April 02 2016 Edit : New version of the map - I added few missing stations back to its glory, and upped resolution of the image for better view. More polishing works to be done.
Disclaimer before I start this topic : English is not my mother language, so if you see any inadvertent errors or omissions, feel free to correct me.
For the past seven days I have been working on a transit map for the Black Mesa Research Facility for use on my custom Black Mesa map. Right now, it still need some polishing works, mostly on textings.
I know this has been attempted a few times before me. But I wanted to make one myself because I was planning to use it on my custom map, and it’s easier than getting a permission. Plus, none of them seemed “finished” either.
I used .RK’s map for reference. I really was against the idea of using modded maps, since I wanted this to be more vanila (however if I wanted real pure vanila I would need to use Half-Life. But did not for reasons I will explain later), I did not want to go through all the levels and take screenshots myself. So, many diamonds to him!
I did not base the map on the transit map seen in Blue Shift - it has too many problems and decided to do it from scratch. I also added a new line - Violet Line (which did not exist in Blue Shift). I also had given each lines a number in addition to the colors.
On the left side of the map, all the stations in Line 1, 2 and 3 are listed. On the right side, stations in Line 4 and 5, and some minor trivia (legends).
Please keep in mind that the map is 2-D projection and therefore does not account for height difference between stations. For example, obviously, High Security Storage Facility is located higher than Administration Offices, as seen in Half-Life. This (of course) is not shown in the map.
This is still WIP, which mean it is bound to change (not a final product).
Even though Black Mesa was used to make the map, I decided to step further and integrate Opposing Force and Blue Shift into the map as well. This means you can draw “paths” where Gordon, Adrian and Barney has walked through during the course of their game on the map. Here are them (smaller size for better view). Sorry for the cheesy Microsoft Paint-Like drawings.
(Note: This path maps were created before I made changes to the transit map, so they may be different from the map shown above. It shouldn’t affect too much though.)
Please do note that I did not use Decay for reference a lot and that is why you see all these big jumps of location. The game was on very low priority.
Some things I wanna note:
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Signs saying “Sector B Coolant Reserve” can be seen few times in-game but Gordon never visit the reserve. In the map, the reserve is indeed in close proximity with the Anomalous Materials, but you can see Gordon simply skipping the reserve past.
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Freight Yard is at the edge of the facility, as this portion of the facility is directly connected to the New Mexico Rail Network.
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Air Control is at the edge of the facility, obviously.
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Lots and lots of dormitories scattered around the facility.
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In all Half-Life games, it’s the train that gets transferred to another line, with people inside. I changed this deliberately however, and made trains can’t access other lines (exception at the Junction point). Now it’s people who has to exit the train, go over to approriate platform and ride the new train.
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Hydro Electric and Ordinance Storage Facility are in close proximity with each other, as can be seen in Opposing Force.
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Drainage Canal is located in center of the facility, assumed from the signs saying “NORTH ACCESS” and “SOUTH ACCESS” and I assumed that the canal is located the same distance from the two access tunnels - which is center.
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Medical Bay and Materials Transport are all located in the center of the facility as well.
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Uplink Center is in close proximity with Freight Yard (as numerous freight cargos can be seen in Uplink).
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One of the thing I wanted to keep in mind is to have the transit map easy to see and understand for those who are colorblinded. I’m not colorblind myself so this was hard to have. While I did try several options, I decided to keep it simple. My art skill isn’t sufficient enough to draw nice curves! The station IDs should provide a nice alternative for now.
However, nothing can be perfect. Half-Life, since it has never been worked on with realistic design in mind, lots of conflict occur that I was unable to adress in this map. Some of them are:
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According to the map, in Inbound chapter, Gordon has transferred his train once on Medium Security station then re-routed back on H.E. Labs station. This does not occur in-game. Also, in the same chapter riding trams, Gordon should have passed Silo D. This also does not happen in-game.
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According to the map, in Inbound chapter, Gordon should have passed South Wing of Level 3. This does not happen in-game again. Also, Couldn’t he have just used this station instead of North Wing?
(It’s possible that the south wing station was not accessible at the time of Half-Life) (These two are more of my problems than Half-Life, but I really did not have many rooms to put the stations) -
Did soldiers seriously drag Gordon all the way over to the proccessing plant from the rocket launch center?
(Most likely they used trucks of sort to transport him) -
Even though the map lists Hydro Electric, there is no feasible location for it to exist. The dam face south direction. But southern Black Mesa is occupied by the Air Control.
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There is no feasible location for the Cliffside Battle area in Surface Tension.
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Some very unnecessaily long travel in Decay, especially from Central Transit Hub to Code Green
(could be explained by the fact that they used transit system to get there)
… And that’s it.
UDhDDH7
