Futuristic Level Design

I think that Futuristic level design/geometry is extremely interesting, and it has this great mood, that is awesome. I was hoping that we could talk about the topic and post some examples or screen shots that you have made of futuristic constructs or worlds or maps that you have made for source. There are some amazing stuff I have seen.

To be quite honest I don't really know how to start of this topic so I will leave that up to you, but I'm gonna get to work right now and make some examples of what I think some really amazing structures, city's and lighting examples probley in source, maybe in goldsource of futuristic level design.

Btw, futuristic means like approx year 2200 and beyond.

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Aaron's Stuff

/pessimism

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i eat paint

ZOMG FISHY, THAT LEVEL GEOMERTY IS STUNNING, nice find fishy. I love the way how the dirt is all stacked like its windy there or something, where did you get that picture.

Great picture :wink:

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Aaron's Stuff

I'm sure you heard of John Mullins? He made a lot of futurist concept art which served as an inspiration for many sci-fi mods out there.

Personally, I like the "grown", unplanned look of cities and structures that look like they had been changed and constantly modified over a course of hundreds of years. I love "The Fifth Element", for example. Think of Italian villages but replace brickwalls by steel columns and little green windows by flying car garages. I like the dirty, intimate look with some over-sized skyscraper lurking in the distance.

The futuristic map I tried to make for Source has been called too, well, contemporary. But I like this familiar-but-over-scaled look.

I like the theme and everything that has to do with it btw.

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Why snark works.

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

What about a futuristic city with busy streets, stores, high-tech accomodation units and highways set in space or in the sky built around this structure:

poor aaron has Halo3 on the brain, it's a life-threatening condition :frown:

Yak_Fighter said:
poor aaron has Halo3 on the brain, it's a life-threatening condition :frown:

A HALF-life-threatening condition!!

Sorry, I had to...

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

......... :/

Halo 3 broke the records :razz:

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Aaron's Stuff

......... :/

Halo 3 broke the records :razz:

For money spent on advertising. Ya, i believe it.

can't wait for it to come to pc.

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Reality has become a commodity.

Lol, they didn't advertise much I thaugt. Anyway like all halo games (halo 2 just came out on pc) halo 3 will come out on pc in a few years.

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Aaron's Stuff

Lol, they didn't advertise much I thaugt. Anyway like all halo games (halo 2 just came out on pc) halo 3 will come out on pc in a few years.

Most likely sooner since Microsoft wont be waiting for an API or OS launch.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Bungie left Microsoft btw. which I think is good, but bungie said they will continue to develop games for Microsoft platforms.

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Aaron's Stuff

......... :/

Halo 3 broke the records :razz:

Yeah records that have nothing to do with how good of a game it is...Halo 3 (and all my gamer friends will agree with what im about to say...) its just halo 2 with prettier graphics and more weapons/vehicles crammed into it. Nothings really changed.

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Posting And You

I have to say your obsession with the Halo trilogy is annoying me too. It gets way more recognition than it deserves. I had to hear about the success of Halo 3's launch on the news and every element of the media on TV just seems to endorse it.

Yes, the gameplay is good but it is too simple for those of us who are smart enough to be able to play games on PC. From what I hear about Bioshock, it seems System Shock 2 has been "Halo-ised" for console then re-released for PC but I guess that's for a different post.

..wont be waiting for an API...

API?

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Reality has become a commodity.

I think it means application inerface

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Posting And You

OMG, its just halo 2 with better graphics? Wrong. Half-life 2 is just half-life one with better graphics.

It has the whole new equipment mechanic, saved films, forge, added vehicles, 4 player co-op over live or system link. The closure to an amazing trilogy. Much more.... . Anyway people say halo is mindless, whatever, halo takes skillz to finish on legendary and the pros can activate the skulls to make the game even harder and more interesting

Anyways its a great series, not everybody likes it, there is a massive, massive fanbase for halo and whatever. I didn't bring up halo anyway.

Now back to futuristic level design.

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Aaron's Stuff

? quote:

..wont be waiting for an API...

API?

Application Programming Interface.

It's basically any sort of large suite of coding that can be called upon in outer programs. Sometimes, depending on the suites use, it will be labeled an "engine", such as a Physics engine.

In this case, I was referring to DirectX 10, which is an all around API that allows programs to interface with Windows. I think, in general, the only portion of the API that has significantly changed is the 3D portion. Though, I'm sure it's still riddled with bizarre holes and lacking quality.

Halo 3 added a shield and put like two more plies in enemy AI agent search (and upped the graphics). I doubt they re-wrote the engine for the game as little changed, technically.

Half-Life 2 has a completely different engine, the only portion of which is similar to the previous engine is the vis structure (the reason they chose this archaically rigid and un-dynamic structure is beyond me).

I just want to point out that changing graphics in an engine is one of the simplest things, since the rendering pipeline is pretty secluded. A good example of this is the Chrome engine, by techland. They originally used it with Chrome ... they've recently used it for Call of Juarez. They just progressively updated the engine. (As valve is doing now with source)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Bungie left Microsoft btw. which I think is good, but bungie said they will continue to develop games for Microsoft platforms.

A message of hope. Now Rare should do the same and make Goldeneye 2 on the Wii. I'd be out buying a Wii the same day as they announce it.

Same for Irrational and 2k Games.

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Why snark works.

Amen to those sentiments for GoldenEye :smile: It is still the greatest console game ever created IMO.

Thanks for the detailed answer Crono.
My response to what u said is, does anyone own the rights to OpenGl ("open" implies something) and what would it take to get it up to par with DX10. I know this skews on topic. No one has to answer.

