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Star Trek: Odyssey "Time's Razor" WIP Map Design
captainazzarano
Member Posts: 60 Arc User
Hi guys,
I was hoping you could comment on the map design so far and what you think could be better. The reason I've been away from STO is the job that I got last September. Also, I had the crazy idea to create my series as a YouTube 3d animated series with 3D sets in Daz and Blender, voice actors, etc. Basically, I got pissed at how limited the foundry was and how difficult creating custom maps was. The situation, however, has slowly changed, and I'm more confident than I was before that I could successfully tell my stories the way I wanted to tell them.
I have added two custom maps. One is a stock exterior, including a custom interior without transitioning maps. This is the colony map, which includes a fortified, elevated city. The palace, which rises above and looms menacingly above the rest of the colony, is the custom interior. Currently, I removed all the floors I set in order to construct the rooms of the palace. The glass facade seen in the South Courtyard will be added to the 2nd and 3rd Floors.
The second custom map, is the player's secret way into the colony, through a security-code locked sewer door in the colony map. It is a custom interior of the colony's sewer system. What I did was use the water of the existing map terrain as sewage water and designed a channel by staggering platforms to either side. This map is made to be a challenging puzzle for the player, and literally contains a maze. Waypoints are disabled, so the player has no choice but to explore and find a way into the colony. It also contains the evil, menacing native rats, which are ROUSs (See "Princess Bride" for more information).
Bahhhh.... enough info. Here you go!
Elysia Colony Map:
The view from outside.
Bird's Eye of Eugenics Square.
South view from West Park.
North from the Palace Courtyard.
Elysia Sewer Map:
Just north of the main entrance.
Maintenance workers monitor the pump systems.
A fork in the road... with no waypoints, which way do you go?
Why does that look like a warp core? You'll find out...
More shots of the generator room.
The security room and holding bays.
I was hoping you could comment on the map design so far and what you think could be better. The reason I've been away from STO is the job that I got last September. Also, I had the crazy idea to create my series as a YouTube 3d animated series with 3D sets in Daz and Blender, voice actors, etc. Basically, I got pissed at how limited the foundry was and how difficult creating custom maps was. The situation, however, has slowly changed, and I'm more confident than I was before that I could successfully tell my stories the way I wanted to tell them.
I have added two custom maps. One is a stock exterior, including a custom interior without transitioning maps. This is the colony map, which includes a fortified, elevated city. The palace, which rises above and looms menacingly above the rest of the colony, is the custom interior. Currently, I removed all the floors I set in order to construct the rooms of the palace. The glass facade seen in the South Courtyard will be added to the 2nd and 3rd Floors.
The second custom map, is the player's secret way into the colony, through a security-code locked sewer door in the colony map. It is a custom interior of the colony's sewer system. What I did was use the water of the existing map terrain as sewage water and designed a channel by staggering platforms to either side. This map is made to be a challenging puzzle for the player, and literally contains a maze. Waypoints are disabled, so the player has no choice but to explore and find a way into the colony. It also contains the evil, menacing native rats, which are ROUSs (See "Princess Bride" for more information).
Bahhhh.... enough info. Here you go!
Elysia Colony Map:
The view from outside.
Bird's Eye of Eugenics Square.
South view from West Park.
North from the Palace Courtyard.
Elysia Sewer Map:
Just north of the main entrance.
Maintenance workers monitor the pump systems.
A fork in the road... with no waypoints, which way do you go?
Why does that look like a warp core? You'll find out...
More shots of the generator room.
The security room and holding bays.
Post edited by captainazzarano on
0
Comments
I'd recommend breaking up the solid walls and floors by either using different textures for different surfaces (i.e. walls vs. floors) or adding accent details such as columns or wall panels (depending on how close you are to your object limit.
Keep up the great work.
I look forward to the series, care to give any plot teasers?
My character Tsin'xing
Sure. I can't divulge too much, because the big shocker of the episode is who the colonists are and where the planet is. I'll give you the synopsis...
---Act I Begins---
Admiral Rush, whom the player rescued in the pilot episode, gives the player orders to travel into the Delta Volanis cluster to deliver much needed medical and construction supplies to the colonists of Polaris, who are new to colonial life and struggling to survive on the harsh new world they hope to tame. Upon arrival, the player enters orbit and begins hailing the colony. Moments later, a strange disruption occurs in subspace. The ship breaks orbit to investigate and scan the anomaly, noting the similarity of emanating wave patterns to soliton waves, when it gets enveloped by the distortion.
---Teaser End---
The ship and crew emerge to a different time and space, and they're reading an entirely different star system then where they came from. Their presence in this space has somehow strengthened the anomaly, which is now reading a severe buildup and discharge of graviton particles aimed at the nearby planet, the sixth planet in the system. Although long range sensors are offline due to damage, short range sensors are picking up scattered lifesigns on the fifth planet of the system. Closer examination reads high concentrations of ionized particles in a particular area of the planet, but also several structures, or intelligent, advanced design. An away team beams down blind, unable to communicate with the ship in an attempt to evacuate the people to the ship, while the junior officers work on finding a way to reestablish orientation and close the distortion.
---Act I End---
Sorry, that's all I'm willing to divulge, or else I'd have to kill ya!
P.S. I'm not really serious about that last part... well, kinda... :P
New pics of recent progress. Mostly, colony palace interior and exterior shots.... The views nice, but I'd appreciate some more criticism. Currently, about 50 detail left in detail budget. Def, not a lot to work with.
Palace Armory
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Grand Apartment
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Grand Apartment
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Grand Apartment
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Courtroom
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South Courtyard
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I like the bar with the view of outside.
The...classroom? auditorium? Looked kind of sparse
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
I imagine a serious issue is going to be hitting the detail object limit. We really need a higher object limit. The object limit in NW is around 1000, basically twice as much as the one in STO.
I have found myself so incredibly hindered by the low object limit in the past. If you try to create anything more than a very basic interior you burn through objects like nothing. Then it's either a choice between having a small, detailed area, or a large but pretty sparse area.
That being said, I agree that a number of the rooms are a little bit barren. With the courtroom I'd recommend removing the chairs and replacing them with benches. You can get more mileage out of fewer objects that way. Maybe make the courtroom and the armory both a little bit smaller so that it doesn't take as many objects to fill them?
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
So, I finally had enough of this sitting around unfinished, and since I haven't been around and just came back, I decided to finish it. All of the major assets are in place. Right now, I'm actually making Side Quests (secret method, will tell if/when it works when tested), and populating the colony.
This is seriously going to hit the Foundry like a ton of bricks. The size of it overwhelmed me a year ago, and the lack of functions and limits on the number of assets per map, or maps per story, or costumes per story in the foundry made it difficult.
Because of the size of the story, I've made the difficult decision to split this episode into two parts. It is unfortunate, because I don't like doing that. However, the epic nature of the story made it so, that in order to fully tell it as well as I wanted to, and to keep the audience engaged, it is necessary to do so.
So, Time's Razor (Pt. I) will become released in the next few days, as I apply the finishing touches to a project that made me scream at times. This episode, I believe took me over 1000 hours to make. Luckily for me, all of the assets used will be reused in the next episode.