heres an example from UT3. They created plain bland gray box levels to start, worked out the gameplay and perfected it from that standpoint. Then, they brought in the artists and had them pretty it up. Its easier to add art to existing geometry than to find that something doesnt work, redesign something, than to create new artwork that fits the given space. Perfect the design and the art will be easy.
I say the word art and you guys jump around like libral I called uptite. you guys need to be more open minded.
Valve does the same thing, and many HL2 mappers do it as well. Only Valve's textures are bright orange and have grids on them so you can scale things in Hammer more easily. :D Changing the art is simple, creating good gameplay is what should be done first. You could take several of the current Empires maps and throw in a volcano, and they would still play the same.
Are you implying that this "Concept" has no mapping value what so ever? That I would make better use of your time by drawing untextured geometric shapes from 3 directions and then explain in text that it might look well as a barren volcanic island? Perhaps Don Miguel and the other artists have been wasting there time, I mean the game play mechanics should come first. We Should be cubes that drive trapezoids and eventually Fly parallelograms until the final version right?! Art has more to do with Modern games then ever before! Video games are art! Tacticle design is art! This Concept Is not a coaloge of road killed Cats! This is a designed concept with a blend of tactical and artistic elements! I didn't just make it cause its art. I made it to become art. To become an interesting and dynamic plain of reality on which we do battle! Lets quit Bickering about the "proper" steps and make art that aged players will look back on and roll up those wrinkled lips and show their toothless smiles, And say "that, Was awesome"!
Vessboy QUOTED FOR TRUTH. Not many people will play an artistic oriented map, people want good gameplay.
Hmm, looks not so much like art, but concepts. You need concepts before you have a game to design gameplay around. Without the story concept, what is Empires? The gameplay is more based upon a back story. Concept work is very important when it comes to keeping a game focused on the ultimate goal of the design. Otherwise, we could have a map on the moon for no apparant reason and there are artillery tanks just sitting around. Concepts > Gameplay
