The Ultimate Hive Design?
Nay
Join Date: 2002-06-09 Member: 741Members
Join Date: 2002-06-09 Member: 741Members
<div class="IPBDescription">thoughts please!</div> Hello,
I am re designing a whole hive section on ns_colony and i want everyones thoughts about what could be possibly the best hive design, some features i will be looking for is.
1 - lighting
2 - Hive size
3 - Possible layout design for room
4 - Amount of enterances to that Hive
5 - And maybe ambience
Thanks all, Hopefully i will get a few ideas and make it into a hive <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I am re designing a whole hive section on ns_colony and i want everyones thoughts about what could be possibly the best hive design, some features i will be looking for is.
1 - lighting
2 - Hive size
3 - Possible layout design for room
4 - Amount of enterances to that Hive
5 - And maybe ambience
Thanks all, Hopefully i will get a few ideas and make it into a hive <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
1st thing: hives should allways be tight. imagine you were a spore (dunno how the ns team explains the hiveplacement or the first born hive...) where would you evolve to the hive? it would be a safe locations that is warm and maybe with some water.
I lerned one thing by just creatin three different hives: if the hive is narrow as hell the skulks will get a big advantage and can easily take down some heavy armors. this makes sense because aliens should feel safe at the hive locations, on the other side the marines like it to fight hard to destroy a hive (at least I like that <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> ).
lightning: some kind of organic fluorescent light. thought about glowing mushrooms I liked in the ps2 game timesplitters 2. dont rip this idea <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo--> ! maybe we should take a closer look on some animals that live in the deep seas. fluorescent light is a natural thing.
entrances: 2. or maybe 1. not more. I mean 1 or 2 passable for marines, of cause you should add some airducts or pipes that lead out of the hiveroom. the entrances should NEVER be facing each other with the hive in the middle! some examples for bad entrances: maintainance hive on eclipse, where the hiveroom is a shooting gallery when the marines attack from the horseshoe side. wastehandling on tanith. crossfire!
you should also make shure that about 50% of the respawn points are covert. when you spawn you wont be able to move for one or two seconds, which is enough to be killed. so chosse the entrances , that aliens easily can get out but marines hardly come in <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
ambience: put some interessting sounds in there. you could mix mechanical and organic sounds to underline that the infested area once was human territory.
I saw so many maps and no map seemed to have trouble with good looking hives (besides "funmaps") and this is really cool. even if the map is not too good, hives often look great. every mapper seems to have a special feeling for the most important locations on the maps. and mapping a hive is allways fun ^^
Hive size - Cramped for marine movements but not for aliens. Big upper arches and ceiling room. Defintely a VERY textured and intricate floor - like feedwater the investation is so intense, marines have very little building space.
Entrances to hive - Two door related entrances, 1 vent. all entrances should have no way of seeing hive from outside the room itself. For vents they should probably come over the room and drop straight down so no one can lerk or jp safe in the vent.
Entrances: At least two main entrances into the hive. You know how hard port and subspace hive are to reclaim on ns_nancy? That's what happens when there's only one entrance. Have you heard strategies for ns_hera? Despite the double-node in holoroom, it's reccomended that marines do NOT relocated there (taking it and defending it maybe, but not relocating)... and this is not just because processing is so good. It's because there are so many ways to get into that room! Aliens like lots of vents leading to a place, lots of entrances. Lots of cover too. So, for the perfect hive, I'd say two Onos-Friendly entrances, and perhaps two vents. ns_caged has a good example of this layout, with (iirc) the ventilation hive. Two main entrances (granted, one has to be welded to get through, and the other could be sealed by an enterprizing gorge) and then two vents right in the hive room, and two more by the entrances a little further out. Aliens love this hive, and regularly cheer when they start there.
Hive positioning: Specifically, you should not be able to see the hive itself from the entrances to the hive room. It should be an experience where the marine is walking around, turns a corner, and BAM! There's the hive. A sudden dramatic thing, as opposed to being able to see it from a distance. Again, ns_caged does this fairly well, but it isn't the only one. Nancy tried, but port hive can be seen from the jetpack friendly vent on the other side of the room.
On the other hand, I'm of the opinion that the hive ROOM size can be as large as you wish, just so long as the hive itself is tucked away and hidden in a TINY little area, good for defense. Again, I'm thinking of ns_caged and it's ventilation hive, and to a lesser extent, generator.
Also, use lots of infestation in the hive room... make the room look cave-like, jungle-like, although showing bits of tech underneath is also good. I like it when there's a nice bit of partial infestation (the thickness of infestation you tend to see on some custom maps in the hive itself) outside the hive, leading up to it, and then the hive itself is really really messed up. Gunk everywhere, piles of it, slopes made of it, all over the place. The infestation can help hide the hive as well...
Lighting should be middling dark. Not so dark as to make it difficult to see (aliens don't even get a flashlight unless they evolve enhanced sight, remember!) but creepy. Think ns_eclipse, computer core has the best lighting for a hive I've seen, in my opinion. Cargo hive on ns_nothing, for it's imbalances, also has decent lighting, but that's less an artifact of light and more an artifact of texturing. Dark colored textures made the room feel darker than it really was. Same went for the entire map, in fact, except for power silo, which felt brightly lit, especially in comparison to everything else.
only the jetpack destroys all the good ideas with its ability to make a player as fast as an lerk and gives him as much firepower as an heavy marine.
alien movement´s are unpredictable while marines have to take routes that are "useable for humans". some should think about changing the jp to something less powerful, maybe the hl jumppack or some kind of gliding wings... dunno...
at least the players have to say "yeah, its really the best spot on the map to place a hive, good job!" and you know your hive is ok <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> thinking about a hive as part of a giant infested area that "lives", the heart of an alien body noone has seen before...
