scarykitties on 18/8/2011 at 16:35
So while my current mission is in beta testing, I'm fiddling around in Dromed, experimenting for my next mission which will be a city mission. Can any of you experienced taffers give me any advice in building city missions? Are there any tutorials out there? Good missions to look at?
Is it better to make a big air brush and fill it in with solids for the buildings or to make the streets out of various air brushes with some solids thrown in? From my brief experiments, using a big air brush filled with solids looks easier, but it's probably only a good idea for a plaza because I can go overboard with complicated shapes that I can't really build roofs for. Furthermore, it's nigh-impossible to make streets that change shape and look good with it because the whole ground is shared. It also makes transitions between different interesting areas difficult.
So, suggestions?
Melan on 18/8/2011 at 21:15
With the kind of hardware people have nowadays, it doesn't matter.
Missions to learn stuff / get inspired from? Here are some:
Calendra's Cistern (Method 2, zillions of cool architectural features worth imitating)
Calendra's Legacy (Method 1, is full of advanced techniques which are a bit hard to understand)
A Night in Rocksbourg 1-2 (Method 2)
Thieves' Highway (Method 2)
Augustine's Revenge (more of Method 2, this is a great mission to study since it uses very simple shapes so you don't get lost in miniature details)
Trial by Night (Method 2)
The Tower (Method 2)
Bad Debts (Method 2)
Disorientation (a combination of both)
Unbidden Guest (Method 2)
Prowler of the Dark (Method 1)
The last four are mine.
sNeaksieGarrett on 23/8/2013 at 15:39
I'm looking to build a farm mission, so it's not really a city mission but it will have a large open area. Currently I'm going with one large air brush and filling it in, but I've been wondering if that's a good idea. Based on this thread and (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137029&highlight=city+building) this one I get the sense that either method is valid? That is, going with a bunch of air/solid brushes versus going with a large air brush with solid brushes inside it.
In my first FM, Good Vs Bad, I had grabbed a bunch of square air brushes and smashed them together to make a large outdoor area. I was just wondering if I need to do that at all, or if one large air brush would be fine. I seem to recall many years ago (probably around the time I signed up on these forums) I had tried working on a city mission with a large air brush and it didn't turn out well.
Granted I was using Thief 1's Dromed, but it had a lot of crashing/error issues that cropped up while I was building. I seem to recall having to make sure I saved often to avoid losing work. Back then, that mission was very very large from what I recall. (I've since lost this FM with the big outdoor area.) My farm mission should be smaller, so perhaps I won't run into any issues? Also, I'm using NewDark so things have changed since then.
john9818a on 23/8/2013 at 18:42
I think my LS2 part 2 was my best city mission. I used one large air brush and added rolling ground terrain. Next I added the canal, and from there I placed my buildings. Admittedly at first the buildings were random and plain but as I fleshed out my map the buildings became more specific to what they were i.e. hotel, jail, pub etc.
With the increase of max polys line of sight issues are not really a problem except they might still slow down older PCs. In the same map I flew up to tje top of the bell tower and looked out over the city, and it was tather heavy and laggy even with a 3GHz pc.
Daraan on 23/8/2013 at 18:53
It's not a building tip but I worked on a remake on JOttos building models. Reduced in polys, replaceable textures, mostly(square) dimensions so the textures/objects can be aligned seamlessly with brush builds. I have 2 finished models and the others are on my old broken pc. I think I will continue them in 3-4 weeks. So if you are already starting with building you might want to take a look at his buildings and place them in your map and later replace them with the remake.
sNeaksieGarrett on 23/8/2013 at 20:00
@Daraan: I'm actually not building a city mission (sorry for confusion because the title of this thread says 'building city missions') but was trying to see if tips might apply to what I am building, as well as check to see how others do it in case I did ever want to make a city mission (or for the general benefit of fellow dromed-ers.) I don't actually need any city buildings, but thanks for the suggestion.
What I do need is a farm house, but I was thinking i'd just build it myself with brushes. Brush method will be annoying, but with brush building I can make the house as large or as small as I want. If I use an actual 3d object model for the house, it might not suffice for what I'm wanting. I'm imagining a rather large house with many rooms and a cellar.
Xorak on 24/8/2013 at 00:04
I haven't tested it completely, but I have a suspicion that building large airbrushes and then filling them in with the solid buildings and then carving out the smaller airbrushes inside those solids, does ultimately lead to more cells. So if you're building a massive mission and you're in fear of reaching the cell limit, it may still be wothwhile to carve the mission out of individual airbushes. Not that I've ever done it like that, but just something to keep in mind. Someday I'd like to rebuild a mission by doing it the small airbrush way, and see if there's any substantial change.
Otherwise it probably doesn't matter.
LarryG on 24/8/2013 at 00:55
When I was looking for a large open outside area, I tried both approaches, and was only successful in getting an organic look with a large airbrush filled with HUGE overlapping dodecahedrons, laid down on their sides to give the illusion of a rolling terrain.
Limiting the player's movements without it seeming an unnatural confinement is tricky. I suppose your farm could be fenced, or have stands of trees, or a cliff dropping off which is too far to jump, or a steep mountain, or ... for the boundaries. I have never been a fan of the forest textures on a solid brush. That just feels gimmicky and immersion breaking whenever I play a mission that does that. I want to have a natural looking obstacle which lets me look past it, while still restricting me.
Room brushing such terrain is a bear! It's much easier to room brush when you use the subtractive approach than the additive. But for outside fields, I think that a large open area followed by adding back in solid features selectively is the best choice.
EmperorSteele on 24/8/2013 at 14:31
Ol' MacDonald had a farm, Ee-ei ee-ei ooh! And on that farm he had a thief, ee-ei ee-ei ooh! With a missing missing vase here and a doused torch there, hear a sound, turn around, oops no one's there... Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-ei ee-ei o-*THUNK*
Sorry, what were we talking about?
