Map of Black Mesa Research Facility

[ripa]

I thought Freeman's Mind fans might find this interesting. I made it a while ago by pasting together the map sections in Blender 3D.

 

 

The map loses continuity at the point where Gordon gets clobbered, so the relative position between the two sections is arbitrary. Also, there is a transition between sections when Gordon is in an elevator, so I was free so select the vertical distance between the parts (i.e. the height of the elevator shaft).

[Alyxx Thorne]

That's pretty awesome.

[Lord Sinister]

What would happen if you made that in to 2 or 3 maps for HL? Is it too big for the engine? Todays computers can have all that in their memory easily, so wouldn't it be possible to make a map with much fewer loadings?

Of course someone as definitely tried to do this before, but I'm curious.

 

Well the Source engine has an entity limit, so linking them all together would probably breach that, and even if it didn't there'd probably be all kinds of entity conflicts and who knows what else to fix just from joining a mere two of the maps together.

 

No idea about the orginal engine's limitations and such, but the entity conflicts issue and whatever else remains the same.

 

It's an interesting idea though. Not sure how much point there'd be in doing it, mind.

[Blue]

What would happen if you made that in to 2 or 3 maps for HL? Is it too big for the engine? Todays computers can have all that in their memory easily, so wouldn't it be possible to make a map with much fewer loadings?

Of course someone as definitely tried to do this before, but I'm curious.

I tried to do something like that once with a top-down orthographic projection of all the levels in Half Life 2. (The level after Kleiner's Lab and the First trainstation don't match up) but as I progressed, Inaccurate scaling became an issue because the levels got procedurally bigger, amking scaling harder to do by eye. I got up to the first map of Black Mesa before an inordinately inconvenient computer crash got my Photoshop document lost.

[Bjossi]

It would be nicel if HalfLife could be made similarly to Dead Space 2, no loading screens are ever visible except when you reload a save or a checkppoint. I guess it is not one massive level but instead there is some kind of content streaming in the background.

 

But to be honest I find the idea of one massive level for an entire game to be mighty cool.

[Blue]

It would be nicel if HalfLife could be made similarly to Dead Space 2, no loading screens are ever visible except when you reload a save or a checkppoint. I guess it is not one massive level but instead there is some kind of content streaming in the background.

 

But to be honest I find the idea of one massive level for an entire game to be mighty cool.

Dynamic level loading I bet is something Valve considered a lot when developing Half Life 2 and found impossible or super hard with their system. Who knows, maybe we might see some kind of new iteration of it with Portal 2.

[Alyxx Thorne]

We'll find out soon, I suppose.

 

I would actually love one giant game world with no loading times because loading tends to break the flow of the game. If we at some point can achieve more smoother ways of loading the game world, then I think that would create a more intuitive experience.

[BTGBullseye]

We'll find out soon, I suppose.

 

I would actually love one giant game world with no loading times because loading tends to break the flow of the game. If we at some point can achieve more smoother ways of loading the game world, then I think that would create a more intuitive experience.

Wouldn't be as hard as it seems if you can manage to get the engine to load 3 maps in one go, overlay them, and load/drop maps one at a time...

 

Load map 1 & 2. When you cross over into map 2, it loads map 3. As you cross into map 3 it unloads map 1, and loads map 4.

 

Rinse and repeat. Easy to script IMO if the engine could do it...

[Alyxx Thorne]

We'll find out soon, I suppose.

 

I would actually love one giant game world with no loading times because loading tends to break the flow of the game. If we at some point can achieve more smoother ways of loading the game world, then I think that would create a more intuitive experience.

Wouldn't be as hard as it seems if you can manage to get the engine to load 3 maps in one go, overlay them, and load/drop maps one at a time...

 

Load map 1 & 2. When you cross over into map 2, it loads map 3. As you cross into map 3 it unloads map 1, and loads map 4.

 

Rinse and repeat. Easy to script IMO if the engine could do it...

I think that could be the future of FPS games.

[Eedo Baba]

OOhh. Would a download of the .blend file be possible? I'd love to take a look at this in 3D.

[BTGBullseye]

We'll find out soon, I suppose.

 

I would actually love one giant game world with no loading times because loading tends to break the flow of the game. If we at some point can achieve more smoother ways of loading the game world, then I think that would create a more intuitive experience.

Wouldn't be as hard as it seems if you can manage to get the engine to load 3 maps in one go, overlay them, and load/drop maps one at a time...

 

Load map 1 & 2. When you cross over into map 2, it loads map 3. As you cross into map 3 it unloads map 1, and loads map 4.

 

Rinse and repeat. Easy to script IMO if the engine could do it...

I think that could be the future of FPS games.

That's the way World of Warcraft, Far Cry 2, The Elder Scrolls series, The Fallout series, and many other games do it...

[Alyxx Thorne]

I think that could be the future of FPS games.

That's the way World of Warcraft, Far Cry 2, The Elder Scrolls series, The Fallout series, and many other games do it...

Good point.

[Blue]

With the cross-coordination of different areas, I have this far-flung idea that it could be done to make the teleportation sequence in Kleiner's Lab actually operate properly so that you teleport from d1_trainstation_05 to d1_lab_01. However it would require very careful sequence surgery in the Teleporter room on both levels as well as intense import work.

[Jek Jek Roo]

Wow, that's amazing. And why there's no exit on this map!? xP

[xxxxxxxxx]

Moved and Sticky'd.

 

Thought this might better give the viewers a better grasp of how ungodly far Freeman walks.

[Counter-Strike]

This needs a "you are here" X-mark to indicate where Ross is in the series. (: Seriously though this is pretty sweet nice work OP

[trevjamsey]

I wonder if you could do it the way Minecraft does it, load chunks of the map as you near it.

[Kirkreng]

This needs a "you are here" X-mark to indicate where Ross is in the series. (: Seriously though this is pretty sweet nice work OP

Only problem is that is very very hard to see where he is on this map since everything is sooo small.

[Kirkreng]

Ok, I tried, and this is where i think he is:

[Jek Jek Roo]

Well done, Kirkreng!