Devblog #15 - CITY 24 V3
Based on V2, 90% of its original layout is remade from scratch with the force of a bulldozer
Here it is! After many hours of toil and hardship fighting with the old Source Engine I’m happy to announce City 24 V3 is finally arriving at all of our doorstep with the re-release Willard Networks. Until then I’ll be working on neat little extras such as a few more hiding spots, details and the like but the map itself is all around complete. I'm very happy with its current iteration focused on fixing the many flaws of past versions, including eradicating that "empty open feel" plus major performance gains.
One of my first priorities with V3 was to fix the cursed open landscape layout that proved dysfunctional. The map now follows a linear progression divided up into different areas inspired by i17 to fix the empty feel but also greatly improve performance. During testing so far the average fps sits firmly around 60-70.
Below is a simplified overview of the map surface layout. Rations are centralized in the middle with a straight line from the train station to its location. The areas citizens will find themselves in are the plaza, residential and slums areas, the nexus/loyalist street are kept in the distance as a more niche area to visit. The nexus is now centralized located very close to the plaza with shortcuts to rations and plaza catwalk access.
The visual aesthetic of city 24 is toned down to a more european grimy feel compared to its previous white marble clean feel in its past iterations. The city is no longer displayed as the crown jewel of cleanliness and “purity” as it once was, there are clear signs of decay, mess and mismanagement from its ruling government.
Shops generally needed an overhaul from the standard plain “box” you find in a lot of maps and thanks to FungletheBungle he’s provided me with excellent shop assets that I’ve utilized to bring more life and variation to the shop life on City 24. Most shops also come with secret hiding rooms and quite a lot of them come with extra floors as well.
Loyalist housing has been completely overhauled with its visuals to offer lots of space. The citizen apartments are reskinned with updated textures to look more up to date but remain mostly the same for their layouts.
The slums is a compact place with a mucky aesthetic attached to it. It offers a public pub with access to a underground smuggling tunnel connected to one of the plaza shops, a workshop and a large abandoned housing building useful for hiding and group locations. There's also a small resistance base to be found here plus a small vortigaunt cave. There are two access points to the underground from the slums plus 2 paths back to the residential area and 1 secret tunnel as well. The abandoned apartment building offers a lot of flexible paths to avoid getting caught up if an attack does occur.
City Twenty Four is well known for its close-proximity sewers and devious underground segments that link up close to that of the main city above. Where it was now once a presumed safe-haven and practical gathering point for many beckoning individuals, that has changed entirely. Here are the following basic changes that can be described:
- The sewers' size has been enlarged, encroached with many twisting tunnels and walkways that'll bring you to many different locations.
- The new underground is designed from the perspective as a “mini dungeon”, where players go to explore and loot, find temporary safety or to conduct devious dealings at the risk of xen spore inhilation, gas and frequent attacks from hostile alien species... or worse.
- There are no bases down there and is designed as a large atmospheric “highway” of sorts, moving from one location to the next searching for items or trying to mask yourself into obscurity.
- Be warned, when we launch the server this place will be full of danger to which Half Life's Universe can offer, simply waiting to destroy you. Caution is recommended.
- The Combine have their own methods of penetrating the overtaken premises along with certain accessibility to the region. Should the Combine venture inwards, you will never know until their clanking boot steps are heard. This is to avoid a Combine public gathering for an operation they will see fit to execute.
- The underground primarily connects up to the slums but also offers a way out on the plaza, though many of them are a noisy and slow venture downward into the depths. Can you find another way less revealing?
Until we're ready to re-release Willard Networks I'll be working on adding small extra tidbits here and there such as more hiding spots and other misc additions I can think of to help encourage "shady" activities on the surface. If you've got any fancy ideas that won't take make forever to do then feel free to post such below in the comments.
