City Map Project

[Natalya]

I need other people to help me with this. Umm, the project is to create a detailed city environment with buildings players can walk into and such. Most of the map team members (all except smurf I think) have been helping me recently with testing my role play server plugin that I have been developing. But once this plugin is done it will need a map for it to be played on. Although my plugin is basically my version of Garrys' Mod RP, a GM RP map is not sufficient. There are too many differences between the engines to be reconciled by the plugin, and therefore a new CS:S RP map is required. So, we need a new map and a city would be fun. I could straight-up make the map on my own, but that would take a few weeks. Additionally, I am the only one who is skilled with Source Mod so I'm basically forced to develop the plugin on my own. With that in mind I therefore need other mappers to get started on the city.

I think we can have a modular framework for building a city together so if everybody made just one or two blocks they could all be linked together by me or whoever to create one cohesive, kick-ass map. What would this map look like?

It will have a few requirements...

- Most doors must be func_door_rotating or prop_door_rotating
- Map needs a government building with jail cells and such (this will be real fun to make)
- Map needs apartments with individual rooms
- 64 spawns located centrally within the map (a park would be a great place)
- It needs a shopping district -- small empty stores, probably near the govt
- Maybe a pool hall or a bar for the Mafia to hang out in
- Other cool stuff (maybe a subway or a road going out of town to a rural area?)

Modularity:
If you guys indeed decide to take up some work for this, maybe to make just one or two buildings, I have some design requirements...

- Floor surface of main lobby is at 0 high. Building can extend below this if you want. Walls within the building are going to be 128 units high until they hit the ceiling. Space between different floors can be whatever, just keep the interior halls and rooms with 128 high walls. Building footprints where rectangular must be constructed in multiples of 128 units as well. The inside doesn't really matter though. All internal walls (except where you have some really good reason to not do this) must be a multiple of 8 units thick and they must be aligned with the 8 grid. Windows and doors can necessarily be thinner. The 8 grid is when you have the grid size set to 1 unit, you see the brighter white lines every 8 units. Line up your walls with that. To do that easily just make the grid be 8 x 8 squares and use snap to grid.

That's all very specific and whatnot, but we're doing that so that the map will be optimized. Failure to build to those specifications leads to VVIS taking 6 hours or something stupid. The map may end up large but I'll be damned if it lags.


Sorry to be such a downer with all that, this honestly should be an opportunity to have some fun making buildings and stuff. I really want to start right away by myself, but the plugin will never get finished if I do that. So yea. Thanks in advance to anyone who makes something for this, big or small. If all you make is just a crappy gas station, even with this you've contributed a lot and you WILL get your name on the map for it.

So yeah, please help me out guys this is gonna pwn. :)


** Also:
Feel free to decompile my maps and use stuff from them if you want. ze_retribution comes to mind. I can also provide you guys with .vmfs of my maps if you want.

[SmurfSniper]

oh.... sorry nat I didnt know you needed help testing. I am more than glad to help with whatever you need, of course saturdays are about the only time I have time to do anything (working 60 hrs a week, on the road 20 hrs on top of that) :( but anything I can do to help just let me know.

[Natalya]

O dude it's totally cool. I've only needed a couple people to help so far -- I was just writing that to indicate that most everyone has been involved already so they know what I'm talking about. I haven't had a problem finding people to help me out so far. ;)

[SmurfSniper]

well Im currently working on a gg map, I think its almost finished just a few more things to add to it then I have to start on the lighting then it should be done ( I think dots gonna help me out here ) ;) but as soon as its done I can start on maybe a park or a building... O_o hey..... I had a factory with working presses awhile back but I ended up scrapping it cause I didnt like how it turned out :( anyhoo lunch is over gotta get back to work :'(

[vince21]

for nubs like me who can't read the scripts you put in here, what will the gamestyle of this map end up being? whatever it is, i cannot wait to see how this thing turns out! GO NAT! :D

[DoT]

We should get permission from the maker of zm_apparts, decompile that and make the whole building accessible...or will that be too many apparts lol

Anywho, im down...i could use some vmfs as evertime i start somethin i never finish...maybe ill just continue some of your stuff.

[Sajora]

should be possible.

[Natalya]

for nubs like me who can't read the scripts you put in here, what will the gamestyle of this map end up being? whatever it is, i cannot wait to see how this thing turns out! GO NAT! :D

A big departure from vanilla CS:S, the idea here will be to live life in the city. You join a team -- citizens, gangsters, government or maybe some other team and you try to get money. You automatically get paid every so often, (and the server remembers how much money you have) so you can eventually buy cool stuff, but it takes a while. With that in mind some players can choose to live a life of crime and make money printers and such to get rich faster, but the police and other people get money if they smash your printers so you have to protect them. Eventually you'll save enough for a car and then you can buy one of those. The server will remember you bought one so you get to keep it forever.

