I've always wanted to try to make a map with multiple levels of gameplay (Skybridge was one attempt at it), but it's hard to figure out how to make it difficult to grief, and allow clean interchange between levels, and etc.

Anyway, while playing with those constraints to come up with a structure, I realized that a parking garage basically has exactly the structure I'm looking for. So I made a map generator to make a giant parking garage structure that fills the map.

So it's an oversized, empty parking garage. It really needs to be populated with voxel cars or tanks or something to make it more interesting, much like the original Urban Tank map.

Also, because it's multi-level, it may play badly, since it may spread people out on separate levels and make it even harder to encounter enemies. Or maybe not, I don't know.

Anyway, if anyone wants to take this and populate it with stuff, please go for it. (I can also regenerate it with different parking space sizes, although there are issues with making them larger, or make other alterations to the generator.)

I don't think it's worth hosting as is, though.

parking_2.jpg -- parking garage ramps
parking_1.jpg -- the levels are staggered so intel and players can spawn on any level (this isn't a view you'd normally get in game)
parking_3.jpg -- the map view

parkkinggarage.vxl

This could be really fun IMHO.

You might actually want to ask someone to host it BEFORE you improve it, so you can get a lot of in-game feedback about how it needs to be improved.

wtf..... its to dank cant see

I like it a map full of cars would be awesome

very interesting, nicely done

i'll get started on a vehicle-filled version tonight

the stalls may have to be resized depending on how the vehicles scale. the height between floors is 8 blocks so trucks should be 7 high and cars around 5 high. i have a feeling more pillars will be needed to buy time against griefing; maybe more frequent the lower the floor?

can the generator place kvx files in random stalls?

my only concern is the file size because it's already at 11MB and vehicles will only make it bigger

looks like fun, is it hosted yet???

We need someone to host this.
Right now.

I agree with Shadow. Get this bad boy on teh interwebz.

the height between floors is 8 blocks so trucks should be 7 high and cars around 5 high

I can change this if more height would help. It's currently five levels and I could reduce it to four, the top level is at 50 and it could be raised, and the floor is 4 thick and could be reduced to 3. So the spacing could be increased to as much as 15 blocks between floor and ceiling. However doing this would require me to rearrange the pillars, so it's not a fully automatic change.

can the generator place kvx files in random stalls?

I have no support for anything like that; I'd have to write a kvx loader, for one thing, which I've never done. I was assuming that placing kvx files from voxed was one thing people seemed happy with, but I could try automating it.

my only concern is the file size because it's already at 11MB and vehicles will only make it bigger

Yeah, I was surprised how slow this was even when run locally. Reducing the number of levels by one would help a little.

If you put in a LOT of cars it would get worse, but putting in only a few probably would be a drop in the bucket.

more pillars ... to buy time against griefing

Because everything is fully interconnected, it should be pretty tricky to grief a large area. You can grief a chunk of floor between pillars pretty easily (although the floor is 4 thick to make this slightly annoying), but hopefully you can't grief an entire level or the whole structure too easily.

@Nothings: I'd reduce the floor thickness to three blocks, so it's not possible to tunnel invisibly through the floors. The floors would still be too thick for single hits with spades to slice through. I'd also make the pillars a few blocks narrower and make more of them (this will up your filesize, which is dependent on exposed voxels, but it'll also cut back the campers and the griefers).

Adding cars would be nice, too. Cars should have chassis that are only one block off the floor, but the trucks could have a two-block clearance to allow people to hide under them, like you could with real vehicles in a real parking garage.

By the way, would you like me to make some vehicle models for you? I'd certainly find the challenge fun.

Sure you can do cars, but lets nail down the size of the spaces before anybody starts that.

I did the four-thick thing intentionally knowing people could make two-tall tunnels inside it. I figure those are so slow people would only use them in short areas (e.g. near intel), which is fine. And it's perilous since someone can easily shoot out the block underneath you and drop you to the next level. Plus I like the idea people can still make three-tall trenches at the surface.

I can definitely do more pillars, I was trying more for realism there (not blocking out too many spaces) but there's no reason to do that. I was hoping that once there's some cars in there that would making camping hard, but I should probably think about that more.

