Re-thinking the "highway" tiles...

[Kieme(ITA)]

Hi all,

I am abusing with thread creation here, but this forum isn't too crowded so I hope there's no problem with that.

I have been thinking about the "highway" concept in CM2x games.

Now, the vanilla idea is having something like 15 Tiles, 10 of which are single tiles, while the other 5 are the same but with different rotation.

So, these 10+5 Tiles are used to represent an in-game highway. You might think that a single tile would be enough, and in fact it would, if you wanted to represent a N-S or E-W highway section, (perfectly straight in game). Problem is, that the original thinking behind the game wants to give map designers the chance to represent other four potential directions, not just E-W but also SE-NW etc. highway sections.

My question: is this necessary? I'd say no.

Pros:

-highways might commonly show straight sections for kilometers (not thinking about USA, even in Italy, which is much smaller is so). So the size of a common CM2x map could include a straight N-S or E-W highway section without being unrealistic for that.

-highways tend to follow a N-S or E-W direction more than not.

-the effective result of a NW- SE highway is not of a great good looking ingame and I know why: modelling in 2d such textures in order to fit each other is a true pain. Also, the highway and in general road "curves" in game are not good looking either because of the limits of actual tile system.

-10+5 Tiles to represent a "slant" SE-NW highway section is a waste of potential resources.

To proof the last sentence, here is an example of completely re-worked Tiles, by modding them, in order to obtain more stuff that could be useful for scenario creation (please note that since I was at it I edited the textures to be 400% the size of originals, since they were only 256 pixels wide)

4 Tiles used to make an airport strip/surface set:

Airports are quite important targets in a modern setting, so I belive these would be represented in game a lot as a setting for potential scenarios so adding this set in game would be quite useful. Not to mention that these Tiles could be used to represent an additional kind of pavement for any situation.

[Kieme(ITA)]

2 Tiles used to make a parking lot set:

In a modern setting CM2x scenarios I can imagine a more common use of parking lots rather than highways, so giving these a couple of Tiles is a must...

[Kieme(ITA)]

And finally a highway, because it has to be there anyway, but taking only N-S and E-W options I had 4 Tiles remaining, and I used them to make two variations:

a darker and cleaner highway (like a recently plopped one) and a lighter, worned version (like an older one), both coming with a tile useful to add a connection to another common asphalt road:

So, in conclusion: I sacrificed the chance to make a "straight" + "slant" highway section in favour of adding:

- "straight" highway new

- "straight" highway worn

- airport strip set

- parking lot set

The above couldn't be a simple mod, since it would not fit actual ingame maps but only newly created ones. Thanks to the new [tagging] system all of this could be possible in a new CM2x game such as CMBS.

What do you think about this matter?

[GhostRider3/3]

Those are freaking awesome looking.. nice job.