Share Mission Maps You Want Added Here!

[Sakura Tenshi]

Basically what the title says. We spend a lot of time in instanced missions, so it might be nice to see some more diversity to these familiar environments. But for a bit of extra challenge, perhaps we should also figure out how we might best go about building these maps, whether using existing assets or just what assets might be needed for something to be made.

My own big suggestions, and possibly the easiest ones would be more transitioning maps like follows:

 

-Caves, sewers, and tunnels into any types of tech map tiles (such as praetorian power, biological, or normal tech, abandoned tech lab, normal tech lab, etc.) by connecting these with a simple door, it can be used to give a sense of going from an out-of-the-way spot into some hero or villains lair. You could also probably include things like warehouses and offices with 'hidden doors' that transition into those and things like Arachnos, Fifth Column, council, and Longbow bases

 

-another type of map that might be nice to see with a minimal change would be various outdoor maps such as ruined city and the three forest maps sans the war walls. These would greatly increase their flexibility to be many other places in the world. Similarly, perhaps Croatoa outdoor maps without the gold filter.

 

Those are the big ones that come to my mind. Actually have a few more but they'd take longer to post details for.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Sakura Tenshi

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

-Caves, sewers, and tunnels into any types of tech map tiles (such as praetorian power, biological, or normal tech, abandoned tech lab, normal tech lab, etc.) by connecting these with a simple door, it can be used to give a sense of going from an out-of-the-way spot into some hero or villains lair. You could also probably include things like warehouses and offices with 'hidden doors' that transition into those and things like Arachnos, Fifth Column, council, and Longbow bases

There are a few -- a very few; I don't think I've gotten more than two on any given character back on live -- missions against the Council where you're sent tot a warehouse door, and when you zone in, you're in a standard Council tunnel map, with the entry popup talking about how you found the concealed entrance to the Council base. Having the warehouse you searched be explicitly part of the map, with your defeat of the pseudo-boss in the warehouse giving you the clue to where the secret entrance is. Doing this for all the various types of concealed bases would increase immersion.

 

Another thing that you could do is to have non-uniform floors -- you enter a door and it's a standard office map, but when you take the elevators up from the second or third floor, you come out on a lab floor. With multi-floor maps, you could do this with almost any 'special' floor type -- an abandoned office map with a concealed Arachnos base, or a villain's hidden laboratory.

[Sakura Tenshi]

Necroing my own thread a bit, also because I realize I never posted the other half.

 

Some mission maps that would be nice to see which could still probably run on existing assets would be:

-Nemesis Tech Labs/Factories.

We have a Nemesis base thanks to the RWZ arcs, but surprisingly it never really comes up again, and admittedly, the textures and such are limited, so assets might need to be drawn from the Clockwork maps and even the Antikythera mechanism chamber from the Signature Story Arc 2, both of such things would need a slight retexture to match the aesthetics of Nemesis. Also some bits from the older warehouse tilesets could help, mostly the conveyor belts. Otherwise I think this could all be a reskinned Praet Tech tileset making full usage of the bio experiment pods, prisons, and possibly retexturing some of the power sources.

 

-Longbow/Arachnos/Council/Fifth Column/Nemesis/Generic Paramilitary/Science Submarines

I think this could theoretically be pulled off using some of the smallest versions of the Cargo Ship interiors, remove a lot of the cargo and place individual levels of roughly Office height to give more area and floors to explore (separated by elevators/doors) and change up the spawn entrance location using an upside down sewer hatch door. The useage of load doors would be needed since to do the top rooms and give a sense of a rounded space, we could flip a cargo ship map upside down so the rounded portions become the ceilings. (at least the rounded portions we can see). And finally from there it's just filling it up and texturing with the appropriate factional assets and perhaps a few taken from the Frigate interiors. If a 'viewport' were to be included, perhaps a special observatory room(s) (which would need all new map geometries and such) could be made to provide a limited view outside, which could be as simple as a blue-tinted abyss with bubbles floating up past it or as elaborate as a mockup sea floor (though that might need new assets)

 

These last ones would call for new map geometries to be rigged up, and potentially some new texture and object assets.

 

-Council/Fifth Column/Nemesis Airship

Biggest trouble with this one would be that the actual navigable mission space would only be a small portion to something set within a skybox high above the 'generic cityscapes' seen outside of the warwalls. Though it could be simplified by just making a 'cloud layer' floor with glimpses of a distant land texture map below (see Bioshock Infinite for example) or even just open water.