Another thing is there are no buy zones and when you spawn all you get is a knife. With that in mind, there will be Arms Dealers who can make guns, but they can only make like 10 at a time instead of just 1 so with a high production cost they'll sell the guns off slightly more expensive than 1/10th of the price it originally costed, earning them a profit. This also makes a cop's life easier since there will be less random killing. I hope to make it so cops can get arrest warrants and arrest people instead of having to kill them all the time. Maybe cops could get money for that.


@DoT:
Good luck with asking permission. The guy is French. Maybe just decompile and take one of the small ones with rooms in it. I don't think anyone will care too bad, especially if we name the appartment after him. Set up the apartments in it with rotating doors and such. The whole building doesn't need to be accessible but the rooms that are should basically be empty except for static props like a toilet, fridge, stove, and sink. Players will be able to spawn props on their own.

[DoT]

@DoT:
Good luck with asking permission. The guy is French. Maybe just decompile and take one of the small ones with rooms in it. I don't think anyone will care too bad, especially if we name the appartment after him. Set up the apartments in it with rotating doors and such. The whole building doesn't need to be accessible but the rooms that are should basically be empty except for static props like a toilet, fridge, stove, and sink. Players will be able to spawn props on their own.

Okay how about this, ill take the top floor of the main appart, and put it over the main floor then duplicate it, easily making the whole thing accessible, clean all props, and make all doors fun_rotating and upload it for others to play with and edit.

[Natalya]

You don't gotta make the whole thing accessible, but if you want to go ahead. :) That would be a great start for the map.

[vince21]

A big departure from vanilla CS:S, the idea here will be to live life in the city. You join a team -- citizens, gangsters, government or maybe some other team and you try to get money. You automatically get paid every so often, (and the server remembers how much money you have) so you can eventually buy cool stuff, but it takes a while. With that in mind some players can choose to live a life of crime and make money printers and such to get rich faster, but the police and other people get money if they smash your printers so you have to protect them. Eventually you'll save enough for a car and then you can buy one of those. The server will remember you bought one so you get to keep it forever.

Another thing is there are no buy zones and when you spawn all you get is a knife. With that in mind, there will be Arms Dealers who can make guns, but they can only make like 10 at a time instead of just 1 so with a high production cost they'll sell the guns off slightly more expensive than 1/10th of the price it originally costed, earning them a profit. This also makes a cop's life easier since there will be less random killing. I hope to make it so cops can get arrest warrants and arrest people instead of having to kill them all the time. Maybe cops could get money for that.

oh that is teh schweetness in a chocolate cupcake! very excited to seeing this thing in action. major, major props to you guys. *thumbs up*

[Natalya]

Glad you think it's interesting. :) I think it will be popular, there's just a ton of work to be done.

[Natalya]

Figured I ought to post something about the doors... I did some research on how prop_door_rotating works and found some good stuff that describes how to use them:

prop_door_rotating - Valve Developer Community (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Prop_door_rotating)
WiseDoor - Valve Developer Community (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/WiseDoor)

Basically what you do is u create a prop_door_rotating and set the model to one of the following:

props_c17\door01_left.mdl
props_c17\door02_double.mdl
props_doors\door03_slotted_left.mdl

You would use the door01_left for almost all doors. Hit apply and the door will show up in Hammer. Put it where you want it and you're on the way. Now you have to select how you want it to open. For most cases you will use the door handle. To do this go into the door's properties and use Hardware Type --> Lever. The pushbar is also good, especially for commercial or industrial settings. Anyway, this choice won't appear in hammer, but it will show up in game:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/images/d/d2/Wisepropdoors0003.jpg


Here's what it looks like in Hammer:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/images/e/ec/WiseDoor03.jpg


You can play with some of the other options like the skin, but make sure the Flag for Use Closes Door is checked so that you can close the door. Also, give the door a name. For example if you made a hotel you might name it like "Hotel Room 204" so that you know where it is. The door features I developed lets you get information about a door as one of the options in the !door menu and it will print out the door's name for players to see, so a descriptive name is good.

I hope that helps. :)

[DoT]

Nat i just thought about this, but a possibly nice feature to add on to the RP mod could be a safe. You know, for the crooks, since they can't use banks, they need a place to deposit money to (If you planned on adding banks). It would be pretty cool if the crooks would be able to hide it in their appartment and what not. Then maybe like if cops or another crook came they could confiscate/steal it if they got into your appartment and found it or what not.

