Empires urban maps architectural style

I've busted out Hammer after a long (10 year) mapping hiatus and I putting together an urban map. Empires has inspired me. :D

Anyway so I'm wondering what everyones thoughts are on architectural styles in Empires. Are people gonna freak if the buildings don't all have that futuristic/utilitarian/concrete look of the official Empires maps? I was going to make a BE military outpost and a few government buildings in that style, but mix up the rest of the city a bit, have some old industrial buildings, some crappy burnt out strip malls and such.

I'm finding the max map size kind of restricting, I wanted to have a large harbor area with a view of the sea, but I found having a large water area used to much precious space I'm settling for a canal down the center. Anyone know if the Orange Box engine will support larger maps?

Oh and while I'm here...I've noticed that a lot of people seem to dislike the urban maps. I'm trying to figure out why so that mine doesn't suffer the same fate. One though is that they feel restrictive for vehicles. People prefer the wide open maps for tanky warfare. Another thought is that they seem fairly linear, offering only one or two routes anywhere. These are the issues I want to address, but I'd appreciate anyones ideas on the subject.

I'm pretty amazed how easy it's been to get back into Hammer. I used it mainly for Quake 1, and a little for HL 1, but it's almost unchanged since then. A few features have been added, but the basic functionality is almost untouched. I had a rough sketch of my map layout in about an hour. Doesn't make me feel quite so old, heh.

 

Well, first of all to try to give you a hint on how to solve the harbor thing:
3D-skybox
a 16x bigger 3d-image projected aroud the map, perfect for large open areas of water or distant mountins and the like

Secondly, about design-choices, iv'e allways reconed as long as it used atleast a few of the empires textures it won't be all that difficult to relate to

I mean, sure, if it looks like your avrage suburb or like central russia (Like halflife2 simply put) then it will be tad strage, but seeing how little reference material there is, just use your imagination and see what you come up with

 

get the city in cyclopean and make it 4x wider. I think a dense urban map would be cool like that in cyclopean. Not linear like streetsofire, or not a stalemate as district, but will loads of different streets and intersections.

Perhaps you could roughly draw out on paint what you thinking of doing?

 

Urban maps are hard to do right, granted. But if you can get the design down, do you think you could increased the number of hollowed out usable buildings in the map? So the buildings are a little more then huge impenetrable pieces of cover?

 

Thanks for the skybox idea Grizzly, I'd heard about that and forgotten. I'll have to look into it.

petemyster, nonliner is what I'm thinking. Each base has three entrances, and at the moment the city is a series of square blocks like a standard North American city, so you are free to roam about the map as you please. Each block is identical at the moment, but of course I intend to make each one a bit different...from open parks to close packed buildings, small stores, industrial buildings, skyscrapers, multilevel car parks, government squares....I have a rough layout in my head but it could change.

grayclay88, I know what you mean. I want plenty of open buildings, ruined buildings and packed industrial areas the vehicles can't get too. The tanks will rule the streets, but the infantry will still have to infiltrate a few areas.

I think I'm ditching the canal in the middle. It will give me the space for another couple of streets, which I think will be more interesting. I don't want the three bridges I have becoming areas of stalemate.

I'm finding it hard to get the scale right. How much is enough room to build the main base? How wide should the streets and sidewalks be? I'm trying to get that right and sort the basic layout before I do any textures or details at all. At the moment, the streets are wide enough to build a vehicle factory on and still leave plent of room to drive around with a tank.

 

Try making a few example streets and get tanks running around them, thats probobly the easyest way of doing it

Also, remember to design it so you can devide it into parts with hint brushes, otherwise it's going to run like crap when you start adding details

 

If you need any models or textures feel free to ask; there are quite a few modelered and textrue artists lurking around on theese forums...

About the balance: As long as you don't limit the path choices to a single linear one; then it should be fine. So you will not have situations like in district escort or SoF

Take a look at slaughtered, in essenese you can replace the hills with buildings, but the gameplay will remain the same. Why? Because the space in between the "Walls" is large enough to let sevral tanks go through without problem, this stops the problems like nadespam on district, where there is only a narrow path. If you think about it; that map is the most linear maps out there; but somehow it manages to have some of the best games in all Empires in it. A very good study map I should say.