 

-Proper space station

It annoyed me to no end when the Maria Jenkins and Tina MacIntyre missions were redone and Anti-Matter's space station was still just a generic praetorian tech map. This one would hopefully be simpler as it would involve using existing tech maps but the tricky part, would be creating new geometries where you could plausibly look out and see the skybox from the Shivan meteor or Space Island maps. It wouldn't need to be all rooms, just a few key ones that plausibly would be on the outermost points of it. If one were to go allout though, a proper space ship could be done though would likely be done similarly to the Airship suggestion.

 

-Apartment Complex/Hotel Interiors

The biggest issue I can see here would be lag from a lot of small assets, but the basic idea would be to make a few interiors of multiple stories surrounding an open foyer with some off shoot spaces and odd accessible apartment/hotel room. I think the assets are there, we have them in the base editor, but, once more, geometries. Relatedly

 

-Generic Mansion maps

Once more, we have the assets now, it's just a manor of making some mansions feel large (like the Dr. Kane trial) and are not either run down or lead into some weird lab or cave.

 

That's all for now off the top of my head that I can give some elaboration on. Maybe I should see if I could learn to map edit for the team if only to put my money where my mouth is.

[biostem]

I would like to see some residential home maps and/or some sort of shopping mall ones.  Maybe a map that took place inside a large train could be pretty cool, (though incorporating the roof/outside and how to handle falling off could be difficult).

[Sakura Tenshi]

On 1/20/2020 at 2:59 PM, biostem said:

I would like to see some residential home maps and/or some sort of shopping mall ones.  Maybe a map that took place inside a large train could be pretty cool, (though incorporating the roof/outside and how to handle falling off could be difficult).

Well, usually passing train scenery in any videogame is handled via a looping skybox, the train itself is actually still and occasionally you'll have transition points which after the player makes a certain amount of progress. Falling off could be easily handled via 'instant kill zone' if you went beyond a certain point. Now, in City of, you can fly, but even that could still be managed by making the train's passing scenery include a lot of overhanging objects and off-to-the-side elements that the train 'swiftly passes by', so the implication behind that even for fliers, stray too far from the train carelessly and you're smashing into a tree or metal signage. Not sure it could be done, but staying with the train on the outside could just have fly powers gain a back trail regardless of the direct they're facing to imply you're always putting in an effort to keep up with the train.

 

Edit: I apologize for necroing this thread, but I remember reading this and had a bit of an 'aha!' moment.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Sakura Tenshi

[Saiyajinzoningen]

hey um guys what about an underwater map? everyone gets fly, all other travel powers are disabled. for lores sake it could be a Poseidon slays Zeus and floods the ruined galaxy city. heroes and villians unite to um prevent the rest of the word from being underwater? Uh it sounded better in my head lol

[biostem]

2 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

hey um guys what about an underwater map? everyone gets fly, all other travel powers are disabled. for lores sake it could be a Poseidon slays Zeus and floods the ruined galaxy city. heroes and villians unite to um prevent the rest of the word from being underwater? Uh it sounded better in my head lol

I'm not a fan of changing how everyone's travel powers work.  Maybe an underwater base, with clear tubes/windows/portholes so you can see the ocean outside or something, could work.

[Sakura Tenshi]

could coincide with that idea I had for a submarine map set above. Trick would just be making a zone of water around the sub you're supposed to enter. Oh, and now making an outer shell of said submarine.

 

[Saiyajinzoningen]

47 minutes ago, biostem said:

I'm not a fan of changing how everyone's travel powers work.  Maybe an underwater base, with clear tubes/windows/portholes so you can see the ocean outside or something, could work.

there are already stages that render certain travel powers useless. i am not saying they are fun or anything just saying this mechanic already exists in game.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

there are already stages that render certain travel powers useless. i am not saying they are fun or anything just saying this mechanic already exists in game.

I was thinking about how the underwater area is treated in Champions Online, where every travel power is basically translated into some version of "fly".  I'm sure some people like it, but I just dislike that my superspeedster or acrobat is forced out of their travel power and the confusing 3-D map layout, since there's basically no gravity in the way its implemented.  Perhaps if things here were implemented better, then it'd be a superior experience.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

i vaguely remember that from the week i spent in CO. it was bad. wasn't there also like a -movement speed penalty as well? Uh if you need further rationalization um yur speedster isn't fast enough to run on water nor possesses the necessary density to push the water out of the way as they run on the ocean floor (instant water jet pack) lol. map would just be ruined galaxy city with everything having a greenish hue and random bubbles floating up with of course roaming mobs of seafolk. maybe even lusca can make a full appearance

