Hi! Does anybody know any downscaling methods to turn a city in, say, 1/3 of the original? Think of Liberty City in GTA. How did they do it? I can’t think of what to keep for my city and what to throw away when downscaling it.
How I did it:
If the dimensions are 12.000 cubic meters: 12.000 * 1/3 = 12.000 / 3 = 4.000 cubic meters. Now what? Do i keep the important buildings and throw away any unneccesery ones? And what about other areas, like a park? It’s really confusing … :x
I’m not sure what you’re asking. If you’re just scaling the actual measurements down, then you won’t be throwing anything away. Everything will just be smaller (but still proportionate).
It feels weird that you’re asking this. You throw away things you don’t need and leave things you think are important for your game. How can we help you here? Do you need the park? Does it fit your design? If yes, leave it. If not, throw it out. Same for all other locations. It has nothing to do with numbers, only design and technical limitations. Can you populate even 1/3 of the city? Because if not, why even have such a large area?
A small but detailed city is much better than huge but bland one.
What i ask is, keeping the character proportions normal, how can i downscale the rest of the map? Many games are downscaled maps of real life (San Andreas, Boston in AC3) etc. The reason why i want to downscale it is for the game itself. In real life, a trek in this mountain is 4 hours. In game it should be less than an hour. This is why i need it to be smaller. BUT only the terrain should be small. I would be ackward to have character as high as the trees, right? I need methods to do this. Should i use clone buildings to fill in space? And, about the park, if the city is downscaled, tha park should be in part, for the same reason as the trees.
You answered your own question.
I am so close, yet so confused…
If you want the treks to be shorter, how about making the character move faster?
I was about to suggest interdimensional tunnels, like the travelling system in Skyrim but take the one by Broken Toy.
Cross whole map = 1h
Map size = sqrt(4km4km3km*3km) = 12km
Velocity = length/time = 12km/1h = 12 km/h = 43.2 m/s
A human character walking in a RL imitating environement with 12km/h, this is a perma sprint.
Just build it to real size. I don’t understand why you want it scaled down. You’ll start to screw with the physics if you do that.
Liberty City is not an exact replica of New York. It’s a totally different city, just the neighbourhoods and some landmarks are set up to be similarly placed and styled to make it feel like New York.
You make it sound like you already have an exact copy of a city and want to remove parts of it, but you seem to be forgetting the fact that you have to model every single thing. If you had even started modeling a single building you would realize that this was a pretty dumb question to ask.
I’m pretty sure all those games you mentioned had one or more person dedicated to designing the game world to be as interesting as possible, gameplay wise.
So San Andreas was obviously designed with gameplay in mind and no attempt was made for it to be a replica of a real city.
As for Assassins Creed 3 it’s pretty much explained here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KMhpeBZNBWA#!
I’m guessing you’ve watched that video seeing as he also refers to 1/3 scale, but you’ve not grasped the concept. They’ve taken the things that define Boston, but reduced the size of the city and the remodeled the filler parts to create the gameplay they want. Basically you keep the landmarks and defining areas of the city you want to recreate, but reduce the scale of it. Scale as in size of the city and not scale of each building. Some cities may even be defined by the location they’re in or the materials or techniques used to build them.
Edit: The “Setting” section here should explain it if I wasn’t able to: Grand Theft Auto IV - Wikipedia
Thank you all for your answers. My gameplay design needs the whole city, but that would be damn difficult, as there are two mountains as well. I guess, with clone buildings i could work it. I liked the idea of the filler parts, and i might use that instead of designing the whole city.
Making a character run fast, say, covering 4km in 1 hour is superficial. Another thing, there are no subways, or anything familiar to the gameplay design. The best things is to design it for the gameplay. The main point was not to have the player bored, if he was asked to go to a distant mountain which is 4 hours in reality. In game, should be much much less. It’s a game after all.
First, I see these questions a lot. So, I think I need to respond (nigh uniformly) with The Law of Conservation of Detail.
If you had infinite resources, you could make an infinitely realistic scene. However, you don’t.
So, scale down, and create the important details. Everything that you include should have some sort of significance to the player’s experience.
Examples: If you include a shop, a minimum requirement is that some NPC mentions it somewhere (helps the guest of your experience with willing suspension of disbelief.) If you include something like a garbage can, it could possibly hold a resource. If you include a building, and it’s not enterable, is it going to be an obstacle for the player to negotiate (e.g. chasing a plot-dependent baddie around it?)
Easy reader version: If it serves no purpose at all, don’t include it. Move on to more important assets.
I pretty much made it out. I scaled the city proportions (the mountain as well, alltogether), and then placed the original roads, and removed the unfitting ones. Next step is to design the buildings (several will be the same obviously) and add landmarks. The trash can, as you stated, will be for aesthetics. Every city has more unneccesery for a game objects. Like rails, trees, flowers etc. Thank you for that link.
No prob.
I agree that there has to be some clutter; a scene wouldn’t look real without it! However, I’ve found the Law of Conservation of Detail to be a useful lens to look through at my game when I start feeling overwhelmed. Half the time I look through it, I see things that need to be cut, and things that should’ve been there in the first place.
The last open-world game I worked on had an environment team of 35 people and approximately 10,000 models (5,000 unique plus LODs).
You may want to consider something 1/35th the size of what you are planning.
I totally agree. Go waaayyy smaller.
1058760–39347–$Incinerator.zip (562 KB)
: 43 m/s ? more 3.33 m/s. 43 m/s is way faster than usan bolt. </Useless post>
1/35th is the size of a neighbourhood…