Something to make it dynamic would be switches that can be shot (or elaboratly triggered though some crazy machine) to cause the hexagons to raise and lower. You could even have some come out of the sky and crush players. You could have them fan out and make a spiral platform to a domination weapon after some series of events occur.

Finger has a cool idea too.

something that would be pretty cool, and disorienting, is having a teleport at the edges of the map that circle the player around. You could have "traps" that fling them in directions and such. A "flip" grid on the bottom that would rotate up with a switch, trigger, whatever, revealing the same land mass, but realistic would be really cool. Obviously, launching the player in the process. You could probably get certain paths going (based on force and position, with some testing you'd figure out common spots in the air) and place some obscure blockade that can come up out of the ground or something as such.

It'd probably require the playing feild to be half way between the bottom and top of the map. Having the realistic side on the bottom (upside down) and what you have no on top. You could then have some nicely placed teleporters and enough draw distance to make it looks seemlessly circular. (You could get launched in the air and smack into the floor that is underneath everyone else, get it?)

Or you can completley ignore me.

But those are some suggestions based on what you currently have.

Not too much of a jump from Peter Manson cliffs, really...

I like it sofar... fan of windwaker :smile: What would be cool is to possibly mirror the general architecture here, with an alternate 'realistic' setting. You could then warp from abstract to realistic at certain points of the map and get the sense of an alternate yet parrallel universes.

Exactly how big are these hexagons gunna be?

I suppose I could make it actual water in the way it acts, but I'd
still want it to be the flat blue that you can see in the screenshots.
Better having bodies and whatnot floating around as opposed to sitting
on a solid lump of blue however :smile: HL2 is pretty good at doing large
areas of water, so it shouldn't be a performance issue (particularly if
I'm not using any fancy water effects like refraction and reflection).

It isn't cel shading, at the moment I just have black brushes around
the edges of all the faces. Its not ideal as it bumps up the poly count
when black trimmed textures would do the trick, but it was just last
nights experimentation so nothing was finalised. I'm pretty set on this
theme now I think (its quick and easy - if I feel like something else
as well, I can probably manage) so I'll work on optimising the
technique. Performance should be fine regardless, as even if there are
a lot of world polys on show, the materials used are all very basic.
They just use the unlitgeneric shader, meaning they are just single
pass diffuse maps, without the addtional complexity of even lightmaps,
let alone normal or specular maps.

BlisTer said:
As great as your last-year's entry looked, i dunno if you're gonna achieve the same "wow"-effect (+the fact that it's not new anymore, only the hexagonal bit)

I got a pretty good amount of "wow" when I saw the visual style of the map :shocked:

I'm assuming you are using the cel-shading method? It's hard to tell if the black lines are somehow built into the textures, or if they are actual polygons.
Based on what I have played of the original HL1 map, my major recomendation would be to make the water... actual water :biggrin: I realize, that since this is DM that could be hard to do for the engine, but meh, worth a shot I guess.

i agree with myrk that it looks too simple and HL1 -even with the fact that probably only 10 ppl in the world are using hexagonal grid right now :smile: That technologically new approach will soon be overlooked i think, and ppl will only see the simple shapes and colors.

If you restrict yourself to hexagons in 2D you can only work in terms of pillars -like in those screens- which will always keep it too simple i think, even if you make it impressive in scale and grandeur. As great as your last-year's entry looked, i dunno if you're gonna achieve the same "wow"-effect (+the fact that it's not new anymore, only the hexagonal bit)

Anyway, it seems everyone is going back for their last year's theme so far :smile:

The HL2 alternate reality idea was kinda, for example, remaking a map, but using only hexagonal shapes. But yer, would take a while. Whens the deadline? I haven't even got an idea yet, but I'm sure I can chug out a map quickly when I know my direction.

The fact it removes the comments is my problem - by starting this
thread, the 4 comments that had been made are now deleted. Anyway I
posted my concerns in the suggestions thread, no point discussing them
here I guess.

Initially I was going for something entirely abstract, then I played
around with a beehive kinda thing, but eventually I settled on this
island setting. I think its because I've been playing the Wind Waker
that I've been turned back to this sort of theme :biggrin: I'm not really sure
what you mean about an alternate universe where everything is hexagonal

• you mean like doorways, windows, pillars, etc... are hexagonal? I

guess that could work, but I don't think I'm gonna have too much time
to work on this level before the deadline, and my current approach is
very playful and simplistic. Its like Lego or something - anybody could
do this, its quick and easy, and the creativity isn't at all hampered
by technical ability.

The 3D hexagonal grid idea sounds far too complex in my opinion.
Hexagonal prisms all slot together nicely on a grid, but I don't even
know if a shape exists that comprises wholy of hexagonal sides :biggrin: I
think "that would be crazy" is a fitting summary of that idea! I agree
that this is currently somewhat HL1 style of complexity, but it does
mean I can make it pretty damn huge and still have good performance.
I'll try and make it impressive in scale and grandeur as opposed to
small scale details.

We don't have both... When you post a forum thread it removes comments... I prefer having both, but maybe only comments on final versions so you can see if its worth downloading.

Anyway, your map. Looks cool, but I feel its lacking- not quite there. Maybe your should expand the grid to a 3 dimensional hexangonal grid? That would be crazy. Just looks like its lacking detail and I can't see how much could be added on the current theme, which may be a little too HL1 based.

Also ask yourself- does it have to be an island? It restricts your choices of what you can do considerably. I think maybe a Hexangonal gridded HL2 style level would be interesting, like an alternate universe where everything is hexagonal, but relates to the existing world.