[biostem]

5 minutes ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

i vaguely remember that from the week i spent in CO. it was bad. wasn't there also like a -movement speed penalty as well? Uh if you need further rationalization um yur speedster isn't fast enough to run on water nor possesses the necessary density to push the water out of the way as they run on the ocean floor (instant water jet pack) lol. map would just be ruined galaxy city with everything having a greenish hue and random bubbles floating up with of course roaming mobs of seafolk. maybe even lusca can make a full appearance

It was just very disorienting, and it was easy, (at least for me), to get disoriented.  A lot of the scenery was the same, and there wasn't quite as obvious of an up & down.  *shrugs*  Either way, I'm certainly down for more map types/more variety...

[Sakura Tenshi]

I think the big trick with an underwater area is that it'd need to be less than half the map makeup, long enough for players to go "oh, that's interesting" short enough to avoid getting too annoying, visibility would need to not be obstructed very much no matter how unrealistic (as I recall, that was an issue in CO and made it more disortienting) and keep the area somewhat small and with plenty of notable features to avoid disorientation.

 

But, that's all a bit besides the point.

[Oubliette_Red]

The CoT's floating stronghold used to be available in AE under Unique maps. This is the same map on CoV side Mage-Killer Zuhkara's 'Stop the Ceremony' mission in 'The Circle's Plot' story arc.

If you've never come across it, it's a large CoT map floating in a big black void. The main issue with the map is that if you fall off (or jump... <.<  ) you incur an insane amount of damage. (Almost 45 mil).

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[Troo]

23 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

you incur an insane amount of damage.

Oooo that sounds like a badge to me.  = )

[Oubliette_Red]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

Oooo that sounds like a badge to me.  = )

I've run that mission on live and it doesn't have the same bug, only occurred in AE.

[Aberrant]

On 2/13/2020 at 1:14 AM, Oubliette_Red said:

The CoT's floating stronghold used to be available in AE under Unique maps. This is the same map on CoV side Mage-Killer Zuhkara's 'Stop the Ceremony' mission in 'The Circle's Plat' story arc.

If you've never come across it, it's a large CoT map floating in a big black void. The main issue with the map is that if you fall off (or jump... <.<  ) you incur an insane amount of damage. (Almost 45 mil).

 

I hope that map gets added back into AE at some point, it's really cool.

[Greycat]

I think maps, I end up thinking AE and what I'd like. But yeah, more "neighborhoods" that aren't city blocks - more or fewer houses, parks, one by the water, one with a graveyard nearby (just for october mission fun,) that sort of thing.

 

Growing up in Milwaukee, we had the Domes - basically giant greenhouses that (IIRC) were open all year. Not only would it not be out of place in a city (stop nature-based enemies, not just DE, from creating a stronghold, etc.) but AE-wise it would find use as a "space colony's greenhouse" or someplace in a desert, that sort of thing. (And if they wanted to use that geodesic dome and put other things, like a neighborhood or lab under it, well... more environments!)

 

In no small part because *I'd love to see the Blood of the Black Stream, or at least investigate their lore,* and part of it deals with Gadzul Oil (Egyptian based?) we could introduce new, desert environments. Heck, add a (SMALL!) -recovery to the map. It's hot, it's dry, it'd sap someone's strength... ok, that should probably be "with some reason in a mission," not tied to the map. But hey. Road trip to Ancient Egypt.

 

... heck, with that let's do actual jungle ruins.

 

 

[oedipus_tex]

A mall. 

[Oubliette_Red]

Joined a couple of friends who happened to be playing "on a most unique map", managed to grab a couple of screenshots. Had to lighten it up because the map is in perpetual night.

 

 

 

[Saiyajinzoningen]

to be fair its probably the only oranbega map i like

[0th Power]

I’d like to see a some sort of sports theme map. Baseball field, football, basketball, whatever. Hell even auto racing. 

[Troo]

or a winter sport like hockey or skiing?

[Lazarillo]

On 2/12/2020 at 7:38 PM, Troo said:

Oooo that sounds like a badge to me.  = )

I was under the impression fall damage doesn't count for badge purposes?

 

On topic (maybe), it's not a nonexistent map but I'd love to see the Cavern of Transcendence map added to AE so I didn't have sub in the Bat'zul prison for my Hollows-related story arc.

[0th Power]

10 hours ago, Troo said:

or a winter sport like hockey or skiing?

I guess we have the ski slopes for the Xmas event. But a hockey rink would be cool.