Just a suggestion, sounds like it would be hard to code though...especially considering i have no idea how lol.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FPSBANANA > Maps > CS:S > Bomb/Defuse > de_apparts_b3 (http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/11770)

ZM Apparts was originally de_apparts.
We were fooled!

I'm lookin up prefabs on FPSB.

[Natalya]

Note: I made zm_apparts lol. It's just a remake.

As for banks, never really thought about that. In CS:S you can only carry $65535 so like one of the first things I did actually was I added a bank feature. You type !deposit or !withdraw to put $$ in ur savings account or take it out. I need to add a !givemoney feature though so people can buy shit off eachother.

[Natalya]

I've gotten some work done on the city. As you can see, it's going to have a So-Cal theme.



http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/rp_socal_city_00.PNG


http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/rp_socal_city_01.PNG

[Miguel]

very nice im really lookin foward to this mod :) i know it might be a good while before you release it but im patient :)

[Natalya]

The game is almost playable but there is still one huge obstacle in my way... Okay right now you can do like everything with respect to classes. You can choose a class, choose your gender, and then it will spawn you accordingly. So, you can be Government, Civilians, or Rogues. Everything with respect to this works. You get paid properly based on your class, and classes can be set to assassinateable. The team radio works too.

What has to be done is items. There's no real incentive to play the game if you can't accomplish things -- the game is just pointless. But if people can work to getting cool stuff like cars then there's a reason to play. So basically what is needed is a sort of economy. I already figured out money and crap, but what I'm working on now that is really hard is the item system. The idea is for players to be able to buy stuff and have the game remember it, then for the players to be able to use them. Lockpicks for example... You buy a lockpick, find a locked door, then when you use it the door gets unlocked and the lockpick is deleted from your inventory. That's what I'm working on now. Once that's done the mod will be playable because prettymuch everything else is in place. It will need refinement, but it will be worthwhile to play.

Okay some preview pics of the map...


http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/city_preview01.JPG
In-n-Out Burger


http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/city_preview02.JPG
Kitchen in one of the apartments. They only come with the fridge and sink, so players would buy furnishings for it like the table and chairs here.


http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/city_preview03.JPG
I've been working on this police car. People who like to be cops would try to save up for one of these. It's not finished yet though -- this is just a beta version of the car.


http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/city_preview04.JPG
The parking lot on left will be for the government building. The section here that I have completed is like the edge of town, so the other corners of this undeveloped intersection will be towards the city centre.


http://www.Aura-Forums.com/cstrike/city_preview05.JPG
The town so far. The far edge will be going into the more urban bit of the city. Some of these buildings are from ze_retribution, but here you can go inside them. The one on the left has a big apartment, while the red brick one has three. The other buildings are stores and the fast-food joint. You can also see X-Storm's playground. ;)

[X-Storm]

Nicely done :D

And u added my playground.
U know where i will live now :D

[DoT]

I just thought about this nat, make a way to prune the database. I'm sure with the mod there will be a lot to save, and when a new mod is relases, we'd imagine a lot of people will come to see what it's about, some may not like it, but their shit will be saved, so maybe a feature to the plugin that cleans up unused files after x amount of days.

Also...holy shit...i can''t even compare what i've been working on to your shit already...omg...

[Miguel]

Wow so much progress already! I got one suggestion though (IF IT HAS NOT ALREADY BEEN DONE...)

The ability to make more than one profile for or character whatever you wanna call it for the server...
Say there is too much of one faction. I can already sense Rogue will probably be very popular. Well maybe you could have a second profile or even third if 2 factions are overpopulated to play on so the game isn't totally imbalanced.

Like I said maybe this has already been done.

[Natalya]

Oh it doesn't remember that. When u leave the server it sets u back to civilian and when u join it sets you to civilian. You can change it using !class when you're playing, but there's a time limiter on it so you can't use it every 2 seconds. What it remembers is your money, ur bank account, and hopefully in the future it will remember items you bought like a car for example. When u join u can spawn ur car, then when u leave it gets deleted.

[Miguel]

ah ok i got the whole concept wrong. i like the way this sounds also though!

[Natalya]

Also...holy shit...i can''t even compare what i've been working on to your shit already...omg...

Hey this goes for everyone not just u DoT...

Though I might have great skills as a mapper, that doesn't mean that your contributions are not valuable. Because I'll be the one putting all the pieces of the map together into one cohesive city I can work to improve upon and incorporate any of y'alls contributions. For example, X-Storm made a small park area, and I managed to use the playground he made from it. So yeah even if you think you don't compare or whatever, if you make something it helps. ;)

[Natalya]

http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/city_preview08.JPG


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/city_preview07.JPG

[DoT]

http://www.xboxinsider.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/so_much_win.png

[Natalya]

[color=royalblue]Wait until you see what I'm doing for City Hall. ;)

DoT make a building for this. Gas station would be nice, but anything really.

