Logical Obstructions

    In other maps it has always been fine to just have no streets that arent needed. I mean, Just have a corner there, block this street with a whole building heh, If the map is big enough you cant really notice and dont feel blocked in.

    When you walk towards the junction a message "where are you going?" pops up, and if you walk a bit more theres a teleport that turns you around and moves you back a bit.

    Also, if there's a crime scene, there could be police tape and some people behind that to block the way.

    RD: Hehe... Interesting suggestions. hehe... Proximity Car Bombs would be sort of strange... but I guess it would be an option. walls of fire/water are sort of dendent upon scenario. Depth perception tricks only work from one perspective... it would be difficult to create that effect that worked with a player that's not on a rail.

    Taylor: The block doesn't HAVE to be shaped that way. But at this point, it's how I'm doing it. Again, the subject is sort of on the topic of urban planning. And many times cities are layed out in grids depending on how they were developed. The other things you mention were mentioned earlier.

    Madcow: A bridge doesn't really work to block-off areas too well... meaning... there would need to be a river or some other obstical inherent in having a bridge to begin with. So it'd be redundant. On the other hand it does work if you're trying to limit the number of paths between areas.

    Rivers themselves have been mentions.

    I didn't think of trains, but that's possible... I guess the player crossing could trigger the coming of a train... but that could get rediculous... but there are other ways to apply it as well.

    I briefly mentioned changes in elevation. So yeah that *could* be an option I guess. But that's not a "Logical Obstruction" very few hills are difficult to overcome... especially in a city enviorment.

    In terms of crowds of people at a "scene" would work kinda, but it would also be an aweful waste of polys unless they're all the same model... which is not very believable.

    Campaignjunkie: "Just putting a building" there doesn't really make sense. There at many intersections to deal with, and putting buildings and garage doors in the way are cop out and box the player in. I've expressed more than once that that is exactly what I'm tyring ot avoid. Perhaps you consider such things acceptible... when working within certain constraints in the case of older engines like HL, it makes sense to do so... but this is more looking forward. Those same cop-outs won't be as acceptible or believable as time progresses because the excuses for having them will no longer be valid.

    JynxDaddy: Same as above.

    Grin: Same idea as before, but yeah, you can do the teleport reverse thing... it's kinda like in Rebel Assault when you fly 'out-of-bounds' and it automatically turns you around. I'm of the opinion that taking control of the player's actions is a last resort to a problem and should be avoided at all costs if possible.

    Thanks for the responses.

    -Dranore

    Have a traffic jam on a road perpendicular to one of the exits, you could have the road running the entire length of the map, effectively solving two of the cutting off problems.

    Also note, in England it's very rare to have cities laid out in 'blocks'. They're pretty much random. Leeds for example has two main roads running vertically in parallel up the town centre, with a couple of roads connecting the two horizontally. Other than that, it's random roads and streets in between the buildings.

    KingNic: Yes, I'm aware that many cities, especially older ones break from a grid... as is the product of being developed overtime without formal planning. I'm going for a different look/feel however.

    Peri: Aahaha... man... they'd never see that coming. But I think that would just make players want to kill themselves so there would be meteors falling all over. hehe...

    -Dranore

    the depth trick could work pretty easily. It might look a bit peculiar when u really stare at it while moving around, but for most players itll just seem like the road goes on way into the distance. The players r kinda on a track (the road)

    It's possible that it might be passable... depending on the situation. I figure I've gotten about all I'll get for my specific situation. So I figured I'd open up the discussion to other areas as well. I guess I'll start it by outlining some scenarios/locations and some of their trappings and make some suggestions for logical obstructions as well as other concerns. Some will have been mentioned before.

    Situations:

    Wartime/Disaster - This has alot of applications. Can literally mean war, riots, martial law, etc. as well as any variety from natural disasters or even alien invasion. As mentioned you can destroy buildings, blockade roads, use crowds of people, you could even make a maze of people concievably, emergency vehicles, military convoys/troops, enemies can create baricades from anything. This is a situation that can apply to any location from terrestrial to interesteller. Allows alot of flexibility and provides alot of plot building tools as well, as such it's used alot in games.

