How to make a warehouse look interesting

[Sir Taffsalot]

What type of things would make a fairly large warehouse look interesting? Obviously it needs more than just lots of rooms with crates. Like the T2 OM Shipping and recieving some of the crates can be opened or are already open revealing what kind of business their owner would deal in eg an inventor, an artist but I don't what it to be exacly like Shipping and recieving so any ideas where I can use the TDM models would be great.

 

Also what kind of rooms would it have besides storage rooms? I'm thinking of a main office, a staff recreational room, anything else?

 

What would the interior look like? The insides of warehouses look dull. They're sole purpose is to store things and nothing else so they're usually quite bland. I'm having a hard time picturing anything but brick walls with crates everywhere and maybe steel going up the walls and across the cieling as support beams. Any tips on how to make it more visually pleasing would be most welcome.

[Melan]

Not all warehouses are completely plain and functional. Victorian and earlier ones had all kinds of complicated facades, beautiful iron girders and so on. They are not just cubical rooms. Do an image search for "brick gothic" and "victorian warehouse" to give you a few ideas.

 

Abandoned and derelict sections. Secret storage spaces. A hidden murder victim. Complicated machinery. Attempts to make the place livelier. Lairs of tramps. A flooded lower level.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Melan

[LordSavage]

I like these:

[Shadowhide]

What type of things would make a fairly large warehouse look interesting?

boobies.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Shadowhide

[Johannes Burock]

boobies.

 

[SiyahParsomen]

thumbs up if you watch it more than once.

[Springheel]

I'm doing a warehouse map myself right now. There are tons of great reference images out there. Doing complicated machinery might be a little tricky, but there are plenty of other ways to make the interior interesting (assuming it needs to be). Mechanical lifts, moving gears, metal girders and walkways, interesting ceiling beams, pipes, creative lighting, etc.

[demagogue]

Yeah you want the pylons & girders, rafters, massive shelves stocked with sacks and crates and equipment. I think it's a good opportunity to do interesting things with the lights, since you can have point light sources hitting the pylons and crates & sacks and they'll cast interesting shadows you can creep through. I think Lord Alan's Factory had a lot of impressive architecture and variety (also in terms of types of warehouse spaces & other kinds of rooms), and still fitting interesting gameplay in it. Also you can have a basic layout like Shipping & Receiving... where the storage facilities are connected by catwalks and connecting hallways upstairs, and there's offices scattered about. Also in S&R, each storage area was owned by different people so was stocked differently (mech equipment, art...) & had a layout for that stuff; it might make your warehouse interesting if you organized it by the kind of stuff it's actually storing.

[Springheel]

It doesn't work for my map, but something that you might consider is opportunities for collapsing containers, like barrels. Could be an interesting trap (I don't think falling objects hurt the player (do they?) but the noise they make would certainly draw attention).

[Shadowhide]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXDo4dL7SU&feature=related

its not even animated

fail

[jaxa]

@LordSavage: I'm seeing Shipping and Receiving in those pics.

 

1. Interior of Building B

2. Waterfront, possible rooftop entrance

3. Building to building connections

 

Let's face it that mission had a lot of cool stuff.

[Sotha]

Sometimes a warehouse is a warehouse: no need to fill it with decorations.

 

Make a simple red brick warehouse but spend extra time setting the lighting to make it interesting. Or lighting + AI placement to make it interesting. Or maybe there are interesting non-standard security measures.

 

See? "Interesting" is not necessarily only looks. Even though I acknowledge that the thread title says "*look* interesting." I want to widen the perspective. Maybe it helps.

[Sir Taffsalot]

Thanks for the replies. There's some good ideas here. I think I might replay S&H from T2 plus the FM Lord Alans Factory and the rather short but sweet TDM FM Too Late for inspiration. It's nice to have an excuse to take a break from mapping and play some classic Thief. Does anyone know of any other Thief FMs in a warehouse / factory setting I could play for inspiration?

[jaxa]

Lord Alan's Factory, although the scale is a bit different.

There's another warehouse T2 FM that I remember looking a lot like S&R but I can't find it, looking through Darkloader now.

 

http://www.ttlg.com/...ouse%20Missions

http://www.interstellarburst.com/index.html#sat

 

Still looking...

 

I think I might replay S&H from T2

 

That'll be $5.99.

Edited January 25, 2012 by jaxa

[Baddcog]

Belboz series has a great warehouse. Tricksters Gem Mine

http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/FM:T2_The_Trickster%27s_Gem_Mine_-_Belboz

 

think it might be Up Shit Creek

[Sir Taffsalot]

Thanks for the links guys. I'll give those FMs a playthrough when I get the chance. There's some nice pics of a Dark Mod FM in jaxa's first post. I hope it gets released eventually.