City 9 - Map in progress

[Roby]

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Introducing City 01, my first project in Hammer Tool, a city built in the spirit of the roaring twenties and inspired heavily by the artwork of Bioshock's Rapture and empathizing primarly on my most favourite art style out of all: Art Deco.

I'm am building a map that can accomodate all types of roleplay, fit for all types of players in order to offer a fresh breath into the life of HL2RP. Below is a list of all facilities that the map shall have for the players to use:

- A small street shopping complex with 3 shops and one barber shop, each having a second floor to be utilized either as an apartment or for additional business purposes, and plenty more shops/cafes/business space around the map
- 'The Condor' Casino/Restaurant in the plaza, together with it's stage for theatral represenations or music shows
- A factory for work cycles
- A small ration distribution center located just above the main entrance to the Nexus.
- A small underground mine fit for mining cycles and other types of things
- Two slums separated by the main canal of the city, one small and one medium, each with their own landmarks and all, including an abandoned garbage disposal facility or slum apartments
- A public pool with a sauna
- A public gymnasium with a boxing stage, fit for citizens or loyal citizens to come and train or maybe organize wrestling fights for bets, etc...
- A small Civil Medical Union clinic
- Civil Workers Union HQ with offices and a large stage for political rallies, union affiliated religious sermons or just public debates, etc
- Abandoned metro system and a small sewer system for anti-citizen RP
- Underground Cave to supplement the missing outlands set, fit for Overwatch missions, antlion events, rebels, etc..
- Underwater Nexus, with prison camp and anything the CCA needs
- 4 apartment blocks, each containing a number of different hosing appartments
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One thing last before I present you the screenshots, I'd like to post my paypal link for donations, in case there are people out there that would like to support me and my project, for I do this out of my free time and purely out of leisure and dedication for the HL2RP gamemode that I love and I hope will continue to live on:

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

[Deleted member 374]

make it look real beat up. lots of holes in walls and decaying buildings n shit. maybe have some old basements and attics.

 

[Ronald]

@Atle any tips for the man

 

[Tortilla Jackson ツ]

Keep up the work man.

 

[Atle]

Well, if you started learning last week, you have a lot to learn still. Hammer is the path of the maddening damned, and there will be roads of terror and savagery ahead.

So let's begin!

I recommend watching this guys videos, as they're extremely useful and will teach you a lot.

Make sure to add the nodraw material to all the brush sides a player never sees, and try to experiment with all sorts of colored lighting, and not fall into the trap of and all around greyish tone. I'd say you've started in a good way, but my own personal recommendation is to wait a little bit with a city map. A city map is probably the most complex thing you could start with, and will include a lot of compromise due to Hammer's inherit limits. Perhaps start with a mini event map?

Anyway, I wish you the best ahead in your learning experience!

 

[Inspector Bandito]

add favela-esque rooftops n shit

 

[Roby]

UPDATE:
I decided to resume the work on the map due to free time this summer. I've removed some parts and added new ones as I'm aiming for an Art-Deco style on the map. Here's some of the updates (the map itself is still heavily WIP). Basically I've retained the slums but redone the plaza and shit.

Plaza (The curved building you see will be a two-story apartment block, and in the background, the white building will have a clinic at it's base, expect most institutions, from the clinic to apartments, leisure, shops and factory to be in the plaza or in the close proximity)

CWU/Office building

Side view of the CWU/Office building, with Art-Deco tower in the background:

The underground passage from the plaza to the slums (from the old map)

Underground entrance to the Nexus (it's designed for quick delivery of citizen detainees):

The Nexus front (I will detail more of it later)

 

[«✪SRC✪»]

I think its coming on really good, Keep up the work, But I think you could maybe make the nexus a little higher. or if that is what you was doing.

But keep up the great work!

 

[jarodine]

Looks pretty good so far! Keep up the good work!

 

[Dr.Towers]

1) Some interior plaster textures are misaligned in the second video, the texture should fit in the entire height of the wall, if it's too short you can either stretch it or simply cut it at the lower border and add another wall with a similar vertical looping seamless texture (there are already some combinations in the textures list) or just another at your choice.

2) Don't make small staircases like the one in the building, it will be hard to move around expecially in Clockwork and it will get clogged easily.

3) Try not to make the exteriors too big unless you have too, concentrate on the other hand to make the smaller spaces prettier with lots of decals and models.

4) I don't do it personally, but some people find it more productive to first set up first a "scheme" of the map made of just basic dev textures and nothing else and see if the spaces and general design work, then they retexture and adjust it later, it's your choice.

5) Remember to turn all "decorative" brushes, like columns and building trims, basically anything that doesn't form the shape of the rooms, into func_details early on otherwise is will be a pain in the butt to do it later (and it will reduce the compiling time ALOT).

6) Give yourself an idea on the areaportals that your map will be using, areaportals are special funcs that separate sections of the map, a section need to be completely "sealed" by these, for instance a room with two windows and a door would be sealed by three areaportals that will fill the holes in the walls (note that only basic brushes and areaportals will define those areas, models and funcs will not). The more areas you define the smoother the map will run, you can check the compiling logs for errors, called "leaks", with it.

7) Remember that Half-life 2 content is just the basics for your maps, you can import textures and models and embedd into your map if you like, just don't make it too big or it won't fit on the workshop.

Other that this it looks pretty good, don't aim too high tho: making such a map can be quite an effort and you may just lose interest halfway ( °-°)

 

[Roby]

Thanks for the tips, here's some more screenshots:

Plaza is coming up nicely, still needs heavy detailing to be done though.

A WIP area I just started to make, it's connected with the plaza. It'll house a few shops here and the citizens can either pick this area or the plaza itself to chill and RP.

Also, if people could post more suggestions I'd be open for them.

 

[Captain Cardgage]

I'm seeing a odd similarity here...

Spoiler: Hmm...

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[lemon]

I'm seeing a odd similarity here...

Spoiler: Hmm...

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I'm seeing an odd similarity here...

Spoiler: Hmm...

 

[Roby]

Additional screenshots

Restaurant/Casino stage for performance (WIP)

More combine monuments in the plaza for maximum A E S T H E T I C S

 

[PADEX]

i can'twait for it to get completed owo it looks very cool! i wanna play it so badly right now XD i love exploring maps.
you're doing a great job, keep up the work c:

 

[Roby]

i can'twait for it to get completed owo it looks very cool! i wanna play it so badly right now XD i love exploring maps.
you're doing a great job, keep up the work c:

Additional screenshots of the hospital main room and one of the apartments, 4 u
Hospital

Apartment

 

[Dr.Towers]

Very nice ( °u°)

p.s. I see you're going for the details, here's a tip to make the doors look better: carve out a brush with a door texture and use it as a frame for doors, since all doors have the same dimensions and since the textures for them are easily changeable, you can make just one and then copypaste it for all the next (make sure to turn the first one into a func_detail before you have to do it for all of them later) °u°b

 

[Roby]

Very nice ( °u°)

p.s. I see you're going for the details, here's a tip to make the doors look better: carve out a brush with a door texture and use it as a frame for doors, since all doors have the same dimensions and since the textures for them are easily changeable, you can make just one and then copypaste it for all the next (make sure to turn the first one into a func_detail before you have to do it for all of them later) °u°b

Thanks, I'll see what I can do

 

[Roby]

UPDATE
I became too unpleased with the current layout (too confusing and without logic) so I recycled the map into another layout. Here's some photos:

 

[lemon]

You've improved quite a lot