About the map:

A Half-Life 2 map (2005)

The map was my first venture into the world of single-player (sp) mapping. I fell in love with story-telling through games and saw them as an excellent (if not the best) medium to tell stories through. The venture into such a concept left me thinking of simpler ideas to get my feet wet while testing my new knowledge of the Source engine. I designed a short two-map concept that led the player from an apartment room out onto the city block to grab some flowers for his girlfriend's anniversary. (Cheesy? I thought so too). In order to keep the map fresh and appealing for people used to Half-Life 2's depressing environment, I by contrast wanted a living environment that showcased people going about their daily lives doing their own thing. This was a monumental task even for a small mapping project like this.

To get myself started on this, I stumbled into Valve's Faceposer tool used to create the amazing facial expressions seen in HL2. I experimented and dove into audio editing to get my own voice and other character's voices into the game. Much trial and error and three weeks later, I had myself a couple of interactive scenes for the player to come across when walking about the apartment complex. This included 1) an old lady standing outside her door calling the player. 2) A friend to the player returning from doing his laundry heading to his apartment and talking to the player. 3) a front desk clerk to greet the player as he would exit the building. The clerk even had several lines to deliver based on how many times the player 'used' him.

While the interactive scripted sequences helped introduce me into the world of Faceposing, I needed to expand my new-found abilities a little bit more. I had to create a believable outdoor cityscape. In order for such a city to be realized, I had several ideas lined up but most of them never came to fruition though. I needed cars driving around the roads, lots of people walking up and down the sidewalks, and to top it off, a car wreck occur right in front of the player with ambulances and a fire truck to create this believable small block of a larger city. It was all planned perfectly in my head, but one day, it all came crashing down. Yes, my Steam account 'crashed' on me erasing everything under my account's folders. I had backed-up my map about a month prior, but I lost all of the progress I had made since then.

Sad I know, but I decided to end the project. For as small as it was supposed to be, it had grown into something I couldn't fully handle all by myself and thus, I decided to end it. I still have the older version I backed-up which is incomplete in a number of ways, but it is still valid enough for me to work off of again if I ever wanted to pick up the project where I left off. The screenshots posted above are all I have left of the (now deleted) latest progress of the city block. If anything, I learned a lesson about backing things up! F.Y.I: None of my later projects ever suffered from this consequence!

Links:

• Profile of sp_morning on www.SnarkPit.net