If you've played my maps before, it'll be obvious that I just fiddle with hammer, do something I like, then make a map out of it.
This week it's vehicles, and I've gotten the Buggy & Jalopy from HL2/Ep2 working pretty nicely...
(Don't ask how, just decompile the map when it's done :p)

Anyhoo, I cant decide whether to make it coop or single player, and figured I'd ask around.
Currently they're just running around in the old Funk Tank level, but I have 2 basic ideas:

Mario Kart style coop race:
--Underground sphere
--Antiquated style
--Some bit spotlights making it look like a monstertruck arena or something
--Trigger traps to knock your oponent into lasers\water and stuff
--Several laps, with counters and all

SinglePlayer:
--Semi outdoor map (bit like this topic7153.html)
--Use the vehicle to make jumps, clear turrets, etc
--Making an escape kinda thing...
--Maybe a few HL2 references

Looking for ideas

How about a co-op level where you have to create bridges, ramps etc. to get your cars across? A couple of lightbridges to drive on, mini-puzzles to drop roads or raise ramps, that sort of thing. I don't suppose the cars can be funneled?

Would a HL2 style big crane magnet that fits through portals be totally out of the question?

EDIT: Hang on, I presume they go through world portals, right? Though I doubt they'd fit through a regular one. So... how about a GIANT MEGA WORLD PORTAL GUN? Mounted on the bonnet! One that shoots portals the size of my shed or bigger.

Or am I just being silly now?

The bridge idea instead of racing seems pretty cool though.
I'd totally like to do something like that if I can fine tune the steering a little; it's kinda touchy but I was planning on putting stuff like lightbridges that turn off when the other player hits a certain trigger, or laser grids for example- hadn't thought of funnels till you mentioned that, or faith plates!

Cheers for the ideas; more stuff to think about!

So I'd probably go with the coop road. If it's a race, make sure to have enough space, to not make it about parking a car rather than racing with cars.

You could also make it a MK battle mode versus type of deal, maybe you have to tumble each others car over, Or push them off a cliff. Can you run people over to kill them? That could perhaps add to a score counter. You could get out and activate things with portals or such that could stop the player, maybe vertical light bridges. Or ones on angled panels so that they could be well placed to help tumble cars. Of course angled panels on the floor could also do these kinds of things. With the versus type set up, parking/getting out of a car would actually be an exciting thing to do.

Thinking about one of my Timesplitters map ideas, it's also very possible to make a certain hybrid between racing and battling. Like, that idea was mentioned (TS is a console shooter, but it has a car) consisted of two seperated, identical race tracks, and the players would race for a joint area where a single pickup rocket launcher would be, and the players can also try to tumble each others car over and run them over. The level would end after the first kill. You could have people race to an advantage point for a battle, both on identical seperated tracks like I mentioned or one bigger shared track.

I can see a racing sort of map being really fun. Even if you make the map Episode / HL themed would be extremely cool. Perhaps the bots escape from aperture or GLaDOS sends them out to explore?

ChickenMobile wrote:
Coop, definitely coop.

I can see a racing sort of map being really fun. Even if you make the map Episode / HL themed would be extremely cool. Perhaps the bots escape from aperture or GLaDOS sends them out to explore?

Haha! I love the idea of the bots bumbling their way onto the surface and finding a race course!
I think that's the clincher right there, cheers

What about a track with rocket tripwires (or if you're up for it, normal rocket turrets) that are actually hard to avoid, and one hit kills you. And there should be screens with GLaDOS on them, even if its outside (I think it should be outside, add some trees.. nature textures, huge box hedge walls, maybe even a skybox with the sun), or you could have one on the moon. Ramps and jumps are a must, maybe even a racetrack thats just big enough for one car (width, not length obviously), and the rest is a goo pit so you can ram the other player in!

So far I've got:
-outdoorness with skybox
-bloody massive level, so no tight corners
-Jