Monday, June 30, 2014

New Places to Tread :: Potential Terrain Layout

Concerned less with balance or general symmetry, something I've explored in a hundred variations, making Gears of War style overhead maps where everything piece of cover is mirrored on the other side, I am embarking on a world building adventure. It's sort of a joke, but I mean this in both the literal construction of the space and in creating a permeated narrative, the objects in this environment should should be utterly tied to the fiction in which they exist.

The environment I am looking to create is the shell of a massive well system, one of the stations which feed water to mankind's city-holds. The layout below represents the top layer of the station, the abandoned yards and theoretical landing site. To make this simple, I'll go through the layout left to right.




Even further to the left will be a service elevator and switch-back stairway, connecting the surface with two sections of subterranean complex. This mess of pipes and cascading plant-life connects to the far left pumping station. Outside the pumping station is a concrete lot, empty, but easily filled with loose terrain like crates and abandoned hover-cars. Speaking of hover-cars, directly over the lip of the pump lot is a short dusty bowl, housing a run down hover-car whose roof has been torn and pressed aside by a gnarled, though now lifeless tree. Overlooking the bowl, a billboard, surrounded by walkways, gives shade to the lower part of the field, helping separate the lower, sand area, and the slightly higher ground of the lawn, a largely open dry grass field with a smattering of thorny bushes along the far edges. Descending the hill to the right, a tunnel-like rain cover provides a funnel for firefights, allowing movement through, to the abandoned car, and over, providing a hard-point for any push or defense. The farthest point on the surface is another bowl, this time descending into a riverbank, broken up by one or two chemical or water tanks, giving cover but providing plenty of room for aerial insertion/extraction. 

Chances are, I won't be exploring the lower spaces until the surface is close to completion, but will begin playing with ideas to incorporate later. If anybody has any thoughts on layout or aesthetics, let me know.

Thanks for looking.

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