Mapping Thoughts
Tweadle
Join Date: 2005-02-03 Member: 39686Members, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2005-02-03 Member: 39686Members, NS2 Map Tester
<div class="IPBDescription">the awkward arranged marriage between aesthetics and gameplay</div>Initially was going to post this in optimisation thread but it's pretty off-topic:
One of the problems with maintaining a high visual industry standard for maps in NS2 is how much interaction there is with objects and surfaces. You can create gloriously shaped features in a COD map, for example, with comparatively little impact on how you approach the map. In NS2, however, complicated features give birth to a unique set of problems.
Traversing maps at high speed becomes awkward and unpredictable (Is that dangling wire going to kill my speed? Is that small gradient change going to affect where I end up? Will I get caught on that protruding broken bit of railing?). This gets worse when you introduce wallhopping. Complicated geometry means that wallhopping can be an imperfect science. You can figure out, in general, which direction you're going to go but it's hard to know with absolute certainty that you're going to land right... there! Simply wall<i>walking</i> is basically a form of dodging because of the plurality of positions the skulk model will take on most surfaces and, though the recent improvements have helped, this is still an ongoing niggle.
What compounds matters is the horrendous animations that architecture can illicit and the dodgy collision system that makes interacting with surfaces feel random. Until these are both vastly improved, convoluted map designs will irk me far more than they already would.
Ideally, you want mappers to create atmosphere and maintain a high aesthetic standard while keeping maps as crisp and clean as possible to play in. Complicated geometry should be most prevalent in low-activity or out-of-reach areas where you can appreciate its beauty without suffering because of it. Entities should be created in such a way that they achieve their aesthetic goals with the minimum level of complexity possible.
UWE have put a premium on map aesthetics which is fair enough but, at the very least, they must back it with the right technical fundamentals. A substantial part of me thinks they should go further still by acknowledging the unhealthy relationship between beauty and gameplay in this area and incorporate this into map-design goals or reduce dependency on architecture in the first place.
One of the problems with maintaining a high visual industry standard for maps in NS2 is how much interaction there is with objects and surfaces. You can create gloriously shaped features in a COD map, for example, with comparatively little impact on how you approach the map. In NS2, however, complicated features give birth to a unique set of problems.
Traversing maps at high speed becomes awkward and unpredictable (Is that dangling wire going to kill my speed? Is that small gradient change going to affect where I end up? Will I get caught on that protruding broken bit of railing?). This gets worse when you introduce wallhopping. Complicated geometry means that wallhopping can be an imperfect science. You can figure out, in general, which direction you're going to go but it's hard to know with absolute certainty that you're going to land right... there! Simply wall<i>walking</i> is basically a form of dodging because of the plurality of positions the skulk model will take on most surfaces and, though the recent improvements have helped, this is still an ongoing niggle.
What compounds matters is the horrendous animations that architecture can illicit and the dodgy collision system that makes interacting with surfaces feel random. Until these are both vastly improved, convoluted map designs will irk me far more than they already would.
Ideally, you want mappers to create atmosphere and maintain a high aesthetic standard while keeping maps as crisp and clean as possible to play in. Complicated geometry should be most prevalent in low-activity or out-of-reach areas where you can appreciate its beauty without suffering because of it. Entities should be created in such a way that they achieve their aesthetic goals with the minimum level of complexity possible.
UWE have put a premium on map aesthetics which is fair enough but, at the very least, they must back it with the right technical fundamentals. A substantial part of me thinks they should go further still by acknowledging the unhealthy relationship between beauty and gameplay in this area and incorporate this into map-design goals or reduce dependency on architecture in the first place.
Comments
The only way to implement proper traversal of complicated / unpredictable surfaces is procedurally generated walking animations for each model - which from what i've heard can be very difficult and time consuming to implement. (But man would this game get so much out of it with skulks on walls!)
It's possible to do though, and one other indie developer, Wolfire games, spent a good bit of time on it for just a single bipedal model with good results.
Scardybob covered the rest of what i had to say :)
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRTsl1jCqq8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRTsl1jCqq8</a>
- Photo-realistic and super-detailed graphics are not specially beautiful, there's plenty of art style that look as good or even better. Photo-realistic style is also over-used in game industry and is getting quite boring. There is no "gaming standard" in terms of graphism or details, there's a big bunch of people trying to put as many triangles in their scene as possible and a few studios that are doing things right. Doing good, original 3D art seems really hard though.
<img src="http://thatgamecompany.com/wp-content/themes/thatgamecompany/_include/img/journey/journey-game-screenshot-4.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
- Photo-realistic style is extremely work intensive. That's one of the reason why making maps for NS2 takes so much time. For a small studio like UWE a more sober style would have been a smart choice.
<img src="http://a238.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/081/Purple/78/93/9d/mzl.wnyocset.800x500-75.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://www.cgsociety.org/stories/2010_01/machinarium/Images/Machinarium_zed1a2.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
This seems backwards. Surely gameplay should be at the forefront of map design. Artistic aspects and atmosphere can then be added afterwards to ensure gameplay and mechanics are not broken, and that the map remains fun to play.
General gameplay, yes. You can't have a hive siegable from 5 rooms away, and you can't have 5 res nodes in marine spawn.
However, when you start becoming too specific as to which gameplay elements you facilitate, you start to lose the feeling of the game. You start to lose the... IMMERSION *gasp*.
