Will there be any variety of environments?

lame-o

You know, I tend to get really tired of playing games that show the same environments over and over again, and they're usually dirty, grimy, broken down, industrial, dark, and small facilities. One of the things that was great about NS is that not all space stations were ugly, in fact many maps were just plain pretty; nice high ceilings, light blue alloy walls, big spaces with giant windows looking on into some colorful nebula, etc. If anything was styled in a specific way, it wasn't to look depressing, it was to look ominous and weird and cool. Some maps were even blatantly inspired by the Aliens movies.

Anyways, NS2 can't be said to be depressing, since we haven't actually seen any real working maps yet, but from my point of view the textures and lighting that come with the spark editor (so far), and the maps showcased so far, are kind of on the grimy-version-of-Doom-3 side (with a lot more thick black cables). I don't think this is a bad thing, it would be fun to play a map or two with this style, but I hope that this isn't the visual theme for everything.

So what do you guys think? Will NS2 be inherently diverse with its visuals and locations? If not, do you think that the NS2 community has the inspiration to make it that way itself?

Also, hi I'm new :)

Kisle

So for I know there are 2 big themes.

Refinery and Biodome.
Well Refinery is the one u know.
And i think the biodome theme is more natural.. with plants and stuff.

Draco_2k

Kisle is right.

Refinery is what we see now, Biodome will be much more bright and organic; other environment types are planned too, possibly post-release.

lame-o

Okay that sounds great. Refinery kind of sucks though, it doesn't look like much fun to play in after an hour or two. Biodome sounds interesting, so I guess it would be like a hemisphere type construction. That could lead to some cool map ideas. I wonder if it would mean that there would be a lot of vegetation? From some concept art it looks like it would have some green-house type areas and medical facilities.

Align

Biodome won't necessarily involve an actual dome, it was just the name of an area in a NS1 map (which did have a dome, and bio). Refinery ditto.

Chris0132

I was thinking about this myself, you can probably go quite a bit less industrial than the refinery theme and that would give you a quite different look.

Still probably gonna be corridors and metal though.

Squeal_Like_A_Pig

NS universe is inherently on the gungy side, however there are plans for more diversity for the maps, eventually. At the moment we are focused on the Refinery art set, which being a mining/refining facility is naturally going to be on the industrial, dirtier side. As other people state we have plans for other art sets, such as the Biodome set, which will have a different color scheme, be a little cleaner, and have lots of plants and greenery, however given our limited resources that will be happen post release.

--Cory

Dalin Seivewright

In addition, other dedicated mappers will likely create custom sets of their own, with their own color scheme and theme, so the Refinery set, definitely won't be the only thing out there.

slayer20

I'm going for a very clean slick look for my level. I have so much work to do...