As for futuristic level design. Maybe you could combine old fashion large stone pillars and domes (like a old church) and add high tech elements to that. Like monitors or glass pillars. I don't know how you would do that in Source though.

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Reality has become a commodity.

Open GL is under the GPL (I think) and it's perfectly free to use, but there is a community, and more importantly, a board of members behind it.

What do you mean by "up to par with DX10"? First, I know you mean D3D10, so that isn't what I'm talking about.

Regardless of the graphics API you use, you still have the utmost control over what is going on. As for what the APIs are really used for (drawing coordinates with the GPU, or more generally, updating the GPU), they both do the same thing.

I think what you're thinking of is more like shader effects, in which case, you have to write those on your own anyway (I'm sure DX10 offers so pre-built ones though)

In any case, the real "power" comes from shader programs and not the 3D API. Both 3D APIs do the same thing (one a little more elegantly than the other). The DirectX API has a few things going for it, but much more going against it ... for developers.

I think they implemented some sort of managed batching cue, which is good (though developers should be able to do this on their own). But, again, the API is only supported on two platforms and one OS.

OGL3.0 standard is suppose to be coming out sometime here with hardware and software support. The other thing DX doesn't have going for it is backwards compatibility. The reason why OGL standards take so long is to ensure backwards compatibility with newer implementations.

But as for implying one is better than the other, that just doesn't make much sense. That's like saying an Audi is better than a VW, when they're the same damn thing, they just have a different icings on the cake depending on what you want. (The key note in the analogy is that at a car-performance level, they're the same)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

So what's the reason for less and less OpenGL support from game developers? Is it only because of Microsoft's DX10 marketing?

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Why snark works.

There isn't really any less support than there used to be.

This is a really complicated question to answer because it has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with tech-politics.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Because open gl sucks ass and you cant get all the sweet effects?

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Aaron's Stuff

All you ever display is endless amounts of fanboyism and it's really starting to piss me off.

If you had any idea what any of this stuff did and you were actually able to develop some sort of opinion that wasn't based on marketing strategy there'd be something for you to go on, but that isn't the case and you're just acting like a complete ass.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

LOL, I think he said it to get a rise out of you. Or he's a gluten for punishment. Ether way it's entertaining.

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Reality has become a commodity.

No doubt, but that doesn't excuse the douchebagery.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

RedWood said:
LOL, I think he said it to get a rise out of you. Or he's a gluten for punishment.

In that case, Crono has coeliac disease.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Actually the Open in OpenGL has nothing to do with GPL(licensing wise). OGL Lisencing stuff

I'm under impression that OpenGL is the largest(perhaps the only?) cross platform graphics API out there(I know there's even a version for some mobile phones with Symbian OS and there was something about PS3 supporting some modified OpenGL lib as well, need to check this though).

aaron, just FYI the native Linux version of Doom 3 uses OpenGL and it looks just the same as the native Windows version(it's actually a bit lighter, but I guess that's just because of better memory and process handling in Linux).

And iD Softwares new idTech5-engine will most likely support OpenGL as well as it is meant to be cross platform( source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3161743 ).

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

Yeah, but as far as I know, all those distributions over platforms have seperate licenses (if any). The base "OpenGL Library" that it's all based on ... I don't think that has a license any longer.

OGL is rather underrated and if you ever want to program 3D environments, it's pretty much the easiest one (or use it's extension, GLUT, which is even easier).

Don't all the id engines use OGL for their 3D API?

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

This is a really complicated question to answer because it has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with tech-politics.

I'm quite interested in tech-politics. :smile:

I mean, I have an idea about what's going on but when you post it it's a much more complete summary than I could ever come up with.

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Why snark works.

I'm not sure if I can even explain it, to be honest. I think the best I can do is give a related example of a similar situation.

I've known several people who had internships at Intel this last year and I had a very interesting conversation with one of them (we we're in the same development group for the software engineering capstone, for the CS degree).

Basically, his boss, whom was a technically-minded person claimed that everything must be Microsoft. The company, Intel, has several tools that all these people have to use ... they're Unix based. So, this guy has everyone running Windows with Cygwin instead of just Unix or any flavor of Linux, this further complicates things, because many, many, many things go wrong in these types of set ups.

At one point of discussing switching the OS with his boss, his boss says, "Well, if you can show me that OSX can run all these applications, then we'll switch to that" (It can, by the way). When my friend inquired, "Why not just use Linux, the platform these tools were made for", his boss responds, "Because, Linux is not an Enterprise Platform". (Which isn't true)

I s**t you not.

The upshot of the story is, bosses tell underlings what to use. Underlings, generally, have a better idea of how everything works, bosses get big comfy meetings and shown fancy ads and that's how they make their decision.

There's many other instances of sillyness like this and it is, actually, very rarely a MS vs The World type deal. A really common one is to have higher ups tell engineers HOW to implement something, because they heard about it somewhere.

An example of this is from a graphics company (whom makes graphics software, akin to CAD). Basically, there are two types of computer graphics rendering, segments and polygons. Segments are lines, polygons are shapes. Polygons are easier to use ... in most applications. However, something 2D ... does not need polygons, since no depth information is needed.
Some higher up guys go, "Hey, we're using segments to do our CAD program, we really should use the new, thus better, technology of polygons. Underlings, use polygons". The underlings say, "Are you f**king crazy?". The underlings have to implement it, since the higher ups are thick headed.

So, they implemented it with Polygons ... polygons with 1 side with a start point and end point.

I hope these real world examples give you an idea of where the answer lies. I can only imagine that bosses are wooed by flashy signs and bright colors and big long words like Hydrogenated Per Pixel Population Pipeline x 30. You can even make it catchier H4Px30 ... hmm Hapxeo, sounds like a product line to me.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.