Tips on constructing outdoor environments?

[Strider9820]

So I'm just starting my first map with DR, and I'm wondering if any of you veterans out there could suggest some ways to create convincing outdoor (city) environments. Indoor environments are going well, but I keep getting stuck on my outdoor areas because I don't know where to start. Any and all feedback would be helpful, but I'm most interested in background construction. I want to offer at least some limited roof access in a couple of my outdoor city areas. I'll certainly be looking through some of the FMs people have already done, but I thought I'd ask for some input here at the same time.

 

How does one make a convincing skyline/cityscape while a) avoiding heavy use of the distant city textures, which don't look very good if the player gets too close, and b ) avoiding too much architecture that is merely background, just sitting there reducing performance? I will of course make proper use of visportals, but still... Is it just a matter of balancing the two?

 

Thanks for any input!

Edited August 6, 2010 by Strider9820

[Melan]

There is a thread with City Reference Pictures you can drawn inspiration from and a tutorial on Constructing Large Complex Areas. Read these.

 

In my mind, constructing a good (not necessarily realistic) cityscape means to build "regular irregularity". Old cities before modern urban planning and mass construction were often built over long time periods and had to conform to their environment. That means instead of regular rectangular buildings, an old one would often have a lot of odd angles and outcroppings, ornaments and additions or modifications reflecting different ages. Streets were narrow and sloping in various ways; building space being limited, construction had to make the best of it by using impossible nooks, reaching over the street floor or rising upwards. The layout of streets, instead of gridlike, was a lot more complicated, with courts and dead ends, winding alleys, walled gardens and various nooks and crannies. Easy to hide in and usually rather dark at night. Add to that the industrialisation of the Builders, and some over-urbanisation generated by the former, and you have a city full of decaying machinery, rotting buildings and sinister alleys; something where individual architectural features may be regular, but their sum feels organic and irregular.

 

This is one possible vision of city construction, which has influenced all of my missions so far (for both Thief and TDM), as well as others like Calendra's Cistern and the second mission in No Honour Among Thieves. What is more, building irregularly with a lot of architecture obstructing views and breaking up game space can be done in very engine-, and therefore performance-friendly ways if you do it well (be warned, in Return to the City, I didn't), and it can also contribute a lot to gameplay where the environment is not just decoration but something you can interact with - climb up on things, stack crates or use rope arrows to reach some impossible spot, find alternate routes to a target or escape pursuit on the "thieves highway".

Edited August 6, 2010 by Melan

[Fidcal]

I would try to make the streets really narrow and tall with overhanging upper floors that jut out and avoid not many very short streets. Include many connecting archways through buildings so that completely isolates those areas. This way you'd have narrow corridors that can be well visportalled because there are no big vistas. Make the tall buildings vary between 2 and 4 and even 5 floors (including attics) so that roof height is very variable. By that means the player can move over roofs yet still have higher buildings around to block the view and prevent huge vistas. Generally prevent the player reaching the heighest roofs by having blocking mechanisms of obstructions like railing and roofs that slope too high to climb. You can have two-angle roofs that slope steeply at the top but shallow lower down so the player can climb around the lower parts but not get too high. So you can produce a kind of upper street of roofs that the player can clamber over and see some moderate views without seeing the whole thing. You will probably get an opportunity to have one or two carefully planned big views as eye candy. Remember, visporals can be stacked next to each other and can be horizontal so on those roofs visualize them as a floor in a large building with long gaps that have horizontal visportals in them.

 

 

[EDIT] Set a big grid for the following:

 

If you have a completely blank idea of any street plan try this: Make some simple tall brushes of different heights and lengths and widths all stone and cut the top into an angle so you have a crude roof. Now you have some toys to play with. Arrange them in rows etc to form simple streets. You can experiment to get pleasing arrangements. Keep checking sizes, Use an AI and a window and door for scale. Make sure you don't finish up with 3 floors that are only 6 foot high. As a street layout emerges you can refine the blocks until you are satisfied. Maybe you'll get some new ideas not even thought of.

