City 9 - Map in progress

'77 East

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I can't agree with you that a day/night cycle is a small lighting effect. It does add to the mood of the city. And it shouldn't be dreary and sad all the time. (I'd love to see a map like the train station map from hl2, the first one. I mean you could probably work off that one, but all the streets would have to be added from those checkpoints that you can't access)

It exists, it's called rp_city17(whatever). Want to guess why it failed as a map?

Turns out atmosphere isn't everything. While it was dusty and nice, it felt like shit, railroaded players around and ultimately jammed everything into far-flung corners of the map. Even the 'secret' areas sucked as even niche places, and ultimately the map was (and still is) rarely used.
 
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Roby

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I was just wondering, are you bringing any inspirations from Lore when you are working on this map? Since, in this server's Lore, City Nine would be in Sector One, maybe on the American East Coast. Are you focusing on any city, or is this a city that was bombed during the War, and was rebuilt? (For example, I think, Atlanta was destroyed during the War)

My primary inspiration is Art Deco, from all around the world, including my own country. The East Coast has very good examples of Art Deco cities such as New York and others.

Now i know this is just a teeny bit off topic, but why is every hl2rp map during nighttime? Did the combine destroy the sun while i wasn't looking?

On the other hand i really like your progress and i admire you learning hammer (i gave up on it, making scripts is much easier than mapmaking)

Nighttime fits better the Art Deco noir narrative that I'm trying to achieve.
 
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Roby

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UPDATE:

I decided to delete a few buildings and re-make them out of some reasons, which I will list below together with the new buildings:


I removed two housing blocks that were located in the plaza in favour of a more detailed commercial building, whose ground level will be used to accomodate more around 3 shops for the players to use (one of them can be used as a street fast food stand). I did this because I didn't like the previous housing block and there weren't many shops located around the plaza which might've driven off the players from there. (The usable floor is still wip)
2ZL4kc.png



This was the place for the second mentioned housing block, of which I've disposed of. Instead, I decided to build a theatre there to be used by players or Universal Union speeches and propaganda rallies (It's still heavily WIP, i need to decorate more)
Z4OTJV.png



Did I mention I disliked the slums I made and decided to re-do it? Yeah, I'm going for an underground slum look, as you can see below, you cannot see the skybox from these parts of the slums. They are meant to be crowded and poorly managed, built out of wooden makeshift materials. I want to give the gangs and criminals a part for their own gritty story and roleplay. (Obviously still needs heavy work, will look better with dim light and decals plus decorations)
fZnH1l.png
 

karl-police

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UPDATE:

I decided to delete a few buildings and re-make them out of some reasons, which I will list below together with the new buildings:


I removed two housing blocks that were located in the plaza in favour of a more detailed commercial building, whose ground level will be used to accomodate more around 3 shops for the players to use (one of them can be used as a street fast food stand). I did this because I didn't like the previous housing block and there weren't many shops located around the plaza which might've driven off the players from there. (The usable floor is still wip)
2ZL4kc.png



This was the place for the second mentioned housing block, of which I've disposed of. Instead, I decided to build a theatre there to be used by players or Universal Union speeches and propaganda rallies (It's still heavily WIP, i need to decorate more)
Z4OTJV.png



Did I mention I disliked the slums I made and decided to re-do it? Yeah, I'm going for an underground slum look, as you can see below, you cannot see the skybox from these parts of the slums. They are meant to be crowded and poorly managed, built out of wooden makeshift materials. I want to give the gangs and criminals a part for their own gritty story and roleplay. (Obviously still needs heavy work, will look better with dim light and decals plus decorations)
fZnH1l.png

You didn't use carve tool right?

The carve tool isn't good.
 

'77 East

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You didn't use carve tool right?

The carve tool isn't good.

what the hell are you talking about.

the whole point of the carve tool is to create things that aren't bland-ass squares and half-constructed cylinders.
 

Dr.Towers

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Carve tool is fine to use except for a nasty bug that can potentially delete all entities in the map permanently, but as long as you don't say yes when asked to delete corrupted brushes it won't happen.
 

