Salmar Theater Map

[Ajax]

This map was being built for Zombie Panic as an objective map. It is based on a section of street near my home. I'm currently giving it an overhaul for L4D.

THE STORY
You have just finished a weekend zombie movie marathon at the old Salmar Classic theater. As you exit the theater on Sunday afternoon, you find the movie surround sound had drowned out the infection outbreak in the streets outside.

OBJECTIVES
1:Find a radio upstairs
2:Get to the apartment roof for evac
3:Door is locked, reboot the security server in the basement
4:Server needs a keycard, search the apartments
5:Use the card to reboot the system...wait 2mins for a 3 digit door code
6:Use the code to open the roof door
7:Get on the helicopter when it arrives

I've used a lot of logic entities to keep things random...the radio spawns in 1 of 3 spots and the keycard spawns in 1 of 8 spots. The 3 digit code to the roof access door is randomly spawned each round as well. I intend to also spawn random barricades to make your route a little different each round.

An older video with a run through of the objectives.
Here. (http://www.wegame.com/watch/l4d_salmar_b01_vid04/)

A video that is basically Objective 1. It shows the start of random barricades in use...giving a 50% chance the front exit of the Theater will be blocked
Here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMG11E6Vw8o)

UPDATES
The main street section is almost done and the apartments are starting to get their props now. I managed to make a copy of the tree model, decompile it, scale it down to 1/16th scale and recompile it so I could put trees in my skybox. I've added areaportals throughout the indoor areas. The back alley is getting cleaned up and the basement is starting to get some detail work.

http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010126.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010099.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010131.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010101.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010124.jpg http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010000.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010002.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010110.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010119.jpg
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/l4d_salmar_b010125.jpg
The street that inspired me.
http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/SA_Street02.jpg

That's it for now. Thanks for checking it out.

[Dead Fish]

Nice map! It really does look like you have already spent some time on it.

Hmm, the cars look quite huge in some of the screenshots.

[Junch]

usually i'm pretty apathetic to the work of others, but heck, this is pretty good. i'm looking forward to playing it sometime. yeah, dead fish is right though, the cars are a tad bit big.

hopefully, we'll be able to shoot some popcorn lolz

[JakeCourtney]

Needs more lighting work.

[Gavage_R]

This looks like a really good job. Its the best looking map i have seen for l4d.

[Otreum]

Excellent looking map, I would most definately love to play on it. And for your first map it's pretty darn good, I can see you've spent quite alot of time on it, and it has paid off. The outdoor environment is a nice contrast from the darker inside environment of a movie theater, and it's nice and open outside without being TOO OPEN, which is good. It looks like the infected navigate the map without any worries, so that's looking good as well.
Not too sure about it needing more lighting work, I mean sure every map could always get the extra touching up, but the lighting to me looks fine.
The cars ARE too big, but nothing a little scaling can't fix up. I couldn't help but notice in one of the screenshots that a female zombies legs were inside the ground as she was running, so I don't know if that's just an issue with the navigation or it was just a one off glitch, but if it occurs all the time, you might want to have a crack and fixing it otherwise it'll be detrimental to the quality of the final map.
Other than that, I can't really pick any other negatives until I play the map, but this is the first map I've seen or I think anybody has seen for L4D that is actually very appealing and well done, so good work and keep it up, can't wait to see more! :D

I was just thinking that later on in your map, as a bit of an easter egg, you could create a little machinma clip that you could have play on the projection or something.

[Ajax]

Thanks for the comments so far!!

Alot of stuff is screwy right now...I've never done a nav mesh before so it needs tweaking for sure...but the infected do ok for a first go. Lighting is still a wip...happy with it for the most part, but still tweaking. My doors are still regular prop_rotating and func_rotating ...the bosses do ok with func_rotating, but the horde piles up in front of them...and nobody but the survirors can use the prop_rotating.

The vehicles in the street are from ZPS so they will not come with the map...alot of the props will be replaced with l4d content once the sdk is out. My objective triggers still fire for things like unlocking doors, but all game_text is not displayed when triggered.

Hopefully everything is easy to clean up once the full game is released, can't wait to play with new toys :)

[Faulty]

Change it to night time outside.

