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An Entire Map Of Half-Life 1… Drawn From Memory; And More Half-Life Cartography

Art & Creations Half-Life

Black Mesa. The place where the world went to hell. In the original Half-Life, we only see a relatively small part of it, but even so, what we do see amounts to an underground complex the size of a small city. Even though HL1 was never really known for its logical level design, many fans have tried to put together a cohesive map of the complex (such as this top-down overview by “Sterd”; this composite model by “Ripa”; and this realistic 3D map by David Dryburgh). But no one has ever tried to put a map together completely by memory, and by hand! What’s that? They have? Christ, is there anything the community hasn’t done in the time it took Valve to make HL3?

An Entire Map Of Half-Life 1… Drawn From Memory; And More Half-Life Cartography

Over at Mapstalgia, a Tumblr page dedicated to… you guessed it, drawing maps of video games entirely from memory, a really cool dude called Corinthian has put together a map of the ENTIRE Half-Life 1 game. ALL of it, excluding Black Mesa Inbound. He even added friend/enemy locations. The sizing isn’t quite right by the looks of it (and everything is completely flat), but aside from that, it’s really well-done. Let’s take a look:

What can we say? Just unbelievable. This guy’s good. While it’s got a few flaws here and there, as previously mentioned, for the most part, it’s just awesome. He’d previously done a map of the first eight chapters of Half-Life (excluding Black Mesa Inbound and including Apprehension), and made a separate, second part including the rest of the game. Let’s see him do HL2 up next!

Speaking of which – while there used to be some composite overview maps for HL2, I can’t seem to be able to find them. However, I have an alternative treat for you: an excellent topographic Soviet military-style map of City 17 and environs, encompassing the entire area traversed in HL2 and the Episodes. All of it. While most of the map is technically made up (albeit using real-life maps of areas that City 17 was based off of), the rest of it is based on the actual in-game levels. It’s unbelievably realistic, and it really does look like an actual Red Army topographic map. Friends of Justin Hammer needn’t worry, as the creator has provided a low-res version with in-game areas clearly labelled; as well as Alyx’s copy of the map, showing important Resistance sites, Metropolice centers, a to-do list, and more. Great stuff; do check it all out.

I can only hope that the release of Half-Life 3 (probably scheduled to tie-in with the next manned space landing on Pluto) will inspire fans to create maps just as great as these. The only problem is there might not be that much to map out when it comes to… the Arctic. Still, I’m sure Valve will cook up other interesting settings. After all, we do have reason to believe it will be far more than a mere episode.

4 Comments

  1. http://www.steam-france.fr/captures/autres/Black_Mesa_Research_Facility_HL_Map.jpg 😀

  2. Wow, awesome stuff! 🙂

  3. News is a little dry so far… 🙁

    Still, this is pretty damn impressive. The level of detail that’s remembered? Amazing.

  4. key = big fish. nuff said

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