The shape of Indar

[texico]

After seeing the GDC footage, I have to say that the landscape of Indar does look pretty spectacular - I particularly noted the scene with the Vanguards moving through the rocky terrain, beautiful.

However, did anybody else think Indar's shape was a little... dull? It forms roughly a square and doesn't look very natural either, I don't think I've seen any islands that square shape before and it makes it look kind of man-made.

Most of PS1's continents are noteworthy for having really well-designed shapes, if you think of Hossin, Solsar, Amerish, Esamir and Ceryshen.

Imo if you want feedback, I would suggest cutting some terrain out of some sides and adding some at others to give it a more inspired and natural shape around the edges without having to change most of the bulk of the continent


Btw, because I have a pretty bad perception of scale, how big is this continent compared to PS1's continents? Like, is it the size of Ceryshen for example? j/w.

[Bags]

It doesn't matter.

[Warborn]

Here's Indar: http://i.imgur.com/BpXFp.jpg

Here's Ishundar: http://i.imgur.com/9SImA.jpg

It is a travesty that the vaguely round blob was exchanged for a vaguely square blob. I am writing the President this instant.

On a more serious note, what matters is the terrain overall and how it affects the flow of battle. The edges are not such a big deal. All FPS multiplayer maps are squares or rectangles, but that doesn't say anything about how they actually play, does it?

[DviddLeff]

Its fine; as good as any of the PS ones tbh.

[Arrow]

Well seeing that it is a continent and not a island..

[texico]

^^^ Yeah, I saw it in the GDC, the continent is pretty much a square.

It's not a big deal/complaint for me, I was just giving feedback. Shape is still nice and important aesthetically - otherwise, you might as well just have three triangles as the continents

[texico]

Originally Posted by Arrow

Well seeing that it is a continent and not a island..

Originally Posted by texico

around the edges without having to change most of the bulk of the continent


how big is this continent compared to PS1's continents?

I know.

Also, how many continents are square either?

[Malorn]

The issue I have with the shape of Indar was that the faction at the north side of it has a lot of territory around its main warp gate, and a lot of open terrain with which they can use.

The lower two factions looked much more cramped. The TR side looked particularly bad as it appeared to be lots of rough terrain and canyons. That doesn't leave a lot of room for them to take alternate routes or spread out and attack different directions. The southwest looked similar with very little land right around the warpgate.

If an empire did get pushed back to the area around its warpgates I think the empires in the lower left and lower right would have a harder time pushing out due to the terrain and lack of territory to expand into. The Northern faction will have the easiest time - lots of territories, lots of terrain to spread out and take.

I'm not all that impressed with the continental layout of Indar from a tactical perspective. Looks like the factions will have clear advantages depending on which position they are in.

Yet another reason why I believe the warpgate bases need to be randomized and moved around once a month or so. That way each empire gets each position so it doesn't really matter if there's some continent imbalances and they can continue making asymmetrical continents. As long as the continent is asymmetrical, certain positions will be better than others.

Mixing up the empire starting locations every now and then fixes the issue. And gives all empires variety. It's a fantastic idea that I'd love to see them commit to doing.

[texico]

Originally Posted by Warborn

Here's Indar: http://i.imgur.com/BpXFp.jpg

Here's Ishundar: http://i.imgur.com/9SImA.jpg

It is a travesty that the vaguely round blob was exchanged for a vaguely square blob. I am writing the President this instant.

On a more serious note, what matters is the terrain overall and how it affects the flow of battle. The edges are not such a big deal. All FPS multiplayer maps are squares or rectangles, but that doesn't say anything about how they actually play, does it?

It's funny you should use Ishundar, which is the map I think has the worst design of the lot (apart from the battle-islands)

But even then, it's not really a "normal" shape. It's not a triangle, square, pentagon etc. or anything like that.


Definitely this doesn't really have anything to do with Battle, but then neither does the design of weapons or armour, but that's still considered important. It's fine for an FPS "map" to be a square because the point is it's usually a self-contained "piece of land" that the particular arena-style battle is taking place in. But when you design an island, you're essentially trying to make the point that it's a real island/continent, which usually means interesting naturally-looking shapes..

Hey, like I said I'm not complaining as such but offering feedback on what my impression was . But it seems like a pretty silly thing to dismiss, why would you want somebody to look at the island and their first impression be something like "this is a pretty much as square, that seems kind of amateurish"?

[Graywolves]

I'm more interested with what is inside the continent than its overall shape.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by texico

Definitely this doesn't really have anything to do with Battle, but then neither does the design of weapons or armour, but that's still considered important.

Totally ridiculous comparison. Armor and weapons are things you will be constantly looking at and which normal people care about for obvious reasons (aesthetics are important). The outline of a continent on a map is something you'll see briefly and which basically nobody will care about at all as it doesn't mean anything to their actual play experience. What matters is terrain features, not the general shape of the entire continent (barring continents with islands and bridges). You really have picked out something silly to take issue with.

[Shogun]

i think it´s no problem, as long as the other continents have a more natural shape. one cont that looks like a square could actually happen, but if they all look like squares, it´s a little wierd.

[DviddLeff]

Flattened out the image:



As Malorn says the VS in the north have an advantage as they have what appears to be an Amp station in the NW which is far removed from the NC and TR gates. However the VS will have much larger defensive lines to hold compared to the others if they are being pushed back by both empires as the TR and NC gates are in the corners, allowing them to pack in more defenders per territory.

Now it is hard to see any terrain extremes such as canyons and hills clearly that would make ground movement impossible, so its tricky to tell exactly where the overall advantage would lie.

[Grognard]

Could be more "man-made" worse... 3 empires starting on a triangular continent...

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

As Malorn says the VS in the north have an advantage as they have what appears to be an Amp station in the NW which is far removed from the NC and TR gates. However the VS will have much larger defensive lines to hold compared to the others if they are being pushed back by both empires as the TR and NC gates are in the corners, allowing them to pack in more defenders per territory.

Now it is hard to see any terrain extremes such as canyons and hills clearly that would make ground movement impossible, so its tricky to tell exactly where the overall advantage would lie.

I like how they're not mirror images, but the only way to make that reasonably fair is to swap positions of the empires.

There's 6 possible configurations of the 3 empires. If it rotates them once per month on each continent we'll see each configuration 2 months out of the year and all empires get to experience each position with opponents in different places.

Don't see why they wouldn't do this, can't be that much work, lots of balance benefits to the game and would avoid all sorts of "Indar favors the VS" crap or "Indar shits on TR" and that sort of thing.