A multi-tiered corporate boardroom in the penthouse atop a century-old skyscraper. Focus on tight quarters, verticality, and non-traditional CS.
INTERESTING:
*two-bomb DE gameplay at the moment
*multiple custom models
TODO:
*Support more gametypes
*Soundscape/audio pass
*Bombsite B needs work
*Update radar image
*Clipping pass
*Replace more geometry with custom models, such as the white sculpture hanging in the atrium
*Add place names to navmesh
*Fix zfighting in a few lazy places
*Additional detail pass
*Environmental story telling
*Performance testing and optimization
The exterior of the building has been built out almost completely. I can’t promise that will all stay as it is unecessary to see during gameplay. It will be used in some promo shots and new assets for the level, but ultimately removed since it will improve performance for older pc’s.
Here’s what’s happened since I started re-skinning the level exterior, and detailing the interior. FYI still a lot of WIP art, most notably the large hanging sculpture in the center of the main atrium.
Created a dozen or so models for the exterior. Really would like more to match the architectural look I’m going for. Will need a seperate post to explain those.
Pieced the models together into the building exterior, after painstakingly removing the old geometry.
Brought in some portal2 assets, placed in level.
Major lighting and fx pass.
Detailed interior geometry and texturing.
A few semi-major flow changes which might get rolled back.
Not pictured – radar (minimap) texture is in, in a basic form.
Nav mesh work.
Fog/sky work. The building is shorter now, so the effect it has on the shadows from other buildings is bothering me, might raise the building back up.
Last weekend I had a few hours to kill with my daughter. She’s probably too young, but nostalgia got the better of me, so I threw Never Ending Story into the ps3. It had been years since I watched it, and I enjoyed sitting there with a surprisingly quiet and enrapt 18-month old.
Later that day, she kept saying “Horsie – Oh NO!” so hopefully I haven’t scarred her for life.
While watching, especially the ending, I was reminded of some of the Assassin’s Creed storyline. If you haven’t played it, I’ll just leave it at that. Go play a few of the AC games. Anyway-
This got me googling, and I ran into this primo piece, which you should read! The crux:
The great temptation, the fatal temptation, of adult fans of fantastic fiction is the temptation of Law. We want the contents of our imagination taxonomied and classified, ordered and indexed, subject to rules and regulations. Gaps exist to be filled. Mysteries exist to be solved. Legends are just timelines that haven’t been formalized yet. Fantastic fiction becomes a code to crack.
Building Massive Worlds
With this, I was immediately struck by my recent endeavors on creating yet another new world and the story to make up the game. Yes – it’s very hard and time consuming. With games you’ve got narrative, characters, world, and you want it to relate to the gameplay as well, right?
And I had this nagging feeling the entire time Bungie described their new world: this is all too much. Cart before the horse, creating empty slots to be filled just because you “need another slot”. It’s all very disconcerting.
We need to be writing with the gaps in mind, and not afraid to have some holes. LOST got away with it, and only failed in the viewership’s eyes because they slowly filled everyone’s gaps. Once you set up a question in the player’s mind, they will fill it with some sort of answer. If the questions are wild enough, you’ll have millions of different answers, which your players will spend hours and hours arguing over. If you fill your story gaps with game content, you are removing the meta-story content from your world. And those hours spent discussing and arguing – players long for that experience. Leave the gaps, let players use their imaginations.
