Idea Development

Skaaj Temple

With the background of the arena changing as the Skaaj clans evolved the map will need to subtle portray areas of how the map arena has progressed from a simple ritual area to a fully formed tournament arena, expanded by the empire's architects.

Skaaj sacred trial/temple grounds:

With the first purpose of he arena being a trail grounds for the Skaaj youths to under go there rite of passage from adolescents to full fledged clan warriors, sections of the map need to hint at this showing the player what the arena was used for in ages past.

For the central structure to keep with the trial ground theme, the central focal point with this idea would most likely be a temple or temple grounds see mood board. A second focal point could be an obelisk or a statue erected in the name of there gods. As with most societies the focal point should be big and attract the player to it, as this is where most of the fragging should happen.

The surrounding platforms will be support structures that branch off from the central area and interconnect with each other. Each of the towers will have several levels with the connection to the central point being done through bridges. In the case of the outer structures that are only connected to the centre there will be jumps pads connecting them to the adjacent platforms, these jump pads will only be one way.

Below is a mood board of the architectural style and feel I have been thinking of using for the basis of the level.

A mood board of the architectural style and feel I have been thinking of using for the basis of the level.

 

This basis could be used in conjunction with one of the main goals for this project, the aim is to use pre-existing meshes so I can focus on the design and layout of the environment. The Necris packages could be used to help portray this idea. The team at utmapping have put a great reference page  for the static meshes available with UT3.

Below is a table for the Necris Meshes:

Package	Contents	Assets
NEC_Arches	7	arches (pointed)
NEC_Base2	1	yellow vortex
NEC_Buildings	9	Turk roofs, octagon pillar (actually it's hexagon, but who would question the mesh name? :-))
NEC_Ceilings	5	Turk ceilings (vault)
NEC_Deco	42	babel spires, tree huggers, statues (angels, figures), infection tech, elevators, bulkheads
NEC_Doors	12	door frames, door leaf, tech doors
NEC_Floors	22	stairs, walkways, trims (all one set)
NEC_Lights	11	wall lights, free lights, turk lamps
NEC_Pillars	19	pillars, decorated pillars, tech pillars
NEC_Roofs	8	tiled roofs, trim, broken roofs
NEC_Supports	13	babel spire supports, tech supports
NEC_Trims	67	tons of trims, decorated/plain, grates, Vertebrae stuff, some decos
NEC_Walls	44	walls, bricks (moisture), arch doors, arch walls, armor walls, curved/decorated
NEC_Windows	5	windows, frame, window wall
NEC_Wires	39	bulb pipes, wires, wire connectors

With an idea in place for the general basis of the level the next stage will be to look at the surrounding area, and the setting of the none playable area. At the moment the initial troughs are to set in and around a cliff face/ocean area. However this idea progression will be covered in a separate post.