Temnograd

Temnograd (meaning Dark City) is my WIP retro style GTA:SA total conversion mod for classic audiences. It’s inspired by the aesthetics of GTA III, post-soviet eastern europe, autumn, and the early 2000s. Intended for both single-player and SA-MP. The purpose of this mod is to create a new fictional world filled with original content - the mod will not port content or reuse any intellectual property from other games. Current focus is only on the map, vehicles, and visuals.

First block of the map

I've been on a streak of posting something every month. I wanted to finish this first city block for this month's post but I realized it's too much work, so I'm posting my progress so far. Of course the first one takes longer because I'm figuring stuff out and making generic textures I can reuse later. Here's a vague plan of the area in Cities: Skylines:

Maps that are just grids on flat ground are boring so I'm trying to incorporate height variations, different angles, and irregular areas. Here's the block in Maya:

It might look simple but there are a lot of things to consider:

• which textures are unique for this model (here only the facades) and which are generic
• vertex color lighting for day and night
• "decals" such as manholes and drains
• how the collision mesh is created (I'm reusing the visual mesh for the roads and ground but creating simpler meshes for buildings and stairs)
• defining collision surface materials (simple asphalt compared to grass with procedural plants on top)
• collision lighting values (used for lighting dynamic objects such as cars and peds)
• object definition and placement files for the game
• exporting the object to blender, processing it, and then exporting it to the game

A lot of time went into figuring out the workflow and streamlining or automating parts of the process - now it takes seconds to go from Maya to seeing the object ingame.

And here are some screenshots of it in-game:

That circular part of the wall with grass will contain a big tree once I get to creating vegetation.

It looks a bit plain but it will improve as I continue working on it and in the future it will have some props such as garbage containers.

The night is just a test since I haven't made any light props or decided their positions. And those floating glowing textures are a test object using a custom shader for night window illumination - they randomly turn on and off during the night.

Supporters on Ko-fi can see archived videos of livestreams where this stuff gets created. I'm also considering doing some public streams (maybe on Kick) where I create landmark models for the map.

Not sure what I will have for you next time - maybe more progress on the map plan and objects or maybe another car.