps for that battlefield permanent that would be even better. I have no idea how feasible that would be though.

Edited by Halfinax, 08 December 2011 - 11:20 PM.

[Hayden]

I'd rather see large "hand made" maps with procedural goals and objectives ;D

[Thorqemada]

I feel that a good mix of random maps and premade maps would be nice.
Premade maps for some of the "iconic" locations that have to have a distincitve look at least in some of the core areas of such a region or planet.

PS: Yay, MWO now has use of the "iconic" buzzword too

Edited by Thorqemada, 09 December 2011 - 01:23 AM.

[Pave Low]

Congrats on your first forum post Stovebolt .
The overall idea for for MWO is for players to battle over planet territory to take control of the Inner sphere, Clan Space or border worlds...I think. Correct me if I'm wrong there.

I'm thinking devs could have huge hand drawn maps which they can cut or paste bits of to reflect the planets where combat is s'posed to be taking place.

I guess my idea is best described as: Mass producing using bits & pieces of hand drawn maps with appropriate weather & terrain effects.

[Kaemon]

Understand we're not to the point where the game is drawing the maps themselves (sadly) so at some point human interaction is needed to load the various bits and pieces that make up the maps.

Even with 'random' maps, you end up using these pieces over and over again, since your eyes are very adept at picking these details out (i.e. I've seen this building before), 'random' maps are never really achieved.

The way around this is with interactive persistent maps, for example cities that become more damaged as you battle, or slowly repair themselves when you are not.

If they could do that, as well as some progressive goals (capture the dropship, hold a key strategic area) while doing the planet conquest stuff, we'd have a winner.

[KitLightning]

Stovebolt, on 08 December 2011 - 11:12 PM, said:

My idea is in the title. While the game may not be able to support great planetwide maps, maybe maps could be created procedurally in some manner? At least it would mix things up.

Afaik MWO will be utilizing the cryengine³, which uses a greyscale map to generate the height map from, most likely GeoControl² is the best choice to accomplish this by. Drawing the greyscale map by hand in software outside the editor, usually will involve an extreme amount of re-sculpting the surface manually afterwards. Sculpting the terrain inside is equally painfull.

Ref. to this for more: Official CryEngine3 Free SDK Documentation Creating a New Map
Cryengine 3 SDK (Sandbox) Tutorial part 3: Creating Terrains [HD]
Cryengine 3 SDK (Sandbox) Tutorial part 4: Sculpting Terrains [HD]

Halfinax, on 08 December 2011 - 11:19 PM, said:

... If you can have generic randomly generated streets and city blocks...

For the streets this is done by the Road Tool, manually. Vide infra for the city blocks.

Halfinax, on 08 December 2011 - 11:19 PM, said:

... but with a few key buildings that are unique to each planet (i.e. Downtown area, government building) that would be awesome, and then somehow make those maps for that battlefield permanent that would be even better. I have no idea how feasible that would be though.

All objects on a Map needs to be placed, by hand, in the editor.

Ref.: Placing and Modifying Objects and Using Level Objects

Also a highly recommended reading is the CrysEngine3 Cookbook and eBook.

[Stovebolt]

Wow, thanks for the info Kit. That's a cool bunch of stuff to look over.
Lots of good points in this thread overall. All of them sound like they'd fix my problems with Map Fatigue.

[CeeKay Boques]

A good solution would be to create a map that is huge (Arma 2s single "map" was 225 km²⁾ enough that every battle can be both learned, and be attacked at from a new angle, complete with cities and objectives. That would actually be super awesome. I don't know if Cry3 can do that, and since they're not writing their own engine... I don't know if Cry3 can randomly generate anything either.

However, I never felt like things were be loaded too much on their island in Crysis either...

[Ghost]

The funny thing is that the CryEngine 3 Cookbook is written by one of the MechWarrior: Living Legends mod developers that got hired by Crytek. It's a good read.