Full template maps & building prefabs

[MirceaKitsune]

I don't wanna sound lazy or spoiled by asking this question: I enjoy mapping, and DarkRadiant helps in not making the process all that hard! At the same time though, it is a lengthy and straining process, so I figure knowing this wouldn't hurt either. After all, scripts and prefabs and other contributions are shared throughout the community, so why not map chunks?

 

But yeah: My question was whether any TDM contributors also publish any complete large structures for other mappers to use. By this I mean full buildings (with interiors), playable base landscapes, maybe even whole towns! I'm thinking of generic area templates that mappers can easily add characters to for their story, in case someone doesn't want to create their map from scratch. For instance, a whole town map with all roads and buildings laid out, entities for paths and doors and all other things, just no objectives or stories or characters as you add those yourself.

 

Another problem is that if people abuse such templates, too many missions will end up looking the sane, which would of course get easily boring. This might be helped if perhaps just important pieces could be offered as prefabs... for instance various types of complete buildings, but it's still the player who makes the roads and places each one in each spot.

 

Has anyone ever made and posted such a thing, and what do you think of the idea? This isn't a request thread mind you, unless merely bringing this up inspires anyone to do it... I'm only asking if anyone else's thought of this before. The reason I think it's a fun thought is that some missions have a few really nice areas, which are definitely created by talented mappers... therefore I wonder if bits of maps could be shared in a way that makes them easy to combine with one another, so that other missions can reuse good parts if of course their authors want that.

[jaxa]

Towns as prefabs sounds boring and too lazy.

 

Someone could potentially pick up on this idea and use it to randomly place building prefabs, streets, alleys, sewers, clutter, AI, etc..

 

http://swift-mazes.com/

 

It would be a lot of work to make a randomly generated map without needing so much polish, but the results could be interesting.

[MirceaKitsune]

Randomly generated maps would be nice. Such as a DarkRadiant plugin that could have a list of prefabs for various sizes of buildings, and automatically place each in the right spot. I think I already posted some ideas on that long ago, but in any case that would likely be difficult to do for no guaranteed gain.

[demagogue]

Modeled facades, or facade sections, walls, hallway sections, rooms, and other features are the ideal compromise between ease, aesthetics, and flexibility I think. It worked well for Skyrim.

[Springheel]

Once my modular sets are released in 2.05, you will find it much easier to create city sections, including complete buildings that can be dropped wherever you like.

[MirceaKitsune]

Once my modular sets are released in 2.05, you will find it much easier to create city sections, including complete buildings that can be dropped wherever you like.

 

Oh... that sounds very interesting, and just what I was thinking about! Is there another thread with more info on how that set works, also any screenshots? And thanks again for making more awesome and helpful content

[Destined]

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18527-springheels-modular-building-assets-205/

[MirceaKitsune]

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18527-springheels-modular-building-assets-205/

 

Thank you! Looking very nice, indeed.

[Anderson]

 

http://swift-mazes.com/

 

It would be a lot of work to make a randomly generated map without needing so much polish, but the results could be interesting.

That wasn't ever finished was it? Tels went AWOL.

[nbohr1more]

There's also BloodRayne's automatic map generator for Doom 3:

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/grimm-quest-for-the-gatherers-key/downloads/d3amb-doom-3-automatic-map-builder

[Destined]

There was also another project like this and it appears that it is far from trivial:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/17132-darkmod-mission-randomizer/

The OP there states that he would have needed a team of 2-4 people if he would have wanted to finish it.