About "limits" on levels....

[Trek234]

Hi all,

 

I'm curious about the limits on levels. Particularly the size and the amount of "locked" areas.

 

Has anyone played Star Trek Voyager Elite Force? It's very similar to this game in terms of the engine that is used (and the developer actually), but anyway - 95% of the doors on the Voyager ship are locked. I found this to be really limiting in terms of where you can go (basically one door only), limiting on exploration, and kind of annoying when you try every door only to get that annoying chime (no ones home) sound lol.

 

So when you are on levels in JK II, will you find that most doors and/or areas are locked off like that? Or will you have a lot of free rain to go places and explore?

 

Also - about the size of the levels them selves - how open will they typically be, if you're on a planet in like a town? (how often will you be in that kind of environment too by the way?) Like will the town be huge? Or will it be like a large town with lots of people, buildings you can go in, etc?

 

And finally - is there anyway you can control where you go? Like say you have an option to go to planet A for the next level to accomplish X task - or you can choose to go to planet B for the next level to accomplish X task - or just too look around?

 

Thanks!

[thrEEpaGe]

first of all, those doors that are locked are simply locked because the designers are simply pressed for time, and cant include every door in their level...it simply takes too much time...on the actual physical limits of the quake3 engine, i have truly have not had enough experience to comment on this =)

if i research anything ill post it, but thats all i have got for now =)

[Cracken]

There will always be unlockable doors in PC games, for the simple reason of ambivalence. Think about it: if you played a game where there were 60 doors and every single one was unlockable, you'd have a hell of a time trying each and every one and seeing what was inside.

[PraetorJudis]

if you played a game where there were 60 doors and every single one was unlockable, you'd have a hell of a time trying each and every one and seeing what was inside.

Well, if you played a game where there were 60 doors and every single one was unlockable, you'd be playing a CRPG!

[H-street]

I definately agree with the initial poster..

 

 

Elite forces was very confined..

 

 

have all the doors open in some way is an easy way to increase your immersion factor.

 

that is one of the reasons elite forces could be completed in under 8 hours of playing .. you would run down corridors and if the door opened you found the right one.

 

 

and lets be realistic here... 60 doors?

 

more like 10 or 15 doors ( that is a high count).....

 

 

 

i think the game that really raised the bar on this subject was Deus Ex. ( best single player FPS IMHO) They provided you with a fully functional ( mostly) level and it was upto you decide how you wanted to solve it. And yes DX was a bit RPGish but the same style can hold true for any game. Do you kill the guard and go through the front door.. or do you break the window and go through that.

 

 

i guess what it comes downto .. does JO have multiple paths to the same objective or are you locked into running down the corridor.

[Zek]

Who cares? Multiplayer is where it's at.

[Desslock]

Actually, many of the doors are locked because EF was designed around a license that limited what the developers could create. This prevented Raven from creating a lot of 'side-content', so to speak, that would shape the Voyager universe, even if it was the architecture of a crewman's quarters. Its not that anyone would care about it... its the principle of the thing.

[Caster]

I really dont care much if the doors don't open. Frankly, that's realistic. Would you leave your front door unlocked and just let people barge in?

 

Other then that, it's pointless if behind those doors are just other peoples rooms. Likely they'd all look the same.

 

-Caster

[Bowen]

Raven has commented on the fact that the Q3TA engine that's only 10% intact in it's original form. Raven has said that this tweaked engine very few limitation on outdoor environments. You have to remember that everything that we can see has to be coded and as others have pointed out.... that takes time. I'm sure that you'll be happy with JKO. Comparing it EF is really only as fair as comparing it to the system specs that it has. The JKO engine is different from the Q3 engine that EF used; even though there are more similarities with that than Q3.