Talk:Citadel design evolution
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'Clamp' Citadel - proposal to reclassify[edit]
If we look at the dates on the maps that use the 'Clamp' style, two observations can be made.
- It first appears on
proto_docks, and the same brushwork (built and oriented the same way) later appears (to be copy-pasted) ind1_sewer51(g)&d1_under_0102. The difference in time is about 3 months, Sep 2002 to Jan 2003. - The tall, prismatic version that later replaces it on
d1_under_0102, by that time already was built and used on different other maps, that themselves are older. In other words, the tall, prismatic, brush version both precedes it chronologically and supersedes it on the only Canals map that uses it.
So my line of thinking is: if it was built for proto_docks, copied over to d1_under_0102, then replaced with already existing and closer to retail version, can it even be called a separate Citadel design, or should it rather be seen and classified as a placeholder for the Citadel (just on that Under map, while Dave Riller was working on it) - and not necessarily even built as a Citadel (or a stand-in for one) in the other map, proto_docks (by Randy Lundeen)? In other words, that it was built (possibly as something else, like Airex) in later 2002, copy-pasted for placeholder reasons, then swapped with the design of the Citadel they were already going forward with. Either two competing designs were being built or they bounced off of the 'Clamp' quickly (as it doesn't appear anywhere else)... or it wasn't ever the Citadel itself.
This is speculation, of course, and the dates on these maps are a single point in time, when they were last edited; we have no way of knowing that working on the Citadel was that last edit, although we can plot the graph of when the skybox was added to d1_sewer51, and that it was after proto_docks was built. But that's part of my point, that we can't even know it is the Citadel because it's a randomly once appearing element in the series of designs. And we don't know what area of the game proto_docks belongs to, we don't know if it's the City 17 docks. We do know that the tall, prismatic version was already built by then, though, so how it would make sense to develop another Citadel just for proto_docks, a styleguide map?.. but it would make more sense (to me, anyway) if it's the prototype styleguide map for the docks that connect the Airex to the ship, as those were still in the plans in late 2002.
What I'm proposing in the end, is we can rewrite it somewhat like this:
- Don't place it in its own paragraph; describe it in the 'timeline' of the August 2002 - July 2003 versions.
- Describe the one in the
d1_under_0102screenshot as a structure that serves as a placeholder for that Citadel. - Describe the
proto_docksscreenshot as the same thing found in another map and point out it's older. - Reflect in the text how it first appears in the docks map, is apparently copied on several versions of
d1_sewer51andd1_under0102, and that it is later replaced, with some structures (the Depot-like structures) remaining.
