Let's decide a map. Brian's

Arvis's


Please decide one to begin. If anyone has any better idea, post it now. Please think of:
design
working on it (does it motivate you, do you like it...)
developing from it (think we will expand from it a complete city)

Original Post:
so as i don't see any project on the 'main co-laboratory grit project' i've decided to try to start it

so what about this idea: start with a random small 500-300 meter square of a city map, model it (lots & road for anyone topick) and when that tiny map is finished, move and design a next maze or something. Maybe this smaller map model will motivate people to fill faster than if we dump a larger map.

so here's something i fast drawed:



and here's the idea after it: think of Brooklyn beach, (hove beach in gta iv)

Small-not very tall building with NY feeling. Two main 4-lane road that converge into 1, a few 2 lane roads with other building. the blocks have alleys etc...



(taking reference from GTA IV, based on new york, but we're just basing on there, this is not a copy of Brooklyn)



does this motivate you to work? please post with whatever is in your mind, we really need to get a project rolling, a solid project with some planning. post your ideas and stuff, and when we have enough we will start modelling the base for anyone to pick the lots and model over them.

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Close off those extra intersections, add a few more around it, replace little white junk with land again and let people go at it with us:

I love the idea of doing a small cropped piece of map, wich can be extended later. However, its clearly the first design you went with, ill give you some tips, the same tips my drawing teacher gives us:

-NEVER go with your first design (as its usually the worst)
-Experiment with shapes, look at real life example (google maps)
-Do thumbnails (fast ideas, to get an idea how it will look, they are like 1/16th of a A4 paper big.
-Randomly placing roads isnt good enough, realy think about how the road should go, think about how the landscape is shaped (height differences etc).


And now some feedback:
-The coastline is liniar, in real life it never happens
-All streets are liniar (sure, a basic streetgrid is like this, but they have a slight bend)

After some more thinking i think this would be awesome. If i have some leftover time, i will try and cook something up myself, too.

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Elaborate more the post, add reference pictures, some words about it...



Thanks for the comment, this fast sketch can be fixed a bit so that it is more natural with no problem.

Designing a big city can be slow/boring/hard. Here i just drawed a small 300m square, we can just model this and then later on when we're finished, think about the city's planning. Or we can just design one big city and model them 500m by 500m. If we're going to design a city we probably need to start talking about theme, what's the city economy based on...

I vote as one of the game's main point is vehicles we could base the city on some motor city, with vehicle industry and highways, dark environment. I dunno how different new york is to detroit, for example, but i don't care much.

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If you want to use this building, feel free:





Sounds like a good project, might give me enough incentive to model again .

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Conqueror of the polygon.

that's nice george but we would really need more than a few buildings we will need complete lot modelling

you don't have any more ideas about the theme/city planning etc?

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I suggest having between the main road a part with grass and trees. Something like what it's in LV.

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those detail depend of the theme of the city we're going to do. probably if this part is brooklyn that detail won't fit much, no?

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I'm not able to get on board for this cropped map at the moment because I cannot see anything exciting nor realistic about it's shape, it just is too square for my imagination to grab hold, but it doesn't mean a little progress on it wouldn't change my motivations

If I did anything from here so far it would be furthering urban which is basically the same thing, already halfway done roads, and much more interesting than the grid with a A in the middle of it (probably just because it's already in a 3d shape). Aside from that, the idea to do a median of trees on a main road was a good idea, from which we could put more roads to it later.

Should probably be doing a tiny little piece of road-only to begin, just like rockstar probably did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URe83jYCOvc

Need to skip some of the flight to see it in the video.

To give an idea of why the yellow and gray map is not exciting me or motivating me, here is something I scrapped a long time ago for similar reasons, though not entirely the same:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1483473/mod.png

still the same, i will work later on the design but could you show any idea of the plans for urban?

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Guys, apart from building a small city, we need to show what the engine can do. So I think having an Aiport is obligatory. A highway can lead to that.

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Ok i added a poll i want to see how we should start this.

remember, lots: you split the terrain in small 90m or so part that can be picked by anyone. They have a road section attached and the modeller can be free to edit it as he wish as long as the boundaries still match with the rest of the city. Maybe finished lots need to be approved by some members to be ingame (maintain quality and whatever)

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Well obviously we first have to do some basic planning about the map. I would say, make first some basic roads and some basic land, such as the basic shape of the island, then assign lots for people to do. It doesn't have to be a "squared cut part of a city" but instead we model one zone, then jump to next zone by deleting some basic land and making the next part of the roads and then the land.

Here is some basic map I drew in some mins, it has some squared lots (which I dont really like) and a highway which leads to other part of island and ends as soon the city part starts (it continues as Las Vegas style road I posted before.


This way we can think about the future of the map while it's in modeling process.

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Kim your idea is a bit of mix of both i guess, design whole city but bring it ingame by zones. but from it i get more questions:

Do we have to care about countryside now? do we start by a city? how do we do lots on the countryside?

imo we should look into city, and when it is more or less started (designed and such) we can look at the countryside. To be honest right now we don't have much on the planes to show, but maybe if we get a boost in plane development we can always jump to some countryside development

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I'd like the idea of make the some small part and continue by making more roads/lots when the small part (letss say like 6 lots) are done.

And yes, better start with the city right now

This I feel the same, I could be pleased with just 2 lots, 2 blocks of road, no more, no less, and focus on just one road between the two blocks.

Do not even need to keep that, see the ghosttown leftovers from gta iii for example.

tut?

or, do more, each of this size and without triangle buildings, different styles, go wild with it, make many, watching the video it seems simple if you already got it?



Is the geometry bad? saw a video it seems to dup faces. Nothing wrong with modeling it all again if you get it to look good enough as concept.

This image is good enough, but I imagine doing 4 or 5 of these would be great to choose from.

Okay, then why don't you people vote so we start best way? we start with a small part of city or by a bigger one? vote!

one day i will look into city generators and see what can we do with them, though i think it may give us a totally boring and cold city

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Voted. And yes, agreed about city generators^ Besides, they can't design any complex architecture I believe, so doing by hand is the best