An extreme example is those quake 3 jump maps, specifically tailored for awesome maneuvers and such. Cool, in an uber arcady experience it works fine. But when you look at the map you can clearly see that that is what it was designed for. An extreme example, I know, but a small element of that would be unavoidable when you expressly create geometry and architecture for skulk movement.
I think it would be wiser to (if necessary) tweak walljump to be more generally applicable, rather then tweaking the environment to benefit a creature that shouldn't be there, if you know what I mean.
Will simply agree to disagree. If I want immersion I play a singleplayer game. If I want to pit myself against other players in a challenging and competitive environment then gameplay takes precedence.
I dont want to take the thread too off topic with this, so
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Tweadle)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tweadle)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->UWE have put a premium on map aesthetics which is fair enough but, at the very least, they must back it with the right technical fundamentals. A substantial part of me thinks they should go further still by acknowledging the unhealthy relationship between beauty and gameplay in this area and incorporate this into map-design goals or reduce dependency on architecture in the first place.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agree 100%, A lot of the issues might be resolved by simply removing clipping on some of the aesthetic objects within maps. It would also need to be made intuitive and consistent across all maps that these objects are for aesthetic purposes only and wont clip. As per your example, dangling wires for instance.
It would be interesting if a clean variant of official maps could be created. Gameplay statistics between the clean + original might yield interesting results.
I'm all for obvious objects used for cover, fantastic, the redesign of east wing and maintenance comes to mind for ns_docking, completely changed the feel of the map whilst also adding in obvious cover in maint and much better vertical areas for aliens in east that give each area a different feel to the others now, it's interesting and fair for both sides.
I don't even think I really have specific examples, the thread about performance and they guy posting the mod that removed objects is perfect to me, ###### keep them in as sprites if you have to but that's probably a faux pas for todays standards but game play and mechanical wise it feels ######ing horrible in a lot of NS2 maps to play as a SS fade, literally feels ######ing bad like I would love to use my abilities and keep moving around here slightly faster but I'll be punished by that angle of the next corner, the 20+ railings in the area the slight elevation, random objects that hang off walls and doorways that seemed especially designed to clip and hang on anything.
The whole box vs hallways mentality is exactly what the dev response was to the mapping thread and it summed it up perfectly, NS1 featured lots of hallways and very little rooms, mostly only for res nodes or staging areas outside hives while NS2 has adopted a room approach and as one person before the dev response said, it feels like every map in NS2 is mapper made a box, threw in a bunch of doodads and objects and bam, onto the next room, another square or rectangle, now what can I put in here.
Even as a skulk it feels like your constantly scrambling around/on top of things and I guess it works for some people but I ######ing hate it and the game has horrible 'flow' or tempo for me.
The main issues with map design and navigation are:
<b>1. Marine navigation sucks.</b> Rock fabs (like the pile of rocks in Cave hive on Mineshaft) are the clearest offender of many, and highlight a weakness in marine movement code. Possible solutions being (1A) stop using complicated floor geometry or (1B) allow fabs to be "painted" as wall-climbable, which means all units (not just marines) use wall-climb code when touching this rock. 1B might be a far trickier implementation, as obviously the goal is to only let players walk over a rock, not to let them wall-climb an adjacent wall.
<b>2. Melee vs. Ranged. </b>Several non-official maps I've played have a very poor understanding of what the "right amount of cover" is, in a game where it's melee vs. ranged most of the time. This results in maps which are either too tight (skulk advantage) or have hallways which are too long (marine advantage).
<b>3. "Wheelchair accessible". </b>As another thread pointed out, another design constrain is imposed by AI-controlled units like MACs, which limits aesthetic creativity. I disagree with this necessarily being a massive net-negative for map design (as that other thread implied) but it's certainly a limit imposed by the game design.
Certainly it's worth supporting the OP's criticism of Visuals Providing the Right Gameplay Expectations (which is one of the fundamental challenges of good map design in games.) For example there's a walkway in Courtyard on Docking. Previously you could jump up from the southwest corner. Now it's blocked off, and that's fine. But what's not fine is the railing still looks low enough that you would be able to easily hop over it in real life -- the player's expectation is that they're able to traverse that part of the map because they could do it in real life. Whereas if the railing was double-high, or the pipe you stand on was removed, it would clearly not be some place you'd expect to be able to go.
I left it like that just to troll everybody. Successful troll successful.
Quiet Dux! Get back to work "making boxes and throwing in a bunch of doodads and objects" .
One knows their game is in a good place when people complain about the cielinhgs in maps :)
So being a skulk and leping for a vent or using a corner leap jump to catch up to a team mate shouldn't be allowed?
NEG.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Photo-realistic style is extremely work intensive. That's one of the reason why making maps for NS2 takes so much time. For a small studio like UWE a more sober style would have been a smart choice.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I mean, does a more abstract art style ala Journey actually requires less work than a the classical detailed-realistic look ? Abstract-minimalist art usually require more skill and experience to do well, but it also seems to simplify a lot of things.
On navigation and room-hallway-room stuff, it seems that landmarks at intersections are the most important, i.e. it's when you need to decide to go left and right that you need landmarks and memorable graphics. For example, cross-road to computer lab and cross-road to reactor-core kind of look the same.
<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724980443000746" target="_blank">http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724980443000746</a>
But the big offender in this regard is alien vision, that mask any kind of landmarks and makes navigation much harder.