How Big Are The Maps?

[Stevo IRL]

Originally Posted by acosmo

hopefully indar is only a test continent then

Hope so cause it seems a bit blandish.

[Quantumplation]

That map seems misleadingly oversimplified. The terrain looks far more varied and hand-crafted in these screenshots:

Here, and
Here, and
Here.

Also keep in mind, it looks like almost every screenshot we've gotten is from the area depicted by that third picture (base sitting between some craggy mountains), so the amount of variety from that one location is very promising.

[Stevo IRL]

Originally Posted by Quantumplation

That map seems misleadingly oversimplified. The terrain looks far more varied and hand-crafted in these screenshots:

Here, and
Here, and
Here.

Also keep in mind, it looks like almost every screenshot we've gotten is from the area depicted by that third picture (base sitting between some craggy mountains), so the amount of variety from that one location is very promising.

This for me is the most encourage SS.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/m...5ab0f19883.jpg

Looks like there could be small hubs near crossroads.

[Ailos]

Caspian border is one of the largest ever maps for the Battlefield series. MW and BF fanboys will have a meltdown if they step foot on even the smallest of PS2's continents.

As far as size goes, I wouldn't be worried about it too much. I think from the Firefly's comparison picture, TD2U should be the next realistic approach (since that game also HAS to use at least semi-realistic sizes because it's a realistic driving sim). But it being so much larger in appearance could probably be primarily attributed to the fact that the whole point of the game is to drive FAST. From point A to point B on roads. While PS2 will have roads, nobody says we need ever follow them. So even though the continent is smaller it'll feel a lot bigger simply because there is meaningful real estate spaced closer together. Whereas in PS1 batllefronts moved 200-600 meters at a time (from one bridge to the next, or from one cliff to the next), battlefronts in BF2/3 move only 10-20 meters at a time (from one building to the next). I would anticipate PS2's frontlines to behave closer to their BF3 counterparts.

[DviddLeff]

PS had most map sizes of 8x8 with cyssor 12x12 or so I thought?

[Levente]

Originally Posted by Ailos

Caspian border is one of the largest ever maps for the Battlefield series. MW and BF fanboys will have a meltdown if they step foot on even the smallest of PS2's continents.

As far as size goes, I wouldn't be worried about it too much. I think from the Firefly's comparison picture, TD2U should be the next realistic approach (since that game also HAS to use at least semi-realistic sizes because it's a realistic driving sim). But it being so much larger in appearance could probably be primarily attributed to the fact that the whole point of the game is to drive FAST. From point A to point B on roads. While PS2 will have roads, nobody says we need ever follow them. So even though the continent is smaller it'll feel a lot bigger simply because there is meaningful real estate spaced closer together. Whereas in PS1 batllefronts moved 200-600 meters at a time (from one bridge to the next, or from one cliff to the next), battlefronts in BF2/3 move only 10-20 meters at a time (from one building to the next). I would anticipate PS2's frontlines to behave closer to their BF3 counterparts.

Caspian border is one of the smallest in bf history my friend. El Alamein is still the biggest map in BF

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Stevo IRL

Well I do hope they have taken some real world inspirations when designing some of the layouts for the maps. Aesthetics are definitely going to be very different (we'v seen a very Red Faction inspired Cont already) but I would be somewhat disappointed if the layout of routes to bases was a simple node based system where every road was pretty much a straight path. I think this is the harder thing for designers to account for because in other large scale games you could just say "Well this is a straight road but we ll have it run through a small village that will act as a cross roads of some sort" thus giving some form of variation of the landscape while travelling.

At the end of the day you'd want "artificially" create hot spots that may not be player capture able but still hold strategic importance though in PS1 it always seemed to equate to "a bridge". Even if it was something small as a small mining village with two to three buildings next to a road it would add so much in terms of adding atmosphere to the maps but also adding in subtle strategic objectives.

IIRC, SOE played around with real US Geological Survey data when testing out the PS1 engine and how it calculated the varied topograhy of its game maps. Looking at PS1's maps it looks like they wanted to give them a "realistic" feel (well, most ofthem anyway. Not Cery or the Battle Isles obviously ). I think they did a pretty good job.

