ut4_gloom beta 3

[MajkiFajki]

I really love Valvover's design in maps. The environments he chooses are very interesting and original. Coldwar has great environment and Gloom too. I would like to put some creative feedback to Gloom.


Imo current layout wastes good design. Look:


To make my point even more clear:




When I am in the caves, I can't say where I am without minimap, and I can't say to my team members where I am at all. 360 degrees - same texture. I have some ideas and suggestion how to solve this problem.

First of all - a happy story. I read once a book about screenwriting. The team of screenwriters had to write screenplay about family and white pony. They were unhappy with their script. They could not fit whit pony into story. So they started to rework material over and over. To fit this damn horse. After few months they were extremely happy with story - they have achieved what they wanted. And one of them asked - where is this white pony in our nice story? And they have realized, they forgot about him. Thanks to that, they have written good story.

What teaches us this story? That sometimes it's better to cut off a large piece of our work and start over. Because we are sometimes in dead end without even knowing it.

Gloom takes place in some jungle/cave environment. Obviously, you can rely on caves only. Now you do and look - labyrinth. What I propose is looking outside of the box.

Caves are great idea if you use all potential and add some other things, that will make them video-game friendly.

Have you thought about water? It's common there are lakes underground. You could add small lake with a small island-alike thingy in the middle. With circle jump ppl would have opportunity to go on shortcut.



That area would be more open-space, less claustrophobic. If you have added there some different light, it would became nice orientation point!


There is a map, ut4_guerilla. It's very randomly created, but has nice idea. Water canal. And this water is shallow. You can't swim there, but you make a lot of noise traveling there. This little lake on Gloom could have a shallow water. No stupid problems with flag falling down there too deep or bomb.



Think about lake.


If we speak about lake, why not go further - river? If river - bridges! They can be "normal" bridges, or more alike fords http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_%28crossing%29



OMG! Another TWO orientation points! Not to mention, that you can separate more areas of your map, but add sneaky shortcut, if some one is ready to go deeper into river and emerge on the onother side:



Just one that kind of shortcut, call it "Devil's Throat" - 4th orientation point. And if you plan it carefully, river can lead to village!



Let's go further.

If you have houses/shacks - it means that ppl live there. Why You won't use it for your own evil plans. Look:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cAWYSTizjTo/T ... an%2B1.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AOFyjh20sfw/T ... an%2B2.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yqsQcxWk4iw/S ... 282%29.png

And so on. One village can be shacks/that kind of houses - that would be native ppl with Pocahontas as their leader, and onother side could be slavers/drug dealers camp:
http://gurstin.com/trips/2008/Honduras/IMG_8951.jpg
Put there a jeep and some weapon crates and you are done.


Moreover one last thing. You could transform this little hole (almost unnoticable)


into THIS:

[Rayne]

OK by the end of the post you went not over board but over the boards boarding board.
From adding a small lake in the caves to building an entire cave man city with rivers, lakes, bridges and a white pony or whatever.
Furthermore what you wrote is not a review of his map it's a suggestion to completely redo the map and should not be in map reviews section so i will move it where it belongs.

[ValkoVer]

it's a suggestion to completely redo the map

What he said :/ I want cave, not jungle.

[MajkiFajki]

What he said :/ I want cave, not jungle.

So you want maze. Ppl tend NOT to play maze maps.

[ValkoVer]

What i want to do, is putting some more unique models all over the map, so it shouldn't be that boring. Won't it be "ok" like that? Bad thing i don't have more ideas for models

[Rayne]

What he said :/ I want cave, not jungle.

So you want maze. Ppl tend NOT to play maze maps.

People tend to play dumbest maps in existence and ignore excellent maps.
Also Gloom is not a maze, no more of a maze than Raiders or Sliema is. All i would add is few more landmarks for easier orientation and that's it.

[Rayne]

As for models you could add some sort of cave man drawings on one wall and then model a scaffold like this one so it looks like someone was examining it.
http://www.cornucopia3d.com/purchase.php?item_id=7354

[MajkiFajki]

Won't it be "ok" like that?


No. You have great idea in your hands. Don't waste it with 3dmax masturbation "omg look at my sweet models!"

[bludshot]

Majki maybe went overboard with his suggestions, but, still maybe some good ideas in there no?

I think the map is a maze map, and unless the gaps between the hallways were tall buildings with accessible rooves, then yeah it is more of a maze than sliema.

But anyhow, my opinion: this map is all hallways no rooms. If you are just going for a unique experimental type map and don't care if it's all hallways, then leave it how it is. But if you want it to be more of a normal urt map, then my suggestion would be to add some rooms. But, the important thing is what you are looking to do with it.

[Delirium]

If you want my honest opinion, I've made maps like this and there's a reason why they're in my mapping graveyard.

You can't polish a turd, If the map has a bad layout most times it takes a total remake to fix it up. Eg Uptown(prime example)
I think what you should do is leave it at _b5 and just start on new projects. You might be familiar with the map, but you remember each time you run around a new map how long it takes you to get to know the map (and with a lot of the map looking the same, in a game like UrT it doesn't work out well. eg Maya)

I think you should do the 30 day layout challenge, every night draw a layout for 30 days (spending ~30 minutes before you head to bed to design a layout) and I guarantee that by the end of the 30 days you'll have at least 1 layout that is awesome to work off.

Either than or I can give you a layout, honestly I don't mind, but I've given you feedback before and I think what you should do is leave gloom and work on something new