Black Mesa Facility Map

Black Mesa Facility Map is an overhead map of the various labs and industrial spaces explored in Half-life (1998). Click the image to view:

I've been wanting to do something like this for a while -- Half-life influenced me a ton, and led me to making my own video games.

Process:

The image was created with the help of HalfMapper, a free program that allows you to view Half-life maps.

I took overhead screenshots of Half-life's levels, pasted them into Photoshop, and moved/resized/recolored them until they looked okay.

Accuracy:

The intention was not to create a 1:1 recreation of the levels in Half-life. This is the raw version of what that would have looked like:

As you can see, the levels tend to create a "tower" of spaces overlapping one another. It does look cool! But, I wanted to create something visually easier to understand. I spaced the levels further apart and made a left-to-right route for the player's journey.

So to be clear, my map is nowhere close to a 1:1 recreation -- but, hopefully it maintains the spirit of the game.

Notes:

• Big thanks to the Half-life Wiki for being a wonderful source of info.
  
• The intro tram ride is massive. The square footage it takes up in Black Mesa is absolutely astronomical.
• Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay's expansion pack areas were not included. They weave in and out of the original Half-life's spaces, so they'd be a great fit here, but were beyond my available scope/time.
• I went back and forth over how much additional infrastructure to include. 
  • Examples: Do we show roads connecting to the outside world? Do we show tram lines not shown in the intro? Do we make new routes the player doesn't use/see? Do we fill in fictional gaps, i.e. if we have "Silo D," does that mean Silo A, B, C exist somewhere?
  • I ended up mostly avoiding fabricating new stuff. I added a dormitory so the tram has a starting point, I jammed in the Hazard Course tutorial because I think that's funny, and extrapolated the hydroelectric dam's river. Everything else is directly from the game.
  • I think it'd be interesting to add more "fictional" details, i.e. how does someone normally travel between labs without dipping into a sewer -- but I'll leave that to someone else.

Details:

• This download includes my source Photoshop PSD file, the final PNG image, and a variation image (a version with no labels).
• The image dimensions are 7500 x 3750 pixels.
• If you print at 300dpi, it comes out at about 25 in. x 12.5 in.
• Free.