Higby has stated that they're hand-crafting each PS2 map to make every square inch unique, contestable land to fight over. There are bases, towers, bunkers, mineshafts, etc all over the map. And not even PS1 has any simple, straight repetitive roads. I highly doubt PS2 will have them since they've said they want to encourage us to fight every where on the cont, not just around bases like much of PS1.

Originally Posted by acosmo

hopefully indar is only a test continent then

Indar is a recreation of Ishundar - a desert cont from PS1. So Indar will look pretty desolate and I doubt it's a "test" map. They have stated there will be multiple biomes in the game so I suspect there will be conts that have forests, swamps, savannahs, and icy tundras just like PS1.

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

PS had most map sizes of 8x8 with cyssor 12x12 or so I thought?

Each square on a PS1 cont map is 400m x 400m (BI's are 200m x 200m). So Cyssor for example is ~ 18 x 16 squares, or about 7.2km x 6.4km in size if you don't include the surrounding water.

Of course, the question becomes, "how long is 1m perceived to be in the gameworld?" In PS1 1m was somewhere about half the length of an actual meter perceptually-speaking. So, if PS2's meters are closer to the real thing (and looking at those amp station screenies I think they are), then PS2's 8km x 8km maps are going to feel much larger than PS1's.

[Skepsiis]

Higby also mentioned including more vertical playgrounds...so the planetside2 continents should hopefully feel more three dimentional, and more densely packed with strategic chokes and points of interest, so therefore bigger although you might realistically be able to fly end to end in an aircraft in less time than a ps1 cont.

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by Ailos

Caspian border is one of the largest ever maps for the Battlefield series. MW and BF fanboys will have a meltdown if they step foot on even the smallest of PS2's continents.

Lol. Most BF2 maps were bigger than Caspian Border. BF3 is small.


I hope the PS2 maps end up being at least the same size as PS1s, hopefully larger. The bigger the better.

[Hamma]

Nice comparison Miir!

[CyclesMcHurtz]

Originally Posted by Quantumplation

That map seems misleadingly oversimplified.

We use the actual terrain data to generate those maps, but we can't include all the details - they just get too "busy" and become unreadable.

[Furret]

I'm starting to get a little tired of all the sterotyping against mw3 and bf3 players. I play mw3 and ps, and i dont have 'meltdowns'. Its a completely different game. Sure, if you said: play team deathmatch on cyssor 6v6, i would quit, but THEY'RE NOT THE SAME TYPE OF GAME.

For all the shit this community gives to small-scale fps gamers, you ought to take a step back and realize they're different games for different people.

Sorry for ranting, but I'm just annoyed that 90% of the planetside community thinks of smaller-scale FPS gamers as unevolved insects with little to no intelligence.

[Vash02]

Originally Posted by Furret

I'm starting to get a little tired of all the sterotyping against mw3 and bf3 players. I play mw3 and ps, and i dont have 'meltdowns'. Its a completely different game. Sure, if you said: play team deathmatch on cyssor 6v6, i would quit, but THEY'RE NOT THE SAME TYPE OF GAME.

For all the shit this community gives to small-scale fps gamers, you ought to take a step back and realize they're different games for different people.

Sorry for ranting, but I'm just annoyed that 90% of the planetside community thinks of smaller-scale FPS gamers as unevolved insects with little to no intelligence.

Someone needs to call pest control, we got another one.

[Hamma]

I think lots of folks are just frustrated with the cookie cutter state of gaming in general and are hoping PlanetSide 2 breaks the mold of the rinse repeat game.

[Quantumplation]

Originally Posted by CyclesMcHurtz

We use the actual terrain data to generate those maps, but we can't include all the details - they just get too "busy" and become unreadable.

Oh, you misunderstand me, When I say misleadingly oversimplified I was referring to this map:


from Miir. His rendition makes it look small, cramped, smooth, and uninteresting (no offense, I'm sure it was a quick recreation, I just don't want other people to get the wrong idea.)