Trantius: Map Concept
WraithOfDark
Join Date: 2002-10-01 Member: 1393Members
Join Date: 2002-10-01 Member: 1393Members
<div class="IPBDescription">A docked science vessel, infested!</div> Here is a top-down, simplistic map concept I have been working on. Looks a bit squashed up and I'm not sure about the vents/resource nodes positions.
If it gets a good reception I might draw up some concept archetecture to clarify what those lines look like.
Yellow = Doors
Red = Vents
Green Circles = Resource Nodes
Blue = Walls
Darker Blue = Floor detail, railings, etc.
Lighter Blue = Outside hull of the ship (Obviously will not all be shown in the map, only where it is visible through observation windows)
If it gets a good reception I might draw up some concept archetecture to clarify what those lines look like.
Yellow = Doors
Red = Vents
Green Circles = Resource Nodes
Blue = Walls
Darker Blue = Floor detail, railings, etc.
Lighter Blue = Outside hull of the ship (Obviously will not all be shown in the map, only where it is visible through observation windows)
Comments
Plus, There is a hive really close to MS, bad news for marines at the begining of the game, think skulk rush.
I'm must say though, I really like it. Some pretty unique touches to it. Keep it coming.
I agree that, perhaps, there needs to be more routes to Minor Observatory and The Work Shop hives. Station reception can be 'got at' through the vent by Jetpack/Welder/SG and assassinated, and the big multi doored bottle neck is just, in effect, realism. It does, however, present a strategic advantage for the aliens but nothing a determined team of HMG/GREN/WELDER can't finish off.
Perhaps the door from the 'hanger' to the 'Observatory' hive could be made functional, this would open up a whole new route without serioussly damaging the map.
Other possible routes I can see would put 2 hives within a few seconds run of each other. IE: The missing coridoor from 'The Workshop' to Trantius's Warp Chambers.
Some of the official NS maps only have one final entrance to hives but a lot of routes leading to that entrance. I still believe a determined team of marines would have no problem bursting through it all. The tight design would, hopefully, prevent too many offence chambers. That said, theres more than enough 'Siege Turret' support for the marines who, if they captured 'Minor Observatory', could use it as a staging platform for sieging 'The Workshop'.
The key areas to control would be 'Trantius Hub' and 'The Neck'. You really can't appreciate the scale of 'The Neck' here as all the coridoors are shown meerly for layout but think of the coridoor from 'Event Horizon' where they placed all the charges...only much, much shorter.
The darker blue-line detail close to the small door of each hanger is, in fact, a raised platform with controls for opening the hanger doors and the refuel node (Resource node in hanger refuels ships, though this won't happen in the map).
That means 'The Neck' and the two coridoors joining the hub will be sloped.
Trantius Hub, Docking Reception, Docking Node and Panoramic are all raised above the rest of the map as well as the Jughandle that leads to 'The Neck' corridoor and the 2 hangers (only one hanger is closed off). The vents going from the 'Jughandle' to the 'Warp Chambers' start at ground level and run level to the warp chambers where they are up near the cieling.
I'm hoping, that if anyone maps this, they will put operational (open/close) 'Blast Shields' in Panoramic Observation. They will play no part in the game, but I think it's nice to have these realistic touches.
I might rename 'The Workshop' to 'Engineering & Maintenance' as it's in the right place to be a room full of Warp core monitoring equipment. The bit of central wall directly under the 'Trantius Warp Chambers' writing will be something like one of the 'Triad Generator Array' from eclipse crossed with the 'Warp Core' from Star-Trek.
I'm also hoping Hanger A can have an open view out to 'space' with a 'force field' between you and certain death (perhaps even one that can be shut off with a weld) ala those in the hangers of Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast.
One last reflection on an earlier point, if I removed one of the resource points from the warp chambers and opened 'hanger A' into 'The Observatory' it would open up another route without giving the aliens extra resource nodes in close range.
Oh, and don't worry about the aliens being close to marines, they would either have to navigate the vents (which would take them a while) or go via 'docking' and have to wait for the blast doors to open. Aliens shouldn't rush for an early kill anyway (but they should rush for light pacification), makes for a bad game.
Okay, I have rambled on for ages and still not covered much of the things I would like to sit here and describe. I will wait for some views on the above before I go into more detail on other rooms/coridoors/vents.
Heres my first redraft. Version 1.1.
Few things to note here.
Darker red indicates where the ducting passes under the floor.
The map is considerably more 'sprawled' over a larger area.
Hanger A has been opened into the observatory with an airlock rather than close-together double doors (think of the hold on Ns_iforgotthemapname)
The warp chambers have been resized and detailed, the 2 lower hives have also been redone. I'm have tried to make all irrelevant rooms smaller.
