Shaunsville was my first experience doing any developing work, and it really shows. I started working on the map when I was around 13, really just learning the basics from a few tutorials. I had some experience making flash movies since around 10, so I had a little experience doing some digital art at least.
If you want to skip all of the history, you can download all versions of the map at the bottom.
ShaunsvillB1
Released 9/27/2005, getting the first version of Shaunsville out the door was really hard for me. I had bumped up against a lot of limits I didn’t understand, and I really had no clue on how to build a map. I had a Athlon 3500+ at the time, so building maps would take me offline and take a long time. Originally I remember running into a problem with HLVIS crashing, but at the time I didn’t understand that it was my brushwork that really caused problems. The only way I could get it to build was to crunch the visible range, so that’s why all of the back clipping. B1 was also fullbright because RAD.exe for me just would take literally days to run, so I just stopped it. Chunks of the map were missing because they had problems but I couldn’t really understand at the time why.
The HWRP community really kept me going and encouraging me to finally get the map released. I remember mapping late nights on the weekends and chatting with my IRL friend Jacob ‘Boa’ about things we should add in the map.
ShaunsvillB3
Released 10/11/2005, after my first release I began to see the problems that folks had with the map. The map looked ugly, the textures were misaligned, entities didn’t work, the back clipping was horrible, the lighting was non-existent, and the list goes on. I first started with fixing VIS issues and then adding lighting. I also started to fix up some messy brush work, and start to understand why that was so important.
ShaunsvillB3v2
Released 10/16/2005, this iteration I started to move a few things around to help some of the map more visually interesting. I also started to pay attention to textures a bit more rather than just applying them. I also had a lot of feedback from the HWRP community at this point where I can start making things for people. I remember (superlagg?) wanted a room for the Dead Poets Society org, and I was able to just make room for them. I also started to realize that folks just wanted properties, so I started to make areas where folks could buy.
Still not the prettiest thing in the world, but I was starting to learn a lot about how to interact with the build tools. I remember around this time I was reading a lot of articles and doing experiments to figure out how I can extend some limits. Leafnodes and clipnodes were at a premium.
ShaunsvillB3v6
Released 10/18/2005, not really much changed in these micro iterations. More lighting, better control over applying textures, and of course more properties. Interior design started to look a bit better, and architecture started to actually come into focus rather than just be totally functional.
Shaunsville_b4v9
Released 12/24/2005, I started to look at other maps as inspirations. I stole some vfx from mecklenburg like the lights on the windows. I also started to think about more interesting architecture and lighting like the gunstore. One major feature was adding the clocktower. Originally I wanted Harbu/Steven to sync up it to the time in-plugin, but I don’t remember if we ever did that.
One major thing happening in the ecosystem at this time was the rush to develop a car mod. This map introduced controllable streetlights and plenty of parking spaces. Unfortunately the plugins just weren’t ready with the cars causing suicide deaths and server crashes.
Shaunsville_b5v7
Released 11/10/2006, I think at this point I was looking at doing some other maps like Mecklenburg and Cerberus. Coming back to Shaunsville I decided to make a day version of the map with some inspired geometry. I started to focus on the roofs because people sometimes end up there. Obviously I was inspired by the Matrix. Some places ended up with less geometry because I wanted to fit more into the map. Still, at this point I was pretty focused on the functionalities of the maps rather than their aesthetics.
Shaunsville_b7v2
Released 4/19/2006, this was the last version of Shaunsville I made. This was back when X-Factor and HWRP merged together. We added in this feature that let you hop to Mecklenburg (the X-Factor server) when you ran into the end of the highway. Again there was a large focus on making some homes into the map this time, as well as spiffying up some areas. There was really a lot of cool stuff in the map, but I found that it segmented roleplay a little too much. At this time, I started making custom builds of Mecklenburg and looking at doing Cerberus.
