MattIs Mapping Project

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Hey Everyone,

So over lockdown I've been a little bit bored, so aside from work I have been working on creating a roleplay map. The map is going to consist of multiple sections, with a highway and underground tube connecting each area, similar to paralake. Here I will be posting updates on the map development, and will be taking ideas from people of what to include.

The map is so far set to include:
- An Airstrip (the skybox has been increased to allow for air vehicles). (I will be using nofunc brushes to optimise large areas).
- Gas Stations (City Construced so far...)
- A car dealership
- Upmarket Residental Zone
- Lowermarket Residental
- Farming Area
- Underground Tube System
- Fast Food Outlet
- Market Area


More ideas would be greatly appreciated, I will be posting screenshots from ingame soon.. but for now I will just use the 3D textured view in Hammer (Top Tip: Alien Swarm version of hammer allows for lighting 3D view, I'll investigate this further another time).

Police PD and Fire Station at Back of City Hall
1586103508490.png

Car Dealership
1586103566209.png (Wood Brush Spins by the way!)

CBD Gas Station
1586103626599.png

Overview of CBD so far, apartment is located below. More of this coming soon... 1586103700231.png

Highway bridge over to the lower end residental, airfield is on the rock above!
1586103811394.png

Lower End Housing Example (This asset was heavily modified from Downtown) [In Progress....]

07/04/2020 - City Hall Almost Finished, Going to Texture the Interior


This section I mainly talk about the optimisation of the map and some tricks I use...

1. Area Portals - This allows for objects and the maps geometry to be culled (not displayed until directly observed). This is absolutely fantastic for sections with complex geometry. I mainly use this inside large buildings such as the city hall I'm creating.

2. Changing Brush -> func_detail - This allows for a decreased number of visleafs.

3. Ensuring Invisible Textures on Correct Side of brushes - An obvious one to anyone who has mapped before but by ensuring non visible brushes are textured with Invisible, decreases the need to render and apply textures subsequently optimising the pipeline.

4. Using a func_viscluster - This allows for large spaces to be rendered much quicker, skipping dynamic lighting.
 
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