Also be smart about how you place the buildings. When you build your map always think of how the players are going to want to move through the map, and design your map to channel both teams to natural front lines. Also avoid "King Of the Hill" situations where one single point will give the "Win" position to the team that holds it...

Also do not fall into the trap of creating TOO many paths, as this will dilute conflict too much, and people will just walk past eachother; much like dustorm but it will be worse because you cannot see them.

If you need to; look at actual city plans as well to give you some start and insipration...

 

Thanks, I'll need to look into that.....it's gonna be a big ass map

 

Thanks for the tips. I was tempted to go for one king of the hill area, but I'm probably going to distribute the ref points pretty evenly. Too many paths may indeed be a problem though. At the moment it's a totally open city. I could always block off streets and alleyways with collapsed buildings though, I want the city too look a bit beaten up (though that is a lot more time consuming to create)

 

Just take a look at all of the current maps; see how they play, and take the element from each map that seems to be the best; and yeah avoid "King of the Hill" :p

I really want to see what you will come up with

 

What I've picked up from empires is that exterior butressing is cool (and neccesary for cover) and that metal is used in lieu of concrete in some places.

They don't have to be particularly dystopian though, I've always thought of the BE as being a strict, but not particularly evil group. A citizen of value in the empire should have good accomodation and work space, which is why I designed the city in kutm like a technology park. The scientists working there should be well treated, given that they are conducting important work.

I'd go with a well planned, but not neccesarily pretty look for the BE, and a more ramshackle look for the NF as they have fewer resources, unless you're doing a jekotian city, which would have it's own architecture style.

 

I don't believe there are Jekotian city maps at the moment are there?

Glycin?

 

They'd probably be decried as "non-empires". I'd quite like to do a map on 2x or 4x scale with a city as a semi-choke point, but personally I won't be doing anything on it for a good long while (ie until November) which may even be long enough for empires to support the larger maps.

I was planning a more random shaped (i.e. not the silly American blocks) city over quite a large river with some decent width roads, small alleyways a few small parks/gardens etc. Even so, mine would end up more of a small town than a city given the fact that I'd want it all in a map so no 5miles square cities...

Some sort of standard for non-BE themed empires cities could be interesting, good luck with the map.

 

I was wondering what Jekotian cities would look like....I figured my city would have some BE buildings in it, but wasn't necessarily built by them, maybe just occupied in the past, and the Jekotians want it back. So I could have some modern NE stuff alongside the older buildings

I just don't want my cities looking completely gray. I had enough of that living in Toronto As said above BE citizens would still want attractive commercial areas and homes...hmmm.......

I have my roads sizes worked out I think. The whole city is a grid of identical blocks at the minute, but thats just placeholder. I'm gonna break up the roads a bit later, make it more interesting. I've started the detail work around the BE starting area as I'm now content with the dimensions. I'm trying not to get to obsessive about tiny details, it's multiplayer map, not singleplayer, after all. It's more important runs and plays well. People won't stop to appreciate every detail.

I could use more posters and storefront textures. BE and NE propaganda posters and graffiti would be cool, but advertisements for regular products would ad atmosphere too.

This could take a while....I'm a mature student with a wife and sprog so I don't have much time. I've tried doing my own mods and games but I don't have the time for them. Which is why I'm settling for mapping again, theres a chance I'll finish a project....

Ack, I'm rambling.....

 

But Toronto is so beautiful!

 

I honestly can't work out if thats sarcasm or not!

I used to live in Edinburgh though



I guess it's hard to compete with the 'Athens of the North' :D

 

Toronto looks like a gray piece of shit right now... It is a really depressing city during winter...

 

Edinbourgh looks pretty nice

 

Yeah, it is pretty awesome. What freaked me out when I first came to Canada was how new everything was. I didn't think about it before I left, but in the UK you are constantly surrounded by history. In Canada everything feels like it sprung up out of nowhere. It's a weird feeling, makes it all seems sort of surreal. I never would have thought it would bother me if you'd told me that before I came. I was looking at Edinburgh on GoogleEarth the other day and got a bit homesick

 

Ha, try living in the US. When there's a building with the slightest amount of history attached, everyone acts like it's the second coming of Christ.

Anyway, as for the map: I would definitely support some more urban fighting. Even the few city maps that we already have are all really wide-open, with the exception of district, which is basically a bullet wind tunnel. No skyscrapers, either, which is kind of a shame. If you're having a problem with the size, you can always go for scaling.