Really I think the atmosphere of the maps is pretty ace, but yeah some giant steam vents, industrial chimneys and more ambient physical atmospherics would be pretty cool. They probably avoided it for gameplay clarity but I think it could add some spice. Like little pockets of ventilation condition.
Those wide open desert concepts have me drooling. Would love to see some sprawling desert but would also like to dive into some canyons too.
Yeah and it’s not just the shape, the fact that it’s just a giant box. It’s the color and the color of the distance fog too. The most unatmospheric, generic grey you can imagine. There is a general lack of contrast between foreground buildings, and the skybox and fog.
This is Dark Communion, which suffers from the same problem. This is maximum graphics quality, ray tracing enabled, brightness turned down. The distance fog color and brightness, and background/skybox is just a terrible design choice. The buildings themselves are awesome, but it’s just the wrong distance fog and background to use, if you wanted to create a way more intense atmosphere:
Ominuous green-glowing gothic castle, but the most out of place and atmosphere destroying skybox. This should be a dark nights sky with clouds on it, possibly with the smoke from the castle melding into the clouds. This strange machinelike sky just looks terrible.
Consignment Yard’s distance fog and skybox is much better:
They’re showing that it’s one of the lower levels of a sprawling multi levelled hive city so I understand they’re choice for skybox but agree it could have a bit more TLC and also be visible a bit more in places.
It is! It looks much better I agree. It could do with some thick billowing plumes of smoke that players have to pass through (which could trigger some VO lines too).
I know what it’s intended to be. It just looks terrible. Given a choice I’d simply decide NOT to portray that part of a hive city because it doesn’t translate all that well to the in-game atmosphere. A view of an open sky just communicates scale and atmosphere much better than that weird machine-like background.
There’s a few maps where it’s done way better, such as consignment yard, and the last area of Chasm Logistratum:
This also shows distance fog color strongly affects the general feel of the level. The bland grey on Dark Communion, and that terrible flat grey-blue machinebox looks abysmal.
Agreed, but I do have to wonder how much overlap there is in who designs these things. Do people who make maps also develop on core mechanics and engine? If not, developing new maps doesn’t have to come at the cost of developing new/better mechanics.
Depends on the studio. Bigger studios will have dedicated designer roles for specialised areas with little to no overlap whereas smaller studios will have dedicated designers who will also overlap and adapt when required.
For FS studio size I think it’s safe to say they will have plenty of overlap on designer roles.
Something as big as havoc will have taken many or all of the designers time in one way or another imo.
VT2 show that they had dedicated map maker. As they were able to make map alongside each content drop.
Same thing most likely apply for DT too.
I don’t know how many people are employed by FS and working on DT right now, but there are 9 level designers and 8 additional level artists listed in the credits from release.
We’re definitely going to get another map for inter-zone void since there is still that missing “get all penances for x map cluster”. Question is when…I’m surprised we didn’t see more of it already. Certainly wasn’t expecting a third map for the Carnival to happen first/at all.
They could be employed as level designers and still help with other design. Things are much more fluid in smaller studios.
Also some people might have worked on it for 6 months then left but they still got a credit. I can’t imagine they have 9 level designers at a given time, unless the designers also do art.
I could be wrong but that’s my hunch.
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