Alright. I personally don't really like three-tall trenches (I prefer the crouch to cover, stand to fire method, myself... no point in a trench that you can't shoot out of) but that's more of a player preference than something inherent in the design. It's also true that tunnels will be underpowered... my primary concern is that you'll give people a leigitmate reason to knock out sections of the floors around intel.

I'll make a few intial cars and trucks at a few different heights now anyways so I have templates later. I'll probably go try truck heights 7, 10, and 13 now. 13 will make for the best-looking ones. Really compared to the player heights the trucks shouldn't be any more than 5 blocks (6 blocks for a tractor-trailer, but those don't usually frequent parking garages), but I think we're going to have to go bigger than that. I might try "real" sizes anyways, but I doubt they'll look particularly good.

I think the "over-sized" look is cool anyway, based on Urban Tank. I'll take a look at changing the map to four levels instead of five to give more vertical space, since that may help the gameplay anyway.

OK. I probably can't make a decent sedan at any less than six-tall anyways, so the more clearance there is the better the vehicles will look. I was able to make a decent pickup only five blocks tall, but that's because they have blocky and distinct shapes.

I have a new idea, I believe 4 levels would litter the map.

You could instead create 3 levels except with each level's floor being 1 block deep with trusses every 2 blocks going across, it would add under level construction and would make the game much more viable and less difficult to play.

One-block-thick floors are a definite no, since a grenade can punch right through them.

Two-block thick floors are a no as well since spades can punch right through them.

Three-block thick floors require more than one spade hit to punch through, and are also thick enough that trenches become viable. Three-block thick floors are too thin for tunneling, though.

Four-block and thicker floors are increasingly tough (although due to the nature of spades, a four-block thick floor isn't much tougher than a three-block thick floor, but a five-block thick floor is definitely tougher than a four-block thick floor) and make tunneling more and more viable. As a plus for thicker floors, due to the nature of the voxel engine used in AoS and voxed, a three-block thick floor is almost exactly the same filesize as a two-block-thick floor, or a four-block thick floor, or a five block thick floor, and so on and so forth.

The idea of horizontal supports doesn't sound so bad... a few could be added just to give the garage an authentic look, but that's Nothings' decision to make.

Anti-griefing an entire floor is simple if you use horizontal supports. The secret is to make it hard to traverse the key areas of support.

Put a grid design hanging underneath each floor, with supports at every intersection. Even if the floor is only two blocks thick, the griefer is no longer able to sit on the "easy" ground-level surface to progress, he must instead work his way down to the grid, and carve up the grid, but in such a way that he doesn't fall off. Since the grid can be suspended high enough that it's hard to reach with spade, falling costs him a lot of time. And since the grid is only one block underneath the main mass of the floor he will have to work twice as hard to make any progress, since one spade hit will only be enough to let him move forward.

For the columns, a similar approach can be used. Instead of solid blocks, which can be traversed in a lazy fashion, the columns are large, with hollow insides and criss-crossing supports going in all directions, like an elaborate spider tower. Besides being difficult even to navigate, falling down from the supports is certain death for the griefer.

Visually speaking, 2x2 columns "look" harder to grief, so they should be used everywhere. This further extends the tedium factor of griefing the elaborate horizontal designs.

Actually, five block floors just take two spade hits to clear (you have to do it in two passes--first get in and dig a three-high trench, then go back and clear the bottom two).

Trusses are an interesting compromise. If the floor were three thick plus occasional trusses, you could still tunnel directly over a truss, but it would be pretty perilous. On the other hand, i'm not sure they're a great anti-griefing solution, since while it requires extra digging, you only have to dig at the truss locations, which are going to be sparser than the floor. An equivalently thick floor would obviously be better anti-grief, so the question is whether you get some extra gameplay out of the trusses.

Supposing four thick floors plus two-high trusses might be a good compromise, let's see how that works. Now it's taking up 6 height units. If we leave 12 blocks of space between levels, that's 4+12+(2+4)+12+(2+4)+12+(2+4) = 3*12+6*3+4 = 36+18+4 = 58 blocks to the top of the top level, which only leaves ~6-high building at the top. Maybe 10 blocks of space between levels, then, which puts the top level at 52 high.

Put a grid design hanging underneath each floor, with supports at every intersection.

