wtf...
101 bassdrive wrote:tbh.. irontaxis original layout looks better than whats ingame.
be it the roads which arent continuosly.. standing for erosion, wildness and the debilitation of the area through warfare.
The layout of the map did not change one bit, the terrain was excatly the same as he sent me and all I did is paint it and the roads are excatly the same before and after, apart from I just hit the "build final roads" before generating the minimap so the roads snapped to the ground in the editor.
101 bassdrive wrote:the lack of overgrowth in the woods which simply isnt realistic and doesnt serve the gameplay in any way.. because grass doesnt grow in forests, moss does, but not grass. furthermore the grass in bf2 leads you to belive youre in cover but it isnt drawn in distance.. thus the only thing you get is VERY poor FPS but no real gameplay advantage.
Taxi was planning on putting as much overgrowth and undergrowth in the map as there currently is in there. All I did is speed up his work flow and give him a better overall resualt. If taxi wanted to go in a different direction he would have said so to me but when I showed him what I done his words where around "man that is excatly what I wanted!"
101 bassdrive wrote:the woods in the original depict realistic conditions way better. moss, rocks, trees. the aerial map perspective of iron taxis layout suggests a forest close to the timber line. this is also the way the map feels like. an elevated plain, high and remote.
more lifelike.
His woods he had hardly started painting, he had only done the basic terrain and basic temp terrain texture.
101 bassdrive wrote:the interview imo shows what im scared about: new assetts, new maps.
wth is wrong about that you might think? well, mods shouldnt live on grafic improvements nor should they on content. they live and shine because of gameplay. CS as the best example. CS:S waits for its breakthrough , its still all about CS 1.6.
you try to cover up the lack of gameplay improvements with grafics and content and hope itll make people interested. it will, surely, but only in the short term.
gameplay, like refined RP system, overall spawnsystem, valueing lifes, relative to that the assett spawntimes.. its such detailed stuff that will matter and possibly secure your entry in the history book of FPS.
I seriously doubt Ill be able to play .8, which is just a pity because it seems that all thats been thought about is to daze people with highend PC's instead of mind blowing them with playability.[/QUOTE]
wtf... we are always working on gameplay changes and improvements, we cant put them in screenshots thou it is very hard to show gameplay, you can only really experiences it! Visual content enhances the gameplay and makes it more appealing to the user. The graphics are there to back up the gameplay, without them there would be no gameplay, with only the gameplay and no assets there would be no game. I really can't belive I'm reading this. Without new maps the gameplay, espically in PR becomes stale as the flag system means that setup can only be played so many times before it becomes stale. We are working on improving this but how can we show you a screenshot, do you want a screenshot of our python code or something?
Let me quote here a part of this book I've been reading by a Epic Games Level Designer who has worked on the Unreal games etc.
Gameplay:
How the game works, why and how to enhance it.
Introduction
Every game in every genre has its own gameplay. No two of them are 100% identical but they all share the same base.
This part of the book exsplains the universal basic principle of gameplay needed in order to understand where the fun comes from. This part of the book is divided into two large chapters: Multiplayer and Singleplayer. Thous two chapters cover dozens of subjects including: floorplans, events, traps, item placment, AI and so on.
Note that even if the only intrest is in either sp or mp it might still be useful to read both chapters since many of the topics talked about are universal and can be applied to either.
Universal basics
The very basics are that there are two types of gameplay in a game. Map gameplay and Core gameplay. Understanding them is fundermental. Many people think of gameplay as just "gameplay" while, in fact, gameplay can be slipt up into two large elements: Core gameplay and Map gameplay.
Core Gameplay:
The core gameplay is the gamepaly provided by the game itself. It gives the player the ability to spawn, how fast the player can run, if the player can jump and if yes, how high and so on. It determines the speed of the game, the weapons and sets the objectives.
A level designer has little to do with this. It already exists and it can't be be easily modified by the designer. A level designer's job is to simply accept the Core gameplay and adopt the gameplay of the Map to it as good as possible.
Map Gameplay:
The Map Gameplay gives the player the ability to spawn in a world and utilize it by using the Core Gameplay. It provides the player a route to the other teams flag. It determines where the weapons are. It determines what the floorplan looks like. It controls how the Core Gameplay is interpreted!
The Core gameplay defines the overall capabilities within the game, and the map gameplay gives a place, a location, to exercise these capabilities within.
Map Gameplay needs to augment the Core Gameplay. The word "augment" is the most important aspect of Map Gameplay. There are 10,000 UT maps and even more HL/CS levels out there. Give the player a reason to play this level instead of some other random level. It needs to offer something more than the ability to run and shoot since all the levels out there already provide just that. The way a designer enhances the Core Gameplay will determins if people like to play the level or not!
The Core Gameplay is a foundation to work on. That means that the rest of the house is not constructed yet. It is the designer's job to take that foundation and built it further up until the house is complete. The gameplay in a level should add depth to the Core gameplay.
The most common gameplay mistake is to crate a too simple a level which adds nothing to the Core gameplay. Pretty much every game out there has a box level floating around on the internet. A big cube where all the players or monsters spawn right next to each other and can do nothing more than attack each other. Such a level or area adds absolutely nothing to the Core Gameplay. the only actions possible in such a level are spawning, attacking and dying.
The is exactly what the Core Gameplay provides, the Map gamepaly has nothing to do with it. Such levels do not have any gameplay of their own.
Some people find such levels fun, if they do the game designer should be thanked and not the level designer. The level designer failed in doing what he is supposed to do: augmenting the Core gameplay though the map gameplay environment.
Good Map Gameplay is gameplay that supports and motivates complex strategies and enhances the depth and the fun though the use of a dozen elements such as: traps, differences in height (vertical gameplay) planned and balanced item placement, extra small stories, puzzles etc. An example of this are leftjumps; the player can jump higher by using the momentum an elevator provides. The core gameplay has nothing to do with that. It is the level that offers the possibility. Without map gameplay all levels of a game would play the same. If a map doesn't add enough to the core it fails as a level, gameplay-wise.
Never work oneself to death on just gameplay or graphics. Only the perfect combination and harmony between each aspect can bring about a good game experience. Graphics are made to support the gameplay between each aspect can bring about a good game experience. Graphics are made to support the gameplay while the gameplay is made to support the graphics! One must support the other. A scary monster setup needs specific environmental elements to function well and the other way around a scary environment also needs a scary monster setup to work well.
That will with any luck give you a better understanding before you basically say I'm destroying the mod!