"Camouflage is the nature style to say ´man, you are too weak!´ "
Hive rooms should be medium-sized areas suitable for alien spawning and a giant alien hive structure (the hives have a 256 unit wide, 320 unit high main body). The exit point of the hive should be facing the middle of the room, and marines shouldn't have a clear line of sight to the hive from other rooms. Hive rooms should favor defensive fighting, with short passageways and cover suitable for flanking, turning and enveloping. A significant vertical component gives an advantage to the aliens with their crawling and flying abilities.
There can also be some ground that is unbuildable for marines to make it harder for marines to fortify. When doing this, however, keep in mind that aliens should be able to build at the hive sites. There should be multiple passageways in and out of hive rooms, possibly including ones that link to adjacent hive rooms and are only accessible by aliens. Travel between hive rooms, however, should usually require going partway back to the marine base
Atmosphere:
Depict Alien Infestation - The map's look and feel should gradually change between the marine and alien starting points, becoming more "alien" as players move closer to the hives. This continuum will really help players know where they are, and get them to feel the tension they should as they leave their territory. Choose an artistic style for each side, for example:
Make it as though the jungle-like aliens have somehow transformed their areas of the ship into their natural habitats from their homeworld. A flooded boiler room could be decorated with draped cables and floating debris to simulate a "bog". A hive room could have treelike structures with connecting "branches", formed by fallen transmitters and posts.
Make the marine base completely dry with some dripping water nearby; add puddles of standing water close to the hive rooms with the hive rooms be flooded with waist deep water.
Make the marine side "dead" and the alien parts "living"; keep the marine side quiet (good for marines to hear the alien growls and squeals) then create a massive fan room and generators that drone out voice communication and scare the marines as they get farther away. Have little "ambient movement" on the marine side, then have moving fans, malfunctioning elevators and unexpected gusts of steam erupting from pipes as the marines get closer.
Consider choosing two drastically different colors or lighting schemes and slowly morphing between them as the players travel from one area to the other. Use only ambient lighting and lights coming from fixtures on the marine side, shifting to only ominous texture lights towards the aliens. Try making the marine side technological and controlled, the alien side organic and primal, then see how slowly you can transition between the two.
Taken from <a href='http://www.natural-selection.org/Mapping_Guidelines.html#Alien_Hive_Rooms' target='_blank'>Mapping Guidelines for Natural Selection v1.04</a>. You should have a look. I haven't read most of it but it looks helpful for mappers.
Put the floors on slopes using fungal textures. Make it look like more of the stuff builds up at the edges of the room than in the middle. This not only mimics natural growth, but gives skulks an easier time of climbing the walls and spiraling in toward marines.
Pools of standing water are welcome, as are using illusionary textures on the floor. If done right, this can make it look like the marine is actually having to slog through the stuff. Don't make it deep enough to hide skulks or lerks within, however. One interesting use for this is making a "pile" directly underneath the hive. A marine standing right under the hive shooting up at it looks to be up to his knees or so if he's in the deepest point
People don't like odd angles. Wall crawling aliens don't care. Rotate the floors, ceiling, and walls a little bit by using growth textures, wires, pipes, etc. as build-up. One idea for this is to make it look like a series of pipes along the floor, each one higher than the one beside it. Of course, the actual floor is simply set on an angle to avoid 2.0 skulks from flipping sideways while running along the floor.
An interesting thing I've seen in other games is putting a recessed light fixture in, then putting a semi-transparant texture over top of it, as if the fungus has grown across the ceiling, covering the light, but not thick enough to block it out completely. Doing this suggests you light the rooms in the colors of the texture you put over the light.. so in NS, dim yellow-browns or golds, perhaps with some green.
A fun trick is to put some movement opposite the hive but in front of the marines approach so that their eyes are drawn to the movement first, possibly making it so that they wind up with the hive directly behind them without knowing it the first time.
It also depends on what kind of atmosphere you're going for. Tight, close rooms will promote paranoia and fear. Larger rooms, especially those that have many entrances for skulks and lerks, and various places to hide behind for both teams will promote hard battles. Ideally, each hive should be marine accessible from two separate areas within the hive room. This not only gives attackers more option to attack from, but allows flanking maneuvers by defenders. You can stack this for the kharaa by making the connection between the two attack zones alien accessible only. (ie, vents or large piles of debris with a tunnel going through)
Hive size: Im guessing hive <i>room</i> size, so maybe something that fits the rooms purpose. if there are generators put the hive in a comfortable position next to one of the warm generators; it obscures the view and makes the placement seem... comfortable, for the aliens. If its a water treatment area maybe have the hive "dug in" in a recess on a wall that was there (or was created) maybe behind the water with masses of infestation; perhaps have the hive "sheild" itself from the water by having a infestation above it, parting the water several ways <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo--> .
Layout: Again, go with the room's design. If it's a armory have cracked caches of ammo boxes that are empty and have the infestation growing out of them. If its a crew quarters have beds and trunks strewn throughout the map obscuring marine veiw and movement, while giving skulks the upper hand from simple bed design.
# of Entrances: The number of walk-in ways should be minimal, since it's the marine's only way to get in. If its a mess hall or Engineering bay, have more. The amount of vents can varry. The hive should have atleast 2 nearby vents. Why 2? A marine could sit in one of them and kill skulks easy while a turret farm gaurds the exterior, however, the other vent is free. Also DO NOT have the vents in view of the hive. No one wants another Satalite Command. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Ambience: The room again. If its a hydroponics bay have dead/infested trees with huge amounts of bacterial vines (that you can walk through, gameplay reasons) obscuring veiw at <i>human</i> eye level. Make it loud enough to not hear a skulk aproaching until its too late (pipes depressurizing, and fans, and echos oh my!) basically as alien-friendly as possible. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->