General > Discussion

+city map: Can you use the elevator?

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TennSeven:
The title pretty much says it all.  I am curious to know if (and how) you can use the elevator in the parking garage on the +city map, or if you have to walk everyone up the stairs.

-TennSeven

H-Hour:
You have to walk everyone up the stairs because the game does not support elevators. I thought about blocking off both elevators, but I left it open in case the game ever implements flying suits.

bayo:
What about adding a broken thing to visually see we can't use it?

H-Hour:
I tend to avoid things like this because I think acknowledging the problem brings more attention to it than quietly ignoring it. We've all played those games where you walk in and the elevator is "out of order", and think "well, how convenient for the map designer!"

My general philosophy is that most people accept the game world and its behavior as-is without too many questions, and good design will seek to minimize the number of times that the player is directly confronted with the unreality of the situation. Right now the game has almost zero interaction with the physical environment, so most players will learn the world as a static world.

Unfortunately, a parking garage presents the problem of how cars get up and down. If I added a ramp (my initial plan) there'd be almost no space for parking, so I chose the elevator route even though it's going to raise questions for some like TennSeven. I'm not sure whether adding an out of order sign would just compound the problem: it would directly confront the player with the unreality of the situation, but this time not just for inquisitive players like TennSeven but for virtually all players. It's hard to measure this, though, because only those who notice a problem will come to the forums. It's hard to say how many never even considered it.

If most people disagree, however, I'm not totally against putting in an out of order sign, or maybe something that indicates the elevator won't move unless it senses the weight of a full car.

bayo:
Some elements of the game world should be movable. For example doors already should be movable, or breakable glaces. But I dont know if it work. I hope we have time to time new players without the knowledge of what the engine can do. Elevator is not a revolution for them (think about HL1, or Doom), thats concepts they know in "similar" games (ok, here there is more constraintes here, but i dont think they know it).

I think, adding this kind of thing with the level design is the gap between a good to a perfect map. Anyway sure it is only a proposal. And it must not look like "artificial", but there is aliens with big guns, a lot of thing should be already broken, or out of power.

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