Also:



http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/city_preview06.JPG


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/city_preview09.JPG


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/city_preview10.JPG

Like the police car? 4 skins so far.

[Miguel]

holy crap nat nice work :O

[X-Storm]

I'm so going to crash a police car :D

[Cogbern]

no x-storm your not going to crash it until you steal it, then you can crash it. XD

[X-Storm]

Hopefully i won't be drunk when i do it :S

[Natalya]

I'm getting closer to the Police Car being finished.

Also, a sneak peek at another project of mine...


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/wheel_problem0.PNG

[<JohnnyBoy>]

lol very nice nat but i thing the truck should be blue!

[Natalya]

It has 8 skins, one is blue.

Also, thanks to every1 who helped me do some testing last night. :) Players can now buy AND use Health Packs. They can also discard them if they want to. I need to work on players being able to drop them, then pick them up. I think I'll get that done with weapons first though since you can already do that.

[Natalya]

Map Updates:
- City Hall has complete underground parking garage
- An elevator takes you up to the main floor with the lobby
- A small parking garage is now near the cool house
- The plants in the park now have pots underneath them
- Door fixed in the cool house

Plugin Updates:
- All guns are fully supported
- Health packs can be dropped and picked up with !pickup
- Cars can be locked and unlocked just like doors
- !debitcard lets you give money to another player from your bank account

[SmurfSniper]

you gonna test anything this weekend? I wanna see this shit :P

[<JohnnyBoy>]

you will get to see it but then you'll lag like fuck when you get in and play!:-D still fun to play though....=]

[Jackd]

I can't wait!!

[X-Storm]

I managed to crash a police car! =D

[Natalya]

you will get to see it but then you'll lag like fuck when you get in and play!:-D still fun to play though....=]

Lol sorry about the lag. Jackd, any chance we can get a N/U test server dedicated to this thing that I can use, so that people can test it w/o it feeling slower than Lindsay Lohan trying to leave a liquor store?

Also, I've been doing a ton of planning for what I'll develop next on this project. Getting the !pickup command to work for the health packs is a HUGE step forwards. I can take my success there and translate that into enabling support for picking up many other items. Body Armour will probably be the next item to get support, but I need cars to show speed via a different gauge for armour to have a point. (You see your speed as your armour level at the moment.) Speaking of cars, right now they operate exactly like doors. I'm going to change that slightly though. Cars will get their own item pack-like menu where you can store them in inventory for when u leave and rejoin the server, but it will be entirely separate. That will resolve a lot of conflicts they have with the door plugin. I want cars to be automatically owned by you when you spawn them; something that isn't done for doors. However you will still lock and unlock them just like doors. Probably after I sort out the car stuff, I'll move on to making the plugin automatically detect doors on the map and assign some of them to be owned by the server by default, with some having access for certain teams. That will be hard, but it will let stuff work better. For example, all doors to City Hall, giving them to the government at the start prevents a lot of potential problems.

I've also been planning a lot for the map itself. If you go to the area where the big road curves away from the beach and back to the land, you know how the skybox cuts off the map there until u get back to the long road, and then like that long road also has the skybox running along the side? (Like it cuts a big corner out of the map.) Well, that area will be transformed into a sort of coast line area, then the beach will be there too. So it will go from like normal land to the beach. I'll try to make it look all natural and cool though, but that TBH is not my strength as a mapper lol. It will be a challenge for me. :) Also, I made some more sign props. Over at the currently dead strip mall, one of those stores will remain empty for players to set it up as they want, but the others will be real stores. The corner store with the entrance on the side will be a Verizon Wireless store. I already made prop_static signs for it, as well as a table for the inside which they would display phones or whatever on. Next door -- the one with the weird interior -- will be a Tilly's clothing store. I've got the basic shape of it's sign done, it just needs to be textured and compiled. That shop also has a custom light model in it that's already there mounted on the ceiling rack. Mappers will recognize it as the studio light from de_tides, but I removed the long wires hanging down so now it's useful as just a normally mounted light.

Umm, that's all I got for now lol but expect cool stuff. :)

[Natalya]

http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/rp_california_alpha_020007.JPG

Okay so new pics...


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/rp_california_alpha_04blank0000.JPG

Police Garage


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/rp_california_alpha_04blank0002.JPG

Re-coloured some buildings downtown.


