Yep, checked it out. Well, can’t wait for the bigger update, though. To be honest, I thought it was it, when Steam told me it downloaded workshop content for Black Mesa. Hmm… It’s like being a kid in the candy store… Waiting for more updates of the BMPD…
So, the long-awaited B Map expansion is finally complete. It’s a whopper at 320% entity data, which means it probably wouldn’t even have been possible without the engine updates intended to accommodate Surface Tension Uncut. In terms of “size” as measured by how-far-you-have-to-zoom-out-in-Hammer-to-see-everything I am thinking the other maps will be about the same, but they won’t be nearly as dense- while B Map is a closely packed collection of offices, other parts of the facility seem to have more empty space to them.
Over all I am extremely happy with the way the map turned out. There are of course additional changes I will be making to it, but they’ll be minor fixes- as it stands, I’d say that pd_c1a2b is now essentially done.
I know that next I’m going to be tweaking Map C a fair bit, as it’s currently in something of a sorry state. After that, though, I am not sure whether I want to expand A or C first, or possibly do some areas of one and some of the other.
Great knowing that progress has been done and will be done to the Office Complex Pre Disaster maps! In my opinion, expanding Map C would be pretty great, since there are doors leading up to areas that are not yet accessible and it would be cool to explore them and know where they lead to.
So, Map C is… maybe not COMPLETELY polished, but in an ACCEPTABLE state, at least. Now I can start expanding it.
The first few areas are going to be simple and obvious. Beyond that, I’ve decided to go through with making another office section off of the first stairwell, connecting back to the left fork of the corridor that leads out from behind the yellow-lit cafeteria area.
Ok. Sounds good, looking forward to it!
Work on what I am terming the Southeast Quadrant of C Map is proceeding at a pretty good clip. I’m thinking that this and the tram station in the southwest will be the two big areas of expansion- the northern end is I am thinking just a few service areas.
Looks cool! Especially the room on the second image. 
Yeah, I figure that since Admin 2 is kind of the central hub for the entire office sector, it would be a logical place for the Administrator’s office to be found. Not sure whether or not Breen will actually be in it, though. I have a standard policy of avoiding anything that could tie BM explicitly to Half-Life 2, and even if I go back on that there are still the issues of why Breen has no dialogue and more importantly why he is the same age as he was in the second game.
Not a fan of HL2?
There’s a “young Breen” skin on FPSbanana, should you change your mind. I think it looks weird to be honest, though.
No, not a fan of HL2. And the skin might be useful… more to the point I’ve just discovered that a lot of Breen’s dialogue is still available in the game. I’m pretty sure he won’t be appearing in the first release of that office… but maybe in a later update?
As usual, kindly asking you to provide us with the map, so that we could figure out your current area of “work-in-progress”, dear Admiral!
Looks awesome!!! Lovely!!!
Expansion of the southeast quadrant is… well, not polished, but all the pieces are now there.
This is going to be another ‘rolling improvement’ update, where minor fix updates to A and B maps will be released within probably a week or two of each other, followed by a fixed and expanded C Map. I’m very pleased with both of the other maps, but they need some minor tweaking.
I was going to include a connection to another well-known area through this door in the secondary stairwell, but I am not sure if I am going to be able to include both it and the southwest tram terminal- Map C is odd in that it has relatively little entity data but is currently at ~85% of the brush limit, and I’m expecting the tram station to take up a goodly amount of that. We shall see.
Looks awesome!
It’s a bit lonely here… 
yup, seen that, and it’s quite exciting and inspiring to see you fixing things at this level!
I’m checking this thread in particular, and the whole community quite regularly, knowing that at some point new gifts would appear as the result of the hard work and desire to restore Black Mesa Research Facility to its glory! 
The most recent update is just a fix for Map A, not a great deal to be too excited about, but it’s another step on the road to an open and fixed C Map. I think things will kick into a higher gear once I finally polish off Map B as well.
It’s kind of fish-or-cut-bait time as far as Office Complex is concerned, as my attempts to create good “false color” lighting simply have not been very successful. Office Complex looks good with pure white lighting, but it’s also very soulless, and as soon as I try to add color on top of that everything just goes straight to hell. So I’m putting the project back on hiatus for the foreseeable future, and I’ll probably only really be able to bring it back out when one of the below things happens:
- I know there are going to be a ton of engine improvements made for Xen and potentially onward. Maybe some of the functionality added there will allow localized colored-lighting-like effects without actual colored lighting, and possibly also ways to prevent lighting pileup that are less constrained than existing versions (a functional “max distance” parameter would be very nice indeed).
- The community reaches some measure of consensus about having a basically all-white-lit Office Complex. I personally don’t like the look of it, but maybe I’m just too close to the project?
- If anyone more experienced wants to take a stab at Office Complex you are welcome to do so- the existing VMFs will remain on the workshop, and if you want additional resources like the new textures I can make those available as well. I am officially putting the project up for adoption.
I do intend to continue with my pre-disaster work- maybe not right now, but certainly by sometime in July with fixed and expanded Questionable Ethics maps. Then there’s a related project that I’m working on with the modder who was restoring Lambda Core a while back (although as he seems to have left the community or at least that project I may end up releasing it on my own), and after that I am thinking of taking a more systematic approach to the entire pre-disaster operation, restoring maps in a more orderly fashion, and seeing what has become of some other people’s reconstructions that have not been active in a very long time. I refuse to let one failure get in my way, and am actually feeling pretty optimistic about restoring the Xen, Surface Tension Uncut, and Deathmatch maps if/when sources become available.