'The Neck' is more detailed, vaguely showing the huge rings that run round the inside and the suspended walkway. Underneath 'The Neck' walkway will be some sort of glowing power conduit.
The hub is larger, I want people to use it like they use 'Hera Entrance and Reception' as a good choke point.
Theres a LOT of doors, not all of these will be usable. Figuring out which ones will be and which not is important as closeable doors demonstrate a stratigic point (used by building offensive structures behind them to ambush the other team when they open the door).
These 'rooms' make up the spine of Trantius which runs through the center of the ship. Central Ventilation and Hanger Control Access are not marked on the top-down above, but I will add them with the next draft.
Here is a diagram showing the elevation/layout of 'The Spine' from a side-on view.
I haven't shown where the Hangers are but they would be in-line with Hanger Control Access with their floors at the same baseline as the generator. Hanger Control is a raised platform at the end of each hanger with a control panel, a railing and a ladder going down to the hanger. From here you could, in theory, jump on top of the parked shuttlecraft. (Would be cool if you could also go inside the shuttlecraft, a low detail interior with seats in the back and a simple control panel/window at the front, you would climp into the top using a ladder.)
Ship looks a bit too squared for me.
Hives are too far away from each other.
if marines controll the "center hall knot" aliens have to get movement chambers essentially. Thats to hard if they have just one hive.
so they need "vent linked" to each other. Make THIS wents not straight to make aliens needing more time from one hive to another.
the upper left hive is to close to marine base. think about sieges.
the only think id like to purpose: have no location where one siege can reach 2 hives. If i am alien this is REALLY bad and imho not very "fun" since the marines basicly need to hold one point only to keep the aliens at skulk level. and its kinda hard to get a well defended base back when you are skulk and the enemy has HMgs ,)
but have sneaky locations in the vents where it is possible to build sieges. with these its often possible to turn a game around. nothing more fun when you are marine aliens think they win and suddenly one of their hives blows up from nowhere.
also dont make it too cramped, at least an onos should not be able to block a hallway completely. Aliens can work much better with small and tight areas then marines can (think TF space, warpgate space)
oh and i almost forgot: WELDABLE STUFF! like vents you can weld shut, doors you can weld open, things that kinda "change map layout" through welding. But make it somehow possible for the aliens to undo this. the same for aliens. have ducts and small holes where Aliens can bite through. so you can never 100% shure what to expect from where. i add this because you mentioned many doors.
well that where my 2 cents.
I do intend some of the vents to be accessable at ground level and then come out at the top of a room which is on another level of the ship. IE: the vents from Hanger Access to the Warp Core. This means a marine or two can get in and cover one of the hive exits. I'm trying to introduce the idea of having marines in the vents BEFORE they get jet packs, because not all ventilation is miles up near the roof.
Most of the hives are partially linked by vents which act as massive shortcuts. IE: The journey from Engineering & Maintenance to Station Reception will take you through 3 vents, one being pressure equalisation. I really don't think the marines would ever manage to hold the entire Spine of Transius, and if they manage to, they deserve to win. Aliens get a distinct advantage and can fortify the Spine at the Hub unless the marine team is smart enough to go for that resource node first. I'm a firm believer in putting resource nodes in locations that offer strategic advantages, thus letting either team kill two birds with one stone. It also lures the teams to USE these stratetic locations rather than neglect them. Even if the marines capture and fortify the Hub the aliens have a vent which they can use to skip past it and go for the base.
I would love to have, somewhere on the map, a control center which marines/aliens could use to toggle some of the doors. IE: If you want to progress to a certain location you first have to send a team to the control center to open the doors.
Think Aliens or Stargate where someone gets in control and the team radios in saying 'seal door 3c'. It would be cool to halt an Onos charge by calling your team-mate to seal the door in front of you. I was thinking of having 'Minor Command' as the door control center.
The corridoors in the design look a LOT thinner than they should be, expect most of them to comfortably fit an Onos though with room to spare.
Oh, and in regards to the general 'squareness', thats the shape of the ship I'm afriad. If it's ever made you wont notice it from the inside so I don't think it really matters.
I don't *HAVE* any mapping skills, never tried. I'm sure I could do it with a bit of practise but I never really have got into the actual 'mapping' part of the mapping scene. Just design.
The way its designed will allow a mapper to see exactly how every brush (excluding only minor details) can be placed. It be nifty.
A few things:
- 'The Neck' is too long... in certain areas, despite the incline, r_speeds will be hell. Also, that many nodes will make VIS compiling a b!tch. And of course Skulks will have a difficult time in there. Make it shorter, and with some sort of variation in the bulkheads.
- You seem to be taking VIS into account... but just in case, trace lines of sight and revise the design accordingly if you spot anything iffy. Even perfectly designed maps can have serious r_speed spikes crop up when a player is running through an area.
