The Murmansk Shortcut
Between Lenin Avenue and Tortseva lies a once abandoned park, fittingly situated between two large apartments. The park, prior to its abandoning was rather popular for children and families alike, until the business that operated it was ran out of business under mysterious circumstances. It stayed that way until 2050, where the poor residents of Murmansk moved into it and its many tunnels.
The area slowly grew in popularity through word of mouth until 2060, where it is practically a tourist destination where people from outside can get a peek into the life of homeless Russian’s, engaging in petty theft to snag a couple 100 rubles. Companies benefited from this by installing multiple advertisements so bright, it lit up the whole place at night so that property owner’s don’t need to install additional street lights.
This has been a map long in the making. Russian cyberpunk settings is pretty rare to see since most if not all are situated around an Asian setting. I had this idea starting around early 2024 but didn’t know how to properly execute it since I had no source material to base it on. Fast forward to September where I officially started production on it. Much of the architecture and overall styling was based on Soviet brutalism of the past and present. I also took very loose inspiration from the architecture and lighting of Cyberpunk 2077.
One of the cool new things in this map is the holographic advertisements, which is really just an emissive transparent material, stacked multiple times on top of each other to create a ""3d"" effect. This method isn’t particularly new since Half-Life 2 used it for the Breen screens but its still a cool decoration, and an unusual Source decoration at that.
Valve – models and textures
Loiste Interactive – INFRA textures
Viper – helping me with some textures