    Locations:

    Nature - Jungles/Forests/Mountains/etc. These locations provide an infinite variety in terms of coming up with things to block a player. On the otherside, it's also extremely unrealistic to uses some of these scenarios in such a way as to limit player movement too much. Nature isn't usually full of dense foliage that's unpassable. Creating small ponds and bushes to hinder a players movements are poor excuses to halting a player's desire to explore. Developers still do this all the time, sadly. Established paths in nature tend to be as direct as possible, except with traversing terrain that requires otherwise. So to belivably control player's actions I think requires alot of care. Players have come to accept that the affore mentioned lame obsticles are in fact obsticles. A silly situation, but again, hardware constraints have created this nesscessity. This thread is more speaking in the theoretical of the nature of games to come. STALKER is a great example of really attempting to treat nature realistically and I applaud them openly for it. The ability to traverse terrain openly and explore without using much in the way of lame obstructions is a fantastic leap forward in terms of game design. That's not to say there aren't situations where you want more control, but I'd argue that Nature isn't the best location to have such events occur.

    Industrial/Factories/Spacestations-ships/Military Facilities/Complexes - This is a very commonly used scenario that allows alot of freedom. Theses sometimes sci-fi locals allow for creation of envioronments that operate under a fictional logic that allows sundry routes and gameflow that seem natural while often seeming logically random. My problem with these locals is that traditionally they aren't laid out in a way that reflects how such facilities would actually be constructed. Usually key areas make sense, but the random factory/machine bits inbetween often would make the place look like it's geometries hub... a very unrealistic structure indeed. They "alliviate" this by including inaccessible doors that infer that your missing out on some massive closet space that isn't worth exploring... or they create a situation where access is controlled in such a way as to keep you from having access within the construct of the plot. This is all well and good, but it doesn't really deal with the fact that structures often time make no real sense in the ways their constructed. Doom3 is a recent title that does alot of this crazy scifi meandering without any realism in terms of how the structure might actually be built. You can make an argument here, as the Mars base in the game is actually farily "filled out" but it's still not a mirror of what such a location would actually be built like, even under those conditions. I think that creating plot devices for prenting access to areas is much better than the bizzare meandering that often exists here. At least infer the spaces exist. Space ships are often treated even worse and are usually just a large mass of inexplicable rooms that have no real "purpose" even within the construct of the game.

    That's all I'll add for now. But feel free to add you own to either of the catagories above or even add more to what I've said. If you start something new, please actually write something about it as opposed to just naming something and moving on. Thanks for the replies.

    -Dranore

    There is something i developed for this exact situation when i stumbled into this problem, it involved two things (which were thoroughly planned but never used due to laziness) Ok first you need to create the player boundaries. What you do is set up some moderately fast traffic around the block, then just on the road you set up a cordon of brushes which bounce the player back if he contacts them, and also triggers a sound of some angry new york cab driver yeeling

    "get off the road assshoooooooole"

    as if he was driving past. Get a few different sounds which can be triggered. Its believable and simple.

    Next up you want to create the illusion of those city streets stretching on for miles. Well what you do is build a very long extended section of the street... far more than you can actually put in performance-wise. Then what you do is figure out the probable angle and position from which the player will be looking down the street when he looks that way. And you stare in that exact direction and take a screenshot of the long roadway in ultra high-res. Then you cut off a major section of the street, and you use the screenshot of the road to cap the street, like an old-fashioned theater backdrop.

    But what you are fighting in this trick is parallax, he is the enemy. Paralax is the visual discrepancy in the movement of scenery or objects relative to the eyes of the viewer. For example, if you are driving down the new york road i was mentioning, and you look out the window, you will see all the objects closest to you appear to move the fastest, the streetlights, etc... whereas the buildings farther back seem to move much less relative to your perspective.

    The way it relates to this is that if you are staring down your faked long street, and you move your player over several feet, you will notice how the buildings which are actually mapped seem to move and change in shape, whereas the background doesnt (a flat surface cannot exhibit parallax motion). I know this all must seem obvious, but trying to battle this effect is NOT. One advisable thing is to set up objects in the foreground and right at the border where the backdrop meets brushes that at least partially blocks the players view.

    BUT! if you put a big object directly in front of the backdrop, it exhibits very strange visual effects. It makes the player be able to tell that the big truck in front of the backdrop is indeed in front of a backdrop simply because when he moves side to side, the streetlight that is supposed to be 50 feet behind the truck seems to have the same parallax motion as the truck...very bad. The farther back you put the backdrop as well, the less relative parallax motion the player will see, but the more polys you will have to draw, this calls for balancing.

    It may seem daunting, but this is an incredibly effective trick if done carefully and properly, the proof is in how many times youve seen this done in movies and not known it.

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