- Make res nodes more visible in the designs... I canna see them too well, eh?
- The Minor Observatory Hive doesn't seem to have a res node.
- Connect the Engineering Hive to the Warp Chambers with a room (something unlike the corridor on the right, to prevent confusion)
- Make the names a wee bit more interesting... like 'Secondary Observatory' instead of Minor Observatory, 'Alpha' and 'Beta' instead of A and B, and 'Auxiliary Command' instead of Minor Command.
Good work! Keep revising the design!
Only disatvantage of this is that such a map needs much players to make it usefull.
A Problem that all custom maps have - finding enough players.
Its worth getting mapped.
I certainly agree with the names and am clueless as to a decent number of resource points. I will juggle them about and make them clearer, somehow.
All this VIS and R_Speed malarky goes right over my head, but I have been trying to keep complex geometry to a minimum.
As for The Neck being a bit of a skulk trap: they have the vents and underneath the Neck's suspended floor (If that can be done without serioussly affecting r_speeds and whatnot). Think of the raised floor in the generator hive of ns_caged. I'm not sure how well that will be translated into an incline but underneath should be well lit and room enough for a skulk.
However I will simplify it and tweak the map here and there.
-Major extention to the vents
-Inclusion of weld points!
-Rename and redesign of bottom right (South East) hive.
-Addition of Excursion Preparation and rename of hanger accordingly
-Addition of Machine Shop with a ceiling suspended vent.
-Lounge hive has a resource node.
-Massive simplification and shortening of 'The Neck' with enough vents to make it a marine hell-hole if they're not careful.
-Moved lounge and engineering further apart to try and keep them out of range of one siege.
-Easy route from lounge to engineering will force marines to think carefully about their attacks.
-Station Reception represents, and will continue to represent, a major strategic point for the aliens, however it could easily be sieged from several points.
-General re-jigging of names all around Trantius.
-A helpful key! yay!
<b>Attention Mappers</b>
A fully layered .png (Fireworks vector based portable network graphics format) version of this map is available on request. You can show/hide each layer to get a clearer view of the design.
Once again, I stress this is not yet truly 'to scale' in respect to coridoors, doorways and vents. And have you ever entertained the possibility that a human ship might have coridoors or doorways that won't birth an onos. Unless it is, of course, a ship for the chronically obese. All the major routes would have to from a map point of view, but the hanger control access airlocks (that lead into the hangers from hanger control access) would never fit an onos, no way, no how. Not a chance!
However, I have gone through the map widening the coridoors to make them look less like the width of a vent.
It's a little bit symmetrical (which I like), in that some areas of the map are at least somewhat similar to areas on the opposite side of the station.
I was about to make a comment on corridor length, but this third revision basically nullifies any relevant comment I was about to make. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Nice job!
I might, possibly, 'explode' the layout a little bit more to take a load off command view.
The more I 'explode' it (spread it out) the less is on the comm's screen at any one time and the higher the frame rate. However, if comm's have decent PCs the 'compact' layout will offer a massive advantage to them, making everything easier to find and giving them a better overview of the map.
If the spread of the map is going to be adjusted to best serve the commander it will have to wait until the map is 'mapped' and alpha tested.
Still, I want to get as much of the design out of the way before it even hits Quark (or WorldCraft).
Perhaps I might brave parts of the archetecture design myself and let a more professional mapper incorporate and optimise it, my cad experience should come in handy there.
It's getting closer and closer to a good map and not just an acceptable one, I can imagine myself playing it, and you probably can to. In fact I have already started strategising and tweaking the map to offer nice nooks for defensive structures.
If you have even the tiniest idea, critisism or, perhaps, a suggestion as to which doors to wire to the control center and what would be best made weldable then don't hesitate to put it forward. Best to get the map as near 'perfect' as possible before it is ever realised, that will save a LOT of more complex map re-design in an editor (I'm assuming that changing the layout in a map editor is more difficult than editing it in Fireworks).
If I could draft the arcatecture (in pencil or in Fireworks) I could get some idea of the polygon counts. Does anyone know the best number of Polygons in any one viewpoint to stay under in Half-Life, I read somewhere that it is 500 in Quake.
Anyway, Thanks for all the feedback. I hope someday we can all play this map. And perhaps it will be liable for inclusion in NS. Who knows.
There are a few quarks i have about it though
- i would suggest that Central ventilation is an elevator of some sort to prefent the loooong corridoor happening right through that section.
- not a fan of having the neck sloping down, the above suggestion would fix that.
- general widening of corridors
otherwise looks good
if your ever strapped for a mapper i could try, ive been wanting to make an ns map but no ideas <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
[edit: w_polys of 600 are recommended but 800 is max and generally accepted. there would be restrictions if it was to be eligable for official.]
