How to make a good city map?

Considering I have yet to see a city map look legit in Halo, I have no advice for you. In my opinion it hasn't been pulled off realistically, ever. The only tip I can give you is to not use window facades, they look like ****.

For a design basis, use tall structures that are playable from several heights, think Headlong. Otherwise you'll be left with extremely long and flat sight lines, as you said in your post.

 

Hey there, so I played on mombasa streets by @Vorked and like you mentioned, it was an aesthetic map prior to a converted playable map. I have seen more than just these two in terms of city-like maps. But I know that recreating a city is a little harder, but I think it's achievable.

http://www.forgehub.com/maps/mombasa-streets.3353/#post-1654583
http://www.forgehub.com/maps/new-mombasa-streets.1913/

 

Well the object limit was raised, but it still suffers from the amount of objects on screen at one time. Whether objects disappear or frame rate drops from to many trees. Just something you will have to experiment. I personally haven't created that issue yet, frame rate has been fairly good to most maps. Just keep those things in mind when creating that.

 

I have a map named Scorch Palace that is a city map that looks really good. If u want to check it out my gamertag is Mr Deliciousman. Also, don't try to make a typical city. U need to make cities with unusual city layouts to make it interesting. My city map is a buried city with towering skyscrapers.

 

Talk to @BaconMedia because he made an aesthetic ODST map, or several, and received help converting one to a playable version. In my opinion, he's rather skilled at that.

 

Speaking of these and aesthetics, BaconMedia is very talented when it comes to these sort of visual maps. We're going to be making a ton of prefabs from this map and rebuilding a new totally competitive map. Should be a good time.

 

I would suggest starting out with the gameplay in mind and then when you have a working layout, apply your odst urban theme. It definitely takes more creativity to do this but in the end you will have s much better map.

If you have the ability for art, there is nothing wrong with doing maps made for casual play or even just aesthetics and when you have a few examples of your work, I'm sure you could find someone willing to hand their map off to you for a collaboration.

 

I'm not sure what kind of city aesthetic you're going for, but I went for a city theme a while ago that I never finished. You could pop into my map and take a look around to see if that'll give you any ideas. The album is here http://imgur.com/a/hkKkq, but if you want a more in-depth look it's in my GT: Yekkou and the file is "Yesterday V2". It's more of a hybrid between outdoors and indoors.

Anyways, I'd take @Blaze's suggestion and design a layout first. Sounds boring, but that way you won't have to rework everything so much if you want to give it some core gameplay, which was the downfall of mine haha.