Thread: Titan Style Games

I was thinking that it would be fun to have a titan style game in which a Capital Class Airship (thanks Naga) attacks a tractionist city. There could be smaller citys on the map which could be captured. They'd provide an additional spawn point and could be moveable by the commander and would help put pressure on the enemy base. The bases could be destructable.Although it'd be a huge project though to model an entire city and make it destructable.....


Another idea is that a city attempts to break through the wall of the anti-tractionists (Can't remember what it was called though) and the city has to be destroyed before it can break through.

Any ideas?

We have thought about things like this but we always come across the same problem. Scale. Just think how big a city must be. Now think how big a wall must be to stop one breaking through.... even allowing for defences we're talking mountains here.

There are other complications to creating moving cities. For example, how could you make a city move in a realistic way? They should leave trenches 100m deep behind them... which I won't say is impossible in CryEngine but its as close to impossible as your going to get. So even if you did get one moving it would leave tracks just like a tank. Bump maps can only do so much I'm afraid.

As for the titan game idea it is a good one, but I'm not sure how some things would work. How would you get from the ground to on board? The other issue is capital ships arnt going to be anything like as slow as a titan in BF2142. They could do around 40 mph I'm guessing, so moving about inside one is going to put massive strain on the netcode.

It's possible thought, just needs a lot of planning!

With the citys tracks they needn't be there perminantly (terrible spelling) they could stay for a little (less then a minute) and then fade. That might take some strain off the engine. With the inside of the city only one floor would really need to modelled in total (Probably the top tier). With boarding the airship prehaps the tractionists shoot it down first (slow leak) and then board and destroy the wreck.

This'd give Green Storm an advantage at the start of the game (more speed and mavuverablilty) and the city would be harder to destroy and would mount heavier guns, that'd give the tractionists too an advantage, so that all in all it'd be pretty balanced. Early game advantage to Green storm, and late to tractionists.

Not sure about the wall though... we could always have a small city... but even that'd be huge.

So how would you stop players getting onto undetailed tiers without using "invisible walls"? I like the idea for the shooting down and boarding though.

The problem with the tracks (as in the trail left behind not as in caterpillar tracks) isn't really the lag but how to physically create them. You can't change Crysis terrain on-the-fly so you couldn't leave the correct size trenches behind. So the tracks would just be a texture on the terrain which is flat. I just suspect it will look terrible when several million tonnes leaves behind a track 5 cms deep. - I might be proved wrong though

Yeah, it'd be making a mockery of the engine not to do something in regards to the tracks.... What if the city moved on a scripted path? Would it be possible to create the terrian then since it would already be part of the map?

With the citys and inaccesible teirs, do the citys have to open? I always imagined them closed in (apart from the top tier and engine room, as well as airship docks but that goes without saying). Couldn't you just block the areas off? Think the "Iron Gator" map from BF2.

I didn't think they were open normally. I always imagined the armoured ones to be closed in though, even on the top tier, I'm not sure how you'd get through that armour perhaps we could have areas which have been blasted open.

I'm not sure we could get the terrain to change in-game even with a pre-scripted path. It's not something that anyone has ever managed to do yet. If someone manages it with a minimal-performance loss then that could work.

Blasted open sounds good, it'd also let us restrict some areas. Another way could be boarding through the airship docks Starwars Battlefront style.

With the shot down capital class, you could have some cool stuff there, like panels or doors which can be blasted open from outside to open more routes of attack for the tractionists. This could prevent stalemating when the greenstorm has massed denfences...*

The most major problem I can see with the capital ship idea is that you'd have people moving around the ship while it's moving... thats a major headache for the physics engine. The only way around it I can see is by having the ship as a normal vehicle with fixed positions until it hits the ground. Then the positions automatically eject you and the interior of the ship becomes available to navigate through. You could also make it a spawn point to simulate the huge crew numbers on board.

You could buy time for people to spawn in by making it so there aren't any natural ways for the Tractionists to board if the Green Storm keep the boarding ramps up (could be opened by a switch on the inside) so the Tractionists would have to blast through the doors. It would hopefully buy the 60 seconds required for a decent defence force to spawn in and to give the old crew time to dig in to repel the boarding.

That sounds like it would work well, but what about the ejected crew, would they be able to open the ship or would they have to wait for someone to spawn in?

That said, we still have the problem of the cities themselves.

When I say eject the crew I mean they'd be ejected out their seats into the nearest open area inside the ship. They could open the doors if they wanted but they'd have to be pretty sure there's no-one outside otherwise they'll be overrun.

What about a scenario where a suburb has got something the Green Storm want on-board? so instead of just bombarding it they land troops on it? We could have the whole top tier open and some of the engine district.