Fascinating level detail, design, and archetecture

[Ombrenuit]

I started to play with the idea of possibly mapping my local art museum for a mission when I started to run into problems I didn't anticipate. Simple things like: what are the average heights of a room? How high should one make a room? Where should one place a door? In a corner? In the middle?

 

This led me to a fascinating website that explains architectural design patterns starting from the distribution of towns to light and decor. What makes a building psychologically pleasing? Here are the answers:

 

http://www.ahartman.com/apl/

[demagogue]

That's an interesting site. I think the general lesson is to just have a reason why you make certain choices over others, which reasons fit into a more general pattern your idea you are working with, so all the features fit together according to that general idea. And then it offers loads of time-tested ideas to start with. I think it's more of a starting place, to get you thinking in terms of patterns and ideas than an "answer" site, per se, but that's more because I've always thought of decorating to be an expression of personal style, informed by good, time-tested sense. (I'm a real sucker for the Home & Garden Channel shows on interior design, actually ... and often try out ideas in dromed).

 

I had problems with the things you were talking about for a long time when I first started using dromed ... I noticed I got a feel for proportions the more I played around with it and I gave myself some simple rules to play with, looking at real world first (doors open from the lesser space into the greater, so from hallways into rooms, except the front door opens in).

 

On proportions, I tend to work in multiples of four and eight. This started from the way textures work in Thief, they tend to divide by 4 and 8, so you want your heights to tend to be some multiple of four; 4 for reliefs, 8 to 10 for small/normal rooms - 8 for the wall and maybe 2 for a border; 12 for larger rooms, relief + wall; etc. And that naturally fed into the way I did horizontal space as well.

 

Then I just sort of figured out my own rules as I went along, and my own sense of style. The tips I read about in magazines and on shows added fuel to my thinking, though. I also just walked around my rooms a lot, in any conceivable way from different angles, as people might actually walk in (thieves running and guards running after them), or just to see how things looked from every angle, so that I placed rugs and furniture and doors in places that made the movement natural to the gameplay and the "look" of it look good from anywhere.

 

One thing to emphasize, as I've been implying, some of the design in a game engine is, in addition to the things that that site focuses on, somewhat uniquely driven by the way gameplay and assets work in the game/engine, such as the way texture space is set or the way a Thief/guards would want to move through a house, etc. The thinking is similar, but some considerations and the "economy" of it can be different. E.g., you don't have to literally worry about a budget and physics in buying/using assets in-game, you only have to worry about it insofar as it looks about right (a peasant would only have about enough money to do this, and the physics generally wouldn't agree with a stone ceiling, but in the margins of fashionable textures and load bearing walls you can push the boundaries in-game more than IRL). But on the other hand, you have to be much more concerned in-game with overusing stock assets (or the work you have to put in to make new assets) and you do have an effective economy for architecture in terms of polygons, etc.

 

Anyway, this site adds a lot more food for thought and considerations that a builder will want to pay attention to. Thanks. Edit: And as I look more into this site, there is a lot of great tips in here. And it is very well organized, almost like a basic, hyperlinked textbook in architecture and design. Really good find.

Edited June 11, 2007 by demagogue