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!

[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!

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
WiseDoor - Valve Developer Community

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:




Here's what it looks like in Hammer:




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.
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FPSBANANA > Maps > CS:S > Bomb/Defuse > de_apparts_b3

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.