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/rp_california_alpha_04blank0009.JPG

Here's that desert type area I was talking about.


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/rp_california_alpha_04blank0010.JPG

New parking garage on the left there. The main street heading into downtown is starting to fill up. :)


So yea some of you have seen this stuff already, but the server hasn't been up recently so this lets anyone who missed it see my updates. Also, I've got a lot of progress with the car ownership plugin. It's not ready yet but much of the ownership functionality has been worked out.

[Mitchell]

Hey, i used to do some thing like this on Sandboxx, back then we used Cheat control, but back then people started to find exploits in the mod, so i learned some coding for Source pawn (or source code), so i secured it from people using cheat commands before they joined. But yet we used to run a decently good Role play we would have admins make gun shops, etc, but half of this now is in python, ive been messing with the vehicles, but i havent learned enough of source pawn to say i know how to make solid cmds. But at last im a very fast learner.

[Natalya]

You know cheat control never worked for me. :( My crap test server has sv_cheats 1 on it but I can't find a way to disable other commands for players like noclip. Basically I wanted a 3rd Person CS:S mod. But yea I just count on people playing to not try to fuck the server up just because they can. If this gets onto a N/U server it's going sv_cheats 0 though unless we can find a reliable way to only enable certain cheat commands (cam_command 1, etc).

Do you know how to script for Source Mod? I need help with this RP plugin if you know what you are doing with SM.

[Mitchell]

Im still trying to learn any extra help would be great! Im a fast learner!

EDIT: Oh and i know how to make maps i forgot to say that a while ago!

[Natalya]

Okay so Mitchell will be helping me with the scripting of the RP plugins. As for the map, I compiled Alpha 05 today. Hopefully I will get it on the server maybe tonight, but definitely tomorrow.

[X-Storm]

Sounds awesome =D And good luck Mitchell :)

[Mitchell]

I hope it all works :D

[Natalya]

You taken a look at the stuff I pm'ed you yet Mitchell? I'm at work btw.

[<JohnnyBoy>]

You know what this map is missing a church/temple and a restaurant i suggest the one from spongebob with the ship in the bottle!:-D but thats my option.

[Sajora]

go work on that stuff then.

[Natalya]

Current city looks:



http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/cali_06_05.jpg


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/cali_06_00.jpg


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/cali_06_06.jpg


http://www.aura-forums.com/Cstrike/cali_06_01.jpg

[DoT]

nats a baddie with her out of proportioned sailor moon sword knife.
<3

[Natalya]

That reminds me. Time to go back to the Moon Stick.

[Cogbern]

is it just me or does the sand look like snow/salt

[DoT]

is it just me or does the sand look like snow/salt

Yeah it does in the corner. It hurts my eyes tbh.

[vince21]

didn't even notice that at first...never actually been to the beach. :/

[Natalya]

I keep making the sand darker and it's still pure white... D:

Umm, so, while I'm at work today, if you guys want to help me take screen-shots of the new version up there, showing me where there are texture errors.

[DoT]

I keep making the sand darker and it's still pure white... D:

Is there an env_sun over there or something?

Also I'm loving the architecture and the new areas.

- Dotty.

P.S. Wireframe and texture issues need to go :O

[Natalya]

I'll make the sand darker again for A8. But yea send me pics of texture glitches, areas where stuff looks funny, and places where things need changes. Example is the lights in the pool look weird -- they're too bright and close to the wall so they don't look good.

[Natalya]

http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/rp_california_alpha_090000.jpg


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/rp_california_alpha_090001.jpg


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/rp_california_alpha_090002.jpg


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/rp_california_alpha_090003.jpg

[onehit]

This very nice nat! Great job! Keep up the good work!

[DoT]

Fuck what ANYONE has to say.
Natalya is mapping goddess.

Most haven't played with hammer so they don't appreciate the work put into and complexity of this little autoshop.

Amazing work nat, keep it up!

[Mongoloid]

nuff said

[Natalya]

http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/rp_ca_b02_05.png


http://www.aura-forums.com/cstrike/rp_ca_b02_10.png

[DoT]

Old news homie.

And im still waiting on the Mustang you owe me for using my GFX at that gas pump!

:p

[SmurfSniper]

OH just so you know nat.... Dot gave up the title on the mustang already so dont worry about giving it to him :P
I gave him a choice... his pathetic rogue life or his favorite car.... of course he cried for a bit but in the end he was a puss and gave up the car.

[xBlAcKBiRdx]

If its not done maybe I can help out, I mean I'm good at making rp maps for h2dm and gmod

[SmurfSniper]

we dont have a rp server anymore... so Im not sure if nats even working on this anymore