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Port Trajan

Port Trajan is one of several smaller ports in the city of Ascot, located in the Trajan District. This port is has been in operation since the 60's and primarily focuses on importing and rarely exporting fish along with other commodities. The only other thing this area is known for is when a fishing boat crashed onto the dock because the captain was blackout drunk.

Brian, a great friend of yours works here. He let you explore the area with his and the manager's permission. The place is empty apart from some security officers as it was a national break for everyone. Even they are laid back, playing cards with each other and watching the soccer matches. It's pretty hard for thieves to enter since it being surrounded by buildings makes it hard to break in and easy to get spotted.

The air never felt so fresh before, especially after enduring the stench of garbage that would cover parts of Ascot. It definitely did in your old apartment, which was the reason you moved out to your father's slight dismay.

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After Taganskaya, I started playing a lot of Zero Hour in order to pass the time and as a nice distraction from exam season which is happening right now. The last map was set on a port which reminded me heavily of Port Hoken which prompted me to create this. I also set out on an ambition to create the largest map I could while running good. Now looking back, I was dumb. It was much more difficult than I had expected and I had to sacrifice several things just to get compile times and performance up. The map took a total of 6 minutes to compile, I had to sacrifice several interior sections and baked ambient occlusion just so I don't go mad.

Overall, this map was awful to work on and I was asinine in thinking so. Despite that, I still learnt quite a lot on large maps such as experimenting for the first time on prop fading distance and getting a reality check that expensive water isn't always the best water. Planar reflections crippled the framerate in half and I did not want to take that chance and leave it in the final map, so instead I used a cheap alternative which I think works fine. This is also the first map where I debut a foam effect near the shores of the port, courtesy of Yanzl (credited below) who I had to edit the material slightly so it functioned properly.


- absolutely gargantuan map
- ai noded + nav meshed
- hopefully good performance??
- custom soundscapes


Valve - models
Slartibarty's Slammin' Source Tools [knockout.chat]
Yanzl's Source Emporium - providing Basalt textures, props & water mats [www.mapcore.org]
Jacob Robbins' Skybox (+ for fixing sky & providing cool water scroll) [jacobdeanr.github.io]
Nacelle [dotcolon.net]