Help me with my memory here. We’ve been discussing maps of 3D environments at work here (e.g. office buildings, skyscrapers, pizza hut) and I mentioned that several games do a great job allowing you to view and manipulate a 3D map. Some of them even let you track assets on that map (e.g where you are, where the bad guys are, where other things are). Hit me with some good examples that don’t include GRAW, Rainbox Six, and Splinter Cell. For example, I remember the old Metroid Prime games for the GameCube did some innovative stuff with the maps you display within the game.
IIRC the maps in Metroid Prime were basically just 3D model viewers showing very simplified and untextured mesh versions of the actual game world environment and allowing you to translate/rotate/scale around it.
Descent used to have 3d maps, IIRC.
True, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t interesting and usable. As far as a 3D map that let me know where to go and where I was, it wasn’t too shabby.
I think Jedi Knight had 3D maps.
Did he say they weren’t interesting or usable?
Oh, I totally agree. The maps in Metroid Prime were very well done. I didn’t mean to suggest they sucked when I said they “were basically just”, I was simply commenting on the fact that they implemented a very simple and straight-forward approach to the problem (and it worked very well, though the worlds in the Metroid Prime games were still quite a bit more 2D in layout than something like a high-rise office building would be and I’m not sure it would scale without some novel tweaks).
As I recall, the original Devil May Cry (and possibly the sequels, never played 'em) used a 3D map, but I don’t recall it being very good. Also, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, but it had a bad map too, in addition to being a bad game.
That’s a good point that almost makes me exclude it. While it certainly played with elevation changes, the design of a lot of maps were similar to DOOM, where it is very unlikely that something was directly on top of something else.
Daggerfall dungeon maps :)
Deadspace had a very nice map. The ui in general was amazing.