Hmm, interesting. I'll take a look at prototyping that so we can test it out.

But I should point out it should be tough to grief an entire floor, since the ramps interconnect all the levels. So you have to grief those, and they're out in the middle of the map so hopefully less inviting.

Nothings, the grid Is kinda what I meant. Like...the floor is 1 or 2 blocks thing with 3 block deep one block wide trusses crossing the entire span that are only 1 or 2 blocks apart, it would also be harder to grief, as theyd have to find the locations of the trusses only and risk falling through.

Also to answer a grenade blowing a hole in the floor, Well It would add a sense of "you're in a f**king car garage d00d" seeing a hole with trosses over crossing would add a realistic effect and make more variety of movement options

Ok, http://silverspaceship.com/aosmap/garage2.zip is a mockup of a grid-based trusswork on a four-level garage. The trusswork is only on the bottom level. Note the trusswork placement doesn't account for the ramps or anything, this is just a mockup/prototype to make sure we're talking about the same thing. And I'll add 2x2 pillars later as well.

Unfortunately, while I can add the trusswork to each of the three raised levels individually, if I try to make all three levels have it ( http://silverspaceship.com/aosmap/garage3.zip ), it crashes the server the first time a player connects to it. It's actually a smaller vxl file than the original parkinggarage, although obviously the complexity is higher everywhere the trusses are (there's seven runs of voxels instead of five in the old one). But obviously the game can handle seven or more runs of voxels in one column *some* of the time, so I'm not sure what exactly is going wrong. *Maybe* there's a screwup in my voxel-saving code, but I doubt it. If I can't find anything wrong in mine, I'll send it to Ben.

Edit: tried offsetting the grid on the different levels so they didn't line up, but it still crashes.

Edit:

For the columns, a similar approach can be used. Instead of solid blocks, which can be traversed in a lazy fashion

The columns also provide the stairs, though. It's difficult to turn it into trusswork without making it even easier to grief the stairs, since by definition everything the stairs are sttached to will always be accessible, so if what the stairs are attached to is sparse, it's easier to take out the bits the stairs are attached to.

looks awesome

you mind posting pictures of it? I'm a lil busy atm with real life topics

http://silverspaceship.com/aosmap/screen/parking_4.jpg

okay thats not what i meant
what you think of is this
|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|
What I think of is this:
And with out the over hanging, it needs to literally be a truss holding up the floor
_______
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
L L L L L|

Like that

I have no idea what you mean. Are those top-down views or side views?

What is overhanging what? What do you mean "holding up the floor"? The thing I have attaches the floor to itself to make it harder to grief, and effectively is holding up the floor since the supports are attached to the pillars, and could you just call them "pillars" if that's what you mean? If you mean every single place the supports connect to the ceiling should have a pillar dropped to the next floor downl, no, that would be way too dense. I did say I would add 2x2 pillars, though, so there would be more supports overall.

According to wikipedia an actual truss is triangular, but diagonals aren't actually good in AoS so presumably we don't mean a literal truss. Except http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truss#Vierendeel_truss

Edit reply to below: "map view seems confusing" -- well, there's no good way for the map to communicate 5 levels at once. I did make the levels slightly different colored, but it's not enough to show up well on the map since everything is so dark. Maybe I'll try using lighter colors.

Edit reply to "top-view": well, I can make the beams only go in one direction and not the other, and they'll still provide just as much support from one intersection to the next, but I think they'd be easier to grief.

top views...and erm let me get a picture for you

Looks damn nice, but the map view seems confusing.

http://imgur.com/SWHzx

Like those beams, only more often and few blocks apart

Those are actually connected directly to the ceiling along their whole length? That was actually what I meant by "two-high trusses" originally before I started talking about the grid idea, the idea that you could actually tunnel right above them, so a three-high floor plus a support right under it lets you tunnel along right above the support. But those suffer from the problem of being more griefable than an equivalently thick floor. (I.e. 3-high floor plus 2-high support beams is easier to grief than 5-high floor.)

The grid thing I think is more interesting because it's more annoying to grief, and exposes you to enemies / antigriefers, and opens up the possibility of actual gameplay. It's basically the jungle-gym intel defense extended in an organized way.