If ever a real place was crying out to be made into a mod, then this is it: Oil Rocks (Neft Dashlari).
It’s a city built on the Caspian Sea and was built to extract oil just after the end of the Second World War.
There are so many possibilities for this city for the developer, that I am surprised something like it has never been seen.
I can just imagine the screen fading to black and the player is silently moving towards the city in a simple boat. It’s night and the lights from the apartments and industrial buildings reflect in the cold, dark water. Voices and music drift in and out of range.
The player comes to a stop against one the few water-level edges and so begins his journey to reach the drilling area and descend hundreds of metres down the shaft to the “Find”.
Something so powerful and so dangerous the Soviet authorities have evacuate the city and sent in hundreds of soldiers.
Anyway, enough of my crappy story writing, here are some real images of the place. You can even see a video here: EnglishRussia.Com. You can also find some more information here: Window 2 Baku.
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sounds like a good idea. I’ll get right to work on it.
Looks awesome, I’ll use this in our mod. We have a sea theme too! Nice 🙂
A great find! Those long roads just beg for some kind of buggy-oriented gameplay. Maybe you cruise around from island to island looking for help.
ooh yes!!
this is definetly a very good question!
They are so many sources of inspiration arround us so many architectural miracles.. I wonder in one day why nobody doesn’t a map for examples with japanesse enviroment ( they are 3 or 4 that I find and are incredible).
Just look of this pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/4148872265/sizes/l/in/set-72157622598602597/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/4077315602/sizes/l/in/set-72157622598602597/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/4018764930/sizes/l/in/set-72157622598602597/
http://www.reallybigcanvas.com/search/node/stuck%20in%20customs
This real theme feature was a great idea for the site.. well done.
Thank you, although I made the first “real Theme” post in June 2005, so it’s over 4 1/2 years old! I think I have gotten a lot of new readers in the last couple of years and most have never fully explored the site.
Hah! I am pretty new to PlanetPhillip, I have only been around for about a year if you count all of the lurking. Are you planning on keeping real theme up on the main page? Will you take submissions for new themes to put along side your own?
No, it was just because I wanted to give them a little limelight.
Definitely, but please email the details, rather than posting them in the comments.
I wish I had photos handy because now that I think about it the shore of Lake Erie around Buffalo, New York and from Buffalo to Lackawanna would make an incredible setting for a game. Between the large number of abandoned grain silos (in groups of up to 50 and as high as 200′), the toxic waste dumps, the beautiful beaches, occupied and abandoned factories,… the possibilities are tremendous. I’m sure a good designer could compress a route from Buffalo to Lackawanna and staying near the shore that would be a delight to play.
Interesting fact – parts of the James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough were set here. Come to think of it, I guess I do recall something like this when he was fighting the helicopter with the sawblade on it.
Strange that was noted in the research I did. You would think they would make more of that fact. How did you find out?
It’s what Wikipedia said. I figured it was accurate since I remember something like this in TWINE, and that whole movie had an oil theme to it anyway. 🙂
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The city has nothing but industrial combat which has been done too much and detracts from any interest the setting has, and the roads all have a narrow path which is boring and would lack immersion.
The only way I can see to stress the setting would be an escape sequence.
The player has no idea where he is, and because the player’s perception is rooted into what he is familiar with, he assumes he is in a city. He is chased by gunfire, and eventually finds his way into the shafts and pillars beneath the city, where he needs to somehow steal a boat, or make his way to a helicopter pad up top. HDR would play a really big role here in that transition sequence.
Urban combat would be present no matter what, so the only way to offset that is to make the sequence puzzle based. A good sense of humor would be needed to offset the visual themes of decay and confusion, and the main enemy needs to be a single soldier with a gun chasing him throughout the area with no immediate way to kill him, only slow him down.
Naturally the entire city needs to explode in the ending, killing just that one soldier. Would be awesome if he still survived though.
Ok well that is my take on it, not a bad setting, just rather limited in what can be accomplished. Not to disrespect urban combat, but good puzzle levels are kinda hard to find, and urban combat in this setting wouldn’t be particularly unique.
The idea of seeing mods based in actual geographical ( cities and/or landscapes ) is something I would truly love to see. Bringing ” reality ” into the HL universe would be amazingly easy ( mapping wise ). Half the work would be done already and as mentioned before, the sites of inspiration are all but limitless. ( City 7: Toronto Conflict is one. )