[Otreum]

Why night time? Every horror game is night, dark, grey, black.....monotonous....it gets boring after a while. It's far more exhilerating when you can see exactly how many zombies are coming after you and being lit up by the sun in the sky.

I mean why have a night map,...with a dark cinema...it's like that zombie panic source map with the theater, it's great inside, but you walk outside and it's night time...YAWN...thats what I mean by monotonous...heck, the map is filled with colours and stuff, which is great, but the lack of lighting drowns out the contrast and the whole map is just a big dark area....which is not very exciting. (Not saying the map is bad btw, it's great, I love it, but if it had more contrast, it would be even better).

Everyone has it in their head that because it's a horror environment, everything needs to be dark...but that is such an misconception and more often than not, it's detrimental to a maps quality.
What would be nice is a Movie (talking about sequence of l4d maps/stages), where at first it is day time and you have to make it to a certain area to collect something, with each level, the day time fades to night, and eventually, you have to travel back to the start again, with a different time of day and a different level of difficulty.

If source had the same system that STALKER does with it's multiplayer maps (being able to choose the starting time of day and the rate at which the time of day passes), then it would definately add a hell of alot more replayability to maps.

[Supremacy]

Yeah, needs a bit more lighting...

[Otreum]

Supremacy....where does it need more lighting? that would be more helpful to his development :P

Cinema's or Theaters are generally pretty dark inside, especially in the actual theater part, where the roof either has very small but powerful volume/adjustable lights which are dimmed to nothing while a movie is on and turned right up obviously when the movie is finished.

If anything, the seated theater area is probably too bright... The whole room, should barely be visible and the only lighting should really be coming from the actual screen projection itself.
Maybe try putting some small illuminating walkway lights in the walkways next to the seats, they are the ones on the ground that help people see where the walk ways area and it lights up the end of the rows of seats.
And one of the pictures there shows black and white floor tiling on the ceiling (it looks ugly), it's the pic where you're looking at the zombies strippers movie poster, that area should be lit up more...that's about the only pic that I can see that needs more lighting.

Just thought i'd ask about what was the story behind the map. What state was the theater left in? I'm guessing it was open

[Platypus]

This looks really cool! I'll be interested how you pursue the whole light or dark outside debate.

[Brimstone]

Not night... early dawn. You emerge from the all-night marathon to find a new world...

[DangerWillRobinson]

This map is SEX. I can't wait to see it on L4D.

[mzbhvn1]

It doesn't need lighting at all. it will still be scary and just because its day time does not mean you are safe from zombies. the foot on the female zombie i did notice at once as well. This is a sweet map and it will be refreshing to experience it in different settings than traditionally assumed.

[DangerWillRobinson]

It doesn't need lighting at all.


Lighting is one of the key elements of design in horror. If you don't nail the lighting, you won't nail the scare factor.

Think of it this way. You will totally go into a perfectly lit basement, but would you enter the same basement with nothing more than a flickering table lamp? No, because you would be fucking scared of the darkness, which holds a lot more than zombies, it holds your frightened imagination. You will be scares shitless from what you can't see.

[squerl]

That's looking really good, keep us updated.

[Platypus]

You will be scares shitless from what you can't see.

That's a primal fear. The fear of unknown. Dark spot equals unknown.

[Ajax]

Thanks guys. You can debate the time of day all you want...this map will be set in the afternoon light. I'll tweak the brightness and such a I go....I'm still learning and slowly at that. The interiors are darker still after the theater...the apartment block has no power except for emergency lights. Many models are missing from the original version of the map...I'll remodel with l4d content anyway. Here are some shots of how it was looking in ZPS.

http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/zpo_salmar00001.jpg

http://www.dragondreamstudios.ca/Discordia/zpo_salmar0060.jpg

[BenKenobi88]

Very nice. I think I might have played that map...? Maybe it was a different theater, I can't remember.

Either, it's looking good, seems like plenty of rooms to mess around in. There just needs to be an objective like you said.

[Otreum]

Perhaps the objective could be to go restore power at a nearby power station so you can finish watching your zombie film :)

[Obama Yo Momma]

Perhaps the objective could be to go restore power at a nearby power station so you can finish watching your zombie film :)

That would ruin the point of watching the film...Its better to fight the undead first hand.

