Anyone interested in collaborating with me and some others on a
CityRP-Esque map should add me on steam
here or through messaging me on the forums.
We'll be utilizing a
Sketchup - Hammer Workflow which opens the door to a
lot of different things that I'll be happy to explain to you here or through a private conversation and demonstration.
I'll be providing in-depth documentation on the features, process and guidelines similar to this quick document <
here> that I made showing the perks of
Components and
Layers and how they can allow for efficiencies in map-making - using one of the homes from Richard Drive as an example and was able to do by quickly exporting it from Hammer as a
.DWG and then remaking it in the program.
Sketchup also has the ability to place entities (Player Starts, Lights, Etc) and apply materials that'll be kept when the model is exported as .VMF - though resizing may be necessary but this isn't necessarily a huge concern.
Overall it's ideal considering the creation of geometry from buildings to infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, layout) is superior to the out-dated X/Y/Z interface that Hammer has.
Would be interested to get some input
if you had some time considering you provided many good points in this thread.
I think Rockford simply does not cater towards this game-mode and I happen to believe that V5P offers the best environment that we can ask for (for the time being) and despite some concern in the design not being completely circular, which pointed out, I would argue that it actually IS. The road design is circular in many parts, including in the city and even into the Industrial zone which allows you to wrap around and come to a junction to either continue straight towards the Lake or turn back into town. We don't need a map that allows for endless police chases. There's no EvoCity map that allows for this due to the fact that there are a # of different tunnels that can be blocked off. On V5P - You can't rely on leading the police on a ridiculous and endless police chase. You're going to need to find a solution whether it be ditching your car and laying low in the Industrial area, hiding your car in the cornfields or even booking it on foot to catch a ride on the subway to get out of town.
: What are some things that I believe are important (?)
Optimizations
I think there are a # of different things that need to be present and with much discussion about this with
it was agreed upon that there needs to be a mid/large scale role-play map that prioritizes optimization. This might mean making more use of rooms/areas that might be accessed through teleporting, which can be seen on Rockford in the PD to an apartment/labs on V2D and even the subway station on V5P. Not only does this allow the map-making process to be done in a shorter time frame, as it eliminates many issues that may arise when trying to plan out the urban context. This is something that could certainly be done for inner-city spaces such as apartments, condominiums, certain shopping areas and government buildings. This can drastically improve FPS in the urban context by having resource intensive areas be located further away and ensure that you're not rendering anything you don't
need to be rendering.
Separation of RP Zones
Another crucial component would be proper planning of RP Zones in order to find the perfect balance and separation between role-play types. Rockford, for example, lacks any sense of separation with the only proper slum location being 20ft away from City Hall and the Industrial area being a few seconds past the Police Department. The planning process starts with a bubble diagram to map out areas and their purposes to ensure that it makes sense in the end.
Integration and Interaction
I want to incorporate features as simple as light-switches that allow you to toggle the lights either in an entire building or individual rooms.
Adding a staff-room that has control panels that can globally turn off all lights to triggering events will bring in the ability to modify the environment for role-play purposes. This was a feature on the original RP_Downtown_V2.
Spawn Zone (Global
)
I believe there needs to be (1) spawn location and I have always had the belief that this should be a transportation center of some sort - similar to RP_Downtown_V2 originally having spawn-points in the subway to HL2 maps spawning you at a train station. It gives you a sense that you're new coming into town which makes complete sense in consideration of NLR. There isn't a need to have spawn locations for different classes of people and it only creates issues when you may be building something that obstructs one of them. This spawn point also opens the door to be a way to interface information to new players by placing advertisements/information on walls that could possibly offer a way to direct link them to the forums, marketplace, UserCP, etc.
![[+]](/forums/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Rockford Issues