It's true and honest and it's here. The Workshop download can be found here.
This is the map that earned me 3rd place on a TTT mapping competition. Oh well. I couldn't gather much information from the playtest session as only four rounds were played and it was all very chaotic. One characteristic of the map I remember changing is the playable area which is dependent on the number of players. Previously it took 16 players to unlock the full playable area, now it's 20. Of note is that the reduced playable area is even smaller in this version as can be seen in the picture below.
Some of the existing areas have received an overhaul, such as the nostalgic house featuring more unique videos playing on the televisions. The needy puppygirl room also exists now. Plenty of secrets and side activities have been added such as being able to visit a remote satellite. A whole bunch of T traps have been added as well, like a propeller trap in the school, three snipers positioned around the map (which can be shot down and cost three credits to summon), a boobytrapped heavy machinegun in the nostalgic house that will kill anyone who attempts to open a door. A truck that crashes into players and shits on 67th way.
For the public release, this map also went through an art pass. Many of the default Half-Life 2 assets were replaced with custom made models which just look better. Blender is pretty fun!. On the topic, the numerous red trucks placed all over the map are now physic props meaning you can launch them around with the Poltergheist and it's nice.
To commemorate this occasion, here's the first ever screenshot of the map, 2 months prior to release, and today. I did a lot of work in just 2 months, and it's time for me to rest.
The map source, meaning VMF and assets, are available in the downloads page. Except there's one problem! this source originates from a pre-release version of the map. It doesn't include a few last minute changes like being able to visit Dimorphos and some other quality of life adjustments. The reasoning behind this is that, normally to ideate a fully compilable version of the map, I'd zip the vmf alongside every custom asset packed into the BSP. One blunder though, you cannot unpack assets that have exist inside a compressed BSP file, this one being my first. The fuckup comes from the fact that I compressed the BSP prior to unpacking its assets to be zipped alongside the VMF. You're not missing out on much.
On another note, yes, I finally learned how to compress maps. It comes at a huge benefit though, file size went down to 90mb from 230mb which is incredible. And I'm sure file size will decrease another bit after compressing to GMA.
Anyway, here's a picture of the surface of Dimorphos, accessible in the workshop release of the map. It serves no purpose to the map but it's yet another side activity that players can indulge on.
And here's part of something awful that hides in this map.