Roby

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Carve tool is fine to use except for a nasty bug that can potentially delete all entities in the map permanently, but as long as you don't say yes when asked to delete corrupted brushes it won't happen.

So far I had no problem of that sort.
 

Roby

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UPDATE
Here's my newest in-game playtest, showing off the progress so far:

This building is one of the landmarks of the plaza, it's ground floor accommodates 4 shops
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Entrance to the said shops, each shop has two floors
59B8C804550E5D6A0515F9B0A0EA09EDD56D4EEA


Here's a glimpse of what the shops look like, this one is the most unique one because it's meant to be a hair saloon (second floor is empty and can be used either as a home for the owner or additional room for the store)
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Vis-a-Vis from the shown building lies the Civil Worker's Union HQ, originally planned to be a cinema or theatre, I've later gave up that idea in faour of a building serving as a center of Union propaganda, useful for speeches, CWU rallies and other type of community meetings or even religious sermons
DAE1DB53B9C04F3897878FB1D61AB38AAF10C781


Inside the CWU HQ (ignore the dark chandellier, I'll remove it and add something in it's place or some shit)
41A3DB67547BCBF4DB476F03642743883AFFC47C


Another view from the scene room, the top door is an entrance to the upper two rooms reserved for higher ranked CWU officials
51E863733E4174D9868162B67203B0B6B06EDFE6



CWU HQ entrance, view from one of the offices (there are 4 standard offices in total and one large room with two areas for high ranked CWU members)
270D7937B258F5B677356EAAF983B9C2FF7CE0E5


I will definately return and furnish the CWU HQ more, but for now it's playable and usable for a beta version, also note that similar to the windows of the first presented building, I will incorporate glowing white windows on each skycraper and all for maximum noir feels
 

Roby

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When I use propper in order to create a model out of a bunch of brushes, the model comes out with purple and black texture instead of it's original texture? Why and how can I fix it?

@Dr.Towers
 

Dr.Towers

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When I use propper in order to create a model out of a bunch of brushes, the model comes out with purple and black texture instead of it's original texture? Why and how can I fix it?

@Dr.Towers

Have you tried to check if the path for the textures you used is corrent in the .qc?
 

Dr.Towers

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Don't know where to find that

I've never used the propper, but according to the wiki somewhere into the game folder there should be a .qc file of the model that contains all the useful information for it. If not you can try decompiling the model and do it manually.

I'm releasing the .bsp file and the vmx/vmf for mappers and players to check out, hopefully one of you will get around using propper better than I and hopefully finish the map since I've fucked up for now

City01 vmf
https://ufile.io/vlkfi

City01 vmx
https://ufile.io/j44nj

City01 bsp
https://ufile.io/09hj3

Pls give credit if you want to finish this map

Do those have the content already packed in?
 

Roby

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I've never used the propper, but according to the wiki somewhere into the game folder there should be a .qc file of the model that contains all the useful information for it. If not you can try decompiling the model and do it manually.



Do those have the content already packed in?

There isn't any custom content if I'm not mistaken, everything I used was vanilla HL2 materials and models

As for the .qc, well, I found it eventually and it was okay but still I couldn't get it to work, maybe I've set up the configurations badly and I've fucked up my own configs in this process.
[doublepost=1502473017][/doublepost]BTW if anybody wonders why I've quit making the map is because i've hit the max limit of brushes and i tried to use propper and long story short, i've fucked up
 

Dr.Towers

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There isn't any custom content if I'm not mistaken, everything I used was vanilla HL2 materials and models

As for the .qc, well, I found it eventually and it was okay but still I couldn't get it to work, maybe I've set up the configurations badly and I've fucked up my own configs in this process.
[doublepost=1502473017][/doublepost]BTW if anybody wonders why I've quit making the map is because i've hit the max limit of brushes and i tried to use propper and long story short, i've fucked up

Add me on a private conversation, I'll help you out