Mc Ribwich
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
415
   |
Posted - 2013.11.21 21:53:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hey all this post is basically about an idea I have about how maps can be changed using the orbital artillery that was mentioned at EVE Vegas, during the PC 2.0 talk.
So what is the orbital artillery? The orbital artillery (which I will abbreviate as OA from now on) is a ground to space cannon, or laser thingy, that shoots from the ground up into space to destroy or cripple EVE ships. If you want to see it in action then this trailer, and this trailer show it in action
Now you're probably asking "How will the OA change the map? It shoots into space." Now this is where things get creative.
What I would like to see is EVE spaceships crashing down into the planet you are fighting on and changing them drastically, but before I start to explain how the map is changed I want to explain my idea of how the ships crash into Dust.
Remeber Caldari prime? The ships in space managed to take down the Caldari titan that was sitting in orbit above the planet, which then caused the remains of the ship to crash down on the planet below causing widescreen destruction and chaos. But on the plus side us Dusties got a nice backdrop to look at while we battled on the ground.
If anything I believe we can replicate the same background effect to give the illusion that ships are crashing into dust. Instead of using a 3D render of a EVE ship I suggest that we use a 2D cut out. The reason for this is that creating huge 3D renders of ships will increase the size of Dust substantially (or even a normal sized model that is placed in the skybox) and at the same time will take up too much dev time, having a 2D cut out will work out just fine, just like it did in the battle of Caldari prime.
Now how will the 2D cut out work? Well by simply animating the 2D cut out to look like it is falling from the sky. For instance, to start you could see it coming out of the clouds or sky by slowly fading in, then it becomes fully visible. You see it fall towards the ground in the distance, to the Dust player it looks massive, small parts of it fall off with flames trailing behind it, maybe an explosion or two is animated with the ship and other fireballs streak across the sky.
Then it crashes. Now this is were I talk about how it changes the map.
Depending on what type of map this is things could act differently, for this post I am going to use desert, snow and normal dirt maps as an example.
Lets start with the desert maps. Remember Star Wars episode 2? There's a big battle scene at the end and the clones manage to shoot down a federation starship just as it's trying to take off, doing so causes the ship to plummet to earth and create a massive sandstorm when it crashes into the ground. Because of the amount of sand that is kicked up by the crash both the clones and droids had to keep on fighting in zero visibility during the sandstorm.
Now lets imagine the same thing happening in Dust: The 2D image of the ship crashes into the ground, and when it does so a sandstorm effect is created and engulfs the whole map for a short while that disrupts the TACNET (causing name tags, the HUD and the announcer voice to go offline but not team chat) at the same time. Because of the sand visibility is almost zero making combat difficult and deadly for anyone caught out in the open during that period of time. If this does happen in Dust then I can see teams consolidating and strengthening certain objectives just as the ship begins to fall to earth, so they won't loose any ground during the sandstorm.
If anything sandstorms are possible in Dust as they have been done in other games, The game Spec Ops the Line used sandstorms heavily throughout its story and multiplayer, lets take this level for example, at the start you can see the sand moving towards the player while he is in cover. The sandstorm then engulfs the player as he is in cover making it hard for him to see anything that is not close and forcing him to shoot anything that moves, which produces an interesting fire fight as a result.
Both Dust and Spec Ops were created using the Unreal Engine 3, so if a sandstorm effect was created in Spec Ops then the effect can be copied in Dust.
Dust 514 video maker
Subdreddit EU director and co-director of propaganda
Twitter
|
Mc Ribwich
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
415
|
Posted - 2013.11.21 21:54:00 -
[2] - Quote
Now lets move onto snow levels, when I say snow levels I mean if the map was completely covered in snow with mountains around the map. I can only see this working on snow maps that have mountains around them, however, I do have one more thing that could work on all maps, which I will explain when talking about the normal dirt maps.
Okay so the EVE ship crashes down onto the map just like before, yet this time it does not cause a sandstorm as it is a snow map, instead the sheer force of the crash and the sound from the explosion cause an avalanche, which swallows up a certain point or part of the map forcing players to change tactics.
Now finally for the normal dirt maps. Some maps in Dust won't have anything in the environment that can be used to change the map when an EVE ship crashes down, so in this case we can use parts of the EVE ship to change the map. Back during the battle of Caldari prime there were a lot of debris lying around the map that came from the titan, however you never saw them crash into the ground.
Physical debris from the ships could be crashing down into the map during and after the EVE ship slams into the ground, they could be small sockets that get randomised to fall down in different places and stay there during the rest of the match. If anything the players might have to change their tactics to work around the wreckage that falls onto the map. Falling debris should work on both sand and snow maps too, just imagine it working in conjunction with the sand map, the sand fades and you come out of shelter, only to find that your path to B is obstructed, and the map is changed by the hellfire that is raining down from the sky, all because an EVE ship got shot out of the sky.
Dust 514 video maker
Subdreddit EU director and co-director of propaganda
Twitter
|