DM_FORTWICK

Fortwick is a HL2DM deathmatch map whose visuals and architecture are based on several medieval castles in Europe. The inspiration/reference was mainly drawn from Warwick and Bodiam castles in England and Carcassonne castle in France.

The map is a nostalgia kick-back to old school deathmatch maps.

Back in early spring 2014, I was having a chat with my good friend mr.P, and we were reminiscing about the good old times at planethalflife and how we used to upload our Half-Life 1 deathmatch maps on that site back in 2000-2001; then it struck me: I have not released a deathmatch map in over 12 years.

I decided to take a small break from CSGO and focus on creating a deathmatch map for Half-Life 2 over the course of the summer even with the little free time available.

I built the map just like we used to do in 1999-2000: it is fully made of brushwork and does not contain any prop, to capture the feel of an old-school brushwork-based deathmatch map. It replicates the mechanics of old school deathmatch maps in relying on weapons only before the introduction of fancy physics and gravity gun wizardry (I might release a second version with throwable physics objects such as wooden chairs/benches/barrels for the gravity gun fans).

The map has 20 spawnpoints.

Please note that Fortwick will be remade for CSGO very soon.

Special thanks to my good friend AlcyToronto for his valuable feedback and suggestions during the alpha/beta stage of the map.

Thanks and enjoy this map .

http://hl2dm.gamebanana.com/maps/183152

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Quote from FMPONE

Really cool architecture Will, you're improving a lot. This is a solid step forward for you. I would say the buildings are a little flat still, why not dig more of those details into the brushwork, create actual depth instead of relying on overlays and decals to do so much work. Also I would try to be really cognizant of building things based on real world photography from now on, recreating things and trying to be accurate will help you avoid very flat sort of boring surfaces such as in the last photograph.

I like your use of trims, try to take it to the next level. Trims on the ground where the floor meets the walls, trims around details, those sorts of attention to detail will help you get to a more aesthetic place with your work. Really cool stuff for the most part, keep it up!

Hey Shawn, thanks for dropping by

As I mentioned in the description, the goal of this map was a nostalgia kick-back to old-school fully brush-based deathmatch maps. Sadly and as you know, Source will easily hit the brush max limit. Even with having around 2000 displacements to ease the brush count, the 8000 limit was fastly approaching; sacrifices had to be done.

Floor/wall/ceiling trims are there in major rooms of the castle but had to be removed from hallways and less prominent rooms.

When remaking this map for CSGO in the near future, most of the crazy arches and wall/ceiling decorations will be switched to props, which will give me enough room to implement more trims and varied-depths/less flat decorations as you mentioned

Reference photos are always used and I mentioned them in the first line of the description

Thanks again for your suggestions

RCBOT2 waypoint file for dm_fortwick

If you want to play the map offline against bots or simply want to practice against bots before going online, this waypoint file will do the trick.

I created it specifically for RCBOT2, so you need to have this bot installed to be able to use this waypoint file.

RCBOT2 can be downloaded from http://rcbot.bots-united.com and works for several games/mods like TF2, DOD:S and HL2DM among others.

To install this waypoint file, simply extract and place the file dm_fortwick.rcw in C:Usersyour_usernamercbot2waypointshalf-life 2 deathmatchhl2mp

Enjoy and have fun

Quote from Spherix

I'm loving that (3d) skybox!

Hey thanks

I used a lot of reference photos of English castles and surrounding countryside and tried to simulate this look as much as possible in the 3D sky.

The background in the 3D sky is an actual shot of Irish countryside landscape

Quote from Squad

²

Did you took those photos yourself?

Thanks

I relied mostly on Google photos as well as some medieval-themed websites/blogs for architectural/historical references.