 

When you have roughly what you want then you might dmap it and run around to get the feel of it. You might spot a good place to climb but its a bit too high so consider lowering it. You can noclip to places to check out roof area and you will find fun routes for the player which can be consolidated later.

 

Obviously as it gets more and more established you can begin to work on specific areas and buildings and add more and more detail. Perhaps you will visualize one building as a tavern and another as city watch station etc.

 

Keep in mind what if any or how much of these buildings you want to hollow out and make possible to enter. It does not have to be the whole building. Maybe the player can lower himself by a rope into a locked bedroom and no further.

 

Have fun and see what you come up with.

[Baddcog]

Those guys covered it pretty well.

 

I'll add that making buildings 'facades' and not entire buildings is a good start.

 

If you start doing entire buildings (all sides) then you get into 'grid' streets', large areas, stuff that's very hard to optimize.

instead build fronts and partial sides of buildings and cram them together so the player can't go all the way around.

 

Instead of thinking buildings, think canyons. The areas between them. You don't want an open huge cityscape, you want tunnels that have moon/stars sky roofs.

 

And like Fidcal said, having an arch way going under/through buildings is a great way to visportal. And do the opposite for roofs you can cross from one 'canyon' to the next. 2 tall buildings with a short roof (inverted archway) for the player to cross over from one street to the next

[Strider9820]

Wow, thanks for the swift and quite insightful replies. I did read the article on constructing large areas, but it dealt mostly with lighting and visportals rather than the art of creating a decent facade for your larger city environments. I'm off to build a city then. Will report back with results, and perhaps some images

[Sotha]

Your first map, accessible rooftops.. hm..

Just try NOT to make too ambitious map, it easier and better to start small. It is rather tricky to do accessible rooftops while maintaining the city-around-you illusion.

 

You could add some prop toy buildings to your skybox prefab to create an illusion of distant towers. Check the "skybox tutorial" in the wiki. You'll only need the end part of it and apply the things you learn to your skybox prefab.

 

Thats all I'd like to add to the good comments given by others. I hope this helps!

Best of luck.

And remember: if in doubt ask for help. We have a really nice and helpful community here!

[Strider9820]

Thanks again. A quick question though -- I'm messing around with patches right now, and I can't get bevels to create on the right dimension. Specifically, I want to bevel the corner of a building, and instead of creating a curved corner, it just creates a long piece that curves at either top or bottom, depending which view I have selected in the grid. What am I doing wrong?

[Fidcal]

You're not doing anything wrong. Unlike plain patches, bevels are always created in one orientation at the moment so:

 

First create your brush.

Rotate it (I forget which way! Try it - there are only three ways)

Create your bevel

Rotate the bevel back the opposite way to what you created the bevel.

[Melan]

Also, if the visible surface of the bevel faces the wrong side, you can invert it with Ctrl+I.

[Strider9820]

Ah, I see. I thought there was some setting or action required to reorient which way it would be created. Heh -- I was reading through the patch tutorial and going, "What am I missing??" I didn't realize the rotation needed to happen before the "create bevel" step. Thanks!

[Baddcog]

Yeah, a slight pain. I always create it, then rotate and resize. Will be nice when they work properly.

But then I usually just clone an existing one a resize anyway, sso I ond't deal with that first step too often.

[Fidcal]

To be honest that is what I do too because often you later drag it somewhere and resize it precisely anyway. I just drag out a brush guessing sideways and make it a bevel of roughly the proportions then rotate if necessary and resize.

[Strider9820]

Another newbie question here --

 

How do you round corners with patches? For example, if I have two bevels meeting each other from different directions, what do I do to make it look nice?

Edited August 11, 2010 by Strider9820

[Fidcal]

Press V for vertex mode then you can move individual vertices. Drag them to the same points on a line 45 degrees from the corner.

[Strider9820]

Oh. Right. Well don't I feel silly...