Terra Nouveau ideas!

dyoano · Post by **dyoano** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:04 am

Hey guys, after trying my hand at a couple of ships, I decided to make a junker city. That's right: not a defense platform, or even a large space station, but a full blown city of "population: 1,000,000" proportions.

However, I'm stuck for ideas. I've gotten to the point where it's hard to make it not look repetitive. Please feed me ideas as to what you would think you'd see in a space-city. Feel free to give me any ideas you want, because i can make sprites for them if the stock ones don't work out. Also, can you guys help me out on adding depth? Thanks!

This is the city so far, around 1/3 done and still lacking refinement in many areas

A close-up on some of the buildings. Note the Sony and Boeing billboards

Right now, I have:

- Reactor Core + refinery + industrial district
- commercial district
- billboards & advertisements
- parking stations with civilian spacecraft
- soccer field (for scale comparison)
- Naval Base + repair station with a fleet of battle-damaged Hestias and Athenas in dry dock
- Galactic Senate building + DNA archives

I have yet to, but will eventually make:

- PD and weapons
- outer ablative armor
- living quarters
- docking station for capital ships
- asteroid mining in the industrial district
- "warp gate" that charges ships w/ deterling that has 0.00 as regen rate
- civilian spacecraft that automatically move around the city in a preset path

please help!

Xynus · Post by **Xynus** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:44 am

can we see a picture?

Post by **Arcalane** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:16 am

Welcome to the City of Lame. Population: this atrocity.

It lacks coherence, and all looks just cobbled together at random. Like some junker city, rather than a legitimate one.

Xynus · Post by **Xynus** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:18 am

i think i agree with arcalane. it just looks like random sections.

AidanAdv · Post by **AidanAdv** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:15 pm

I'm afraid I agree with Arc, it looks randomly thrown together, like you put no thought into what should go where.

Also, I'm interested in acquiring the "city" sprites you created for the ship, they could be useful.

Squishy · Post by **Squishy** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:58 pm

Good ambitious concept. Poorly executed.

Some parts are neat (the cityscape sections and such), but the rest suffer from massive stretching and severed discrepancies of detail between the connecting hulls and the busy industrial/commercial districts.

The general shape is done, but there are many rough edges that require smoothing out.

Start by substituting whole, large, single sections with combinations of normal-sized pieces to maintain an even level of detail across your creation. Doodads, glows and other fancy effects should come later after you've gotten all of this sorted out.

DoubleThink · Post by **DoubleThink** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 1:34 pm

I'd recommend experimenting with section usage in the 'skeleton' of this city. You have a novel concept, but like stated earlier, it looks cobbled together. Try to make it flow.

Slayer0019 · Post by **Slayer0019** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 12:24 am

Well, you took the junker concept to heart.

Replace a lot of the big sections with several smaller ones, pick a color, and get a rough plan before starting to build. Also, what junkers can capture a sun but can't keep their city from looking like it's going to fall apart?

dyoano · Post by **dyoano** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 2:53 am

None of the sections are stretched more than one unit in a direction... the problem is that sections are shrunk. I've been thinking about just simply making bigger custom section pieces to make the city look even, but does BF accept sprites larger than 80x80 or do i have to make several and "paste" them together in SM?

Oh, and... quite honestly... i know the city looks bad. i agree. however, believe me or not, my original WAS to make a junker city. It was supposed to be a massive city made from the hulls of the remaining Earth fleet after Earth's destruction, made in a matter of days out of sheer necessity. To capture this, i had no coherent plan (as i do on my other ships), but rather added whatever i felt like in around 5 or so different sittings of 15 minutes over the course of two weeks. But i'm less than pleased with how its going... it looks rather terrible, even for a junker. :[

Xynus · Post by **Xynus** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 3:46 am

going for junker? may i suggest using some of Kaelis's steampunk sections?

Edit: you can make larger than 80x80 sections but the glow will asplode.

Slayer0019 · Post by **Slayer0019** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 8:44 am

He's right. If you are going to make sections larger than 80x80, all you need to do is turn off additive blending and probably glows.