[Otreum]

Yeh..well you would have to fight the undead first hand....to get to the power station and back...

[Ajax]

Currently the objectives (which were designed for ZPS) work like this:

The survivors spawn in the theater, having just finished a movie. As they leave, they trigger a case logic which spawns a radio randomly in 1 of 3 locations. Once they find the radio they are prompted to get to the roof of the apartment across the street for evac in 15 minutes. The roof access door is locked electronically (the apartment is on emergency power only), players are prompted to go over-ride the pass-code in the basement via the security server. At the server they are prompted for a keycard (another logic case was fired to spawn the keycard randomly in one of the 8 apartments) The key must be grabbed and the server must rebooted (this takes 2 minutes). I used some logic entities here to generate a random 3 digit code that displays on the server screen and will now unlock the roof access door. Once on the roof, you will have to hold out till the Heli comes to get you.

Most of this functions still in l4d, just not the game_text entities which actually tell you what to do. Should be easy to fix up next week after release.

[Dre]

HOLY SHIT!!! that map look HELLA good.

Ajax.............
http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s353/KatieBelle_HelloKitty_2008/whos-awesome-1.jpg

and i LOVE the objectives, it gives you something else to do beside, get from point A to point B making it more exciting. NICE JOB.

[Enzo]

Currently the objectives (which were designed for ZPS) work like this:

The survivors spawn in the theater, having just finished a movie. As they leave, they trigger a case logic which spawns a radio randomly in 1 of 3 locations. Once they find the radio they are prompted to get to the roof of the apartment across the street for evac in 15 minutes. The roof access door is locked electronically (the apartment is on emergency power only), players are prompted to go over-ride the pass-code in the basement via the security server. At the server they are prompted for a keycard (another logic case was fired to spawn the keycard randomly in one of the 8 apartments) The key must be grabbed and the server must rebooted (this takes 2 minutes). I used some logic entities here to generate a random 3 digit code that displays on the server screen and will now unlock the roof access door. Once on the roof, you will have to hold out till the Heli comes to get you.

Most of this functions still in l4d, just not the game_text entities which actually tell you what to do. Should be easy to fix up next week after release.

First map? Riiiiiiight...
:P lookin good!

[Ajax]

Hehehe. I only said it was my first map with Hammer. I haven't really mapped since Heretic II. I've spent months learning how to use hammer and getting familiar with the different entities for triggering events. Thanks again for the comments.

I've been adding more areas and got my original sky working. Only 2 more days and sdk should be updated and I can get textures and models updated, then maybe a beta for those who would be willing to test it.

[MindHack]

It looks awesome! cant wait to play it

[Ajax]

I figured it was time to update this thread. I've been keeping my progress logged at http://www.l4dmods.com/index.php but let it fall to the lost pages on this site. Anyway, I updated the op with some new pictures.

[Failfox]

Good job on that, very cool map.
I wonder how you did that code thing, could you tell me that?

[Chaos]

Amazing work so far, love the change of atmosphere, as well as actual map objectives. This seems like a very fun(but somewhat short) single map campaign. Or do you plan to add on to it and make it a full Movie?

[Ajax]

Failfox: Here is where I found the random code stuff. There is a VMF to download in case you do not want to try to set it all up on your own. http://halfwit-2.com/?page=tutorials&id=193&PHPSES SID=b4425b64b114f118da17dd22948234f1 (http://halfwit-2.com/?page=tutorials&id=193&PHPSESSID=b4425b64b114f118da17dd22948234f1)

Chaos: I am undecided if I will make a movie out of this one. Right now it is meant to be a versus map played in 15 minute rounds. If enough people like it, I will probably add some more levels to it...

[Ajax]

I seem to be unable to edit this thread. I was hoping to clean it up and bring it up to date. I will do so if I am ever able to edit it. Anyway, I have released a beta of a survival version that you can download from here (http://www.l4dmods.com/index.php?option=com_joomloads&view=package&Itemid=133&packageId=105).

[doa]

screenshots look good! looking forward to playing this one :)