Also, 3 vents open into the CV elevator, it's a key point for marine travel and can be defended by skulks, hiding in the vents. The vents from Excursion and Maintenance access slope up to mid level 2 so a marine can crawl from the (moving) elevator into the vent. The vent underneath 'Hanger Control Access' joins with CV underneath the elevators lowest level, skulks could climb out of here onto the underside of the elevator and dive into the vents to Excursion/Maintenance as the elevator goes up.
The vent going into the suspended ceiling vent of the 'Machine Shop' will now have to open into 'Tactical Display' near the top of the room as TDisplay and MShop are on the same level. Same with the one that runs through the top of 'Excursion Prep'
The jughandle, formally 'Hanger Control Access' has been split into two, the second being 'Tactical Display.
This is basically a big wall with a bank of monitors in it and a control panel at the base.
The airlocks from 'Excursion Prep' and 'Engineering' now lead down to their respective hangers, each will have a flight of steps. This cannot be avoided, but won't do any harm.
The 2 lower hives are disturbingly close together, a decent sized siege farm could probably cover them both but that depends on how the scale in the final map works out.
I have added light/dark detail to the floor detail. Dark shows areas that are lower than the floor, and light shows areas which are higher.
Recreation is now 'Communications' with a control panel and a monitor bank. It is set into a shallow pit in the floor with a slope down to it.
The vent from 'Machine Shop' which runs past the hanger is sloped downward to below level 2 and connects to the 'under lift' vent.
The vent from L2-Engineering-Hive floor level to L1-Maintenance Access-Coridoor has to slope down below L1 and then rise again to connect to Maintenance Access at floor level.
I think I should have covered any elevation confusion. It's difficult to find a way to represent it on a 2d plan.
Thanks for the Elevator idea, Phish.
I have downloaded Quark and Python, anything else I need? I'm not going to do the entire map, just some of the archatecture, as that's difficult to convey to a mapper.
a good layout is what i always missed, and with yours..it should be no sweat <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
a) Samples - Particularily someone doing a section of the layout to flash off theirs skills
or
b) Ask a mapper who has already made an official map, this could be because you like their style or you have an ominous feeling about the layout and that the mapper will work magic well with it.
Personally I would not mind mapping the layout as it is interesting, although I must say there are too many double doors and the areas are so close the map will be unbalanced as soon as marines get siege cannons. One other problem is the Hives, 2 are close together and if mapped right will be a good average length from hive to hive. The other hive by the marine spawn seems a little out of reach from the others, skulk rush will overhaul marines if this is the initial hive. Although on the other hand if that is not the initial hive marines will get that hive all too easy. My advice is to just notch it down the left side a little, maybe make it stick out a bit. Overall, one of the best layouts I have seen.
Btw, I forgot to mention what an excellent layout it is.. (IMO that is)
Ill try to take this for learning the tool.
IF it becomes a working map all you will get is an awfull textured Map thats just good for ballance tests.
<b>please</b> make a "siege radius" around every hive that shows:
a siege must be placed inside this circle to hit the hive.
siege radius is 19-20blocks (each block 64*64).
question is, what does a siege reach when its build in...
Pandoramic obs
excusion hangar
pulse engine (center)
Registry (3 ressource nodes)
Does it hit hive or "just" ressource node?My suggestion is that it just reaches the ressource node from there.
You have other more close rooms to siege hives from.
Also, whoever maps this, make SURE that the station and the ship look DIFFERENT. And make sure that the part where they dock is discernable.
Also, whoever maps this, make SURE that the station and the ship look DIFFERENT. And make sure that the part where they dock is discernable.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Exactly! Fantastic idea about the airlock or decontamination area.
This map is a sort of 'learning' thing for me to, so anyone can have a go at mapping it. Perhaps they will come up with archetecture worthy of the final version. I'm not too 'nazi' about all this design copyright malarky. But I would appreciate a mention somewhere if you make a decent map (as would some of the people who helped me out here, i bet). I know what you mean about textures, gawd it took me 10 minutes to align them on a join between 2 walls! mapping is 'not my bag' so to speak.
I definately forgot to mention making the station and ship look different, very valid point that.
The map has plenty of intemediary coridoors which can be stretched to spread it out even more, play tests will probably have to determine how much the map will need extended.
Thanks for all the feedback, I will start work on another version of the map and add an extra room or two to the station (got to admit, the station IS sparse).
Vents doors Textures and weldables missing.
just blocks all over.
Readyroom and map looks awfull.
There is no Z axis / levels + stairs.
just done to test room-hallway proportions and how long it takes to run from one place to another, wich is impotrant.
have I mentioned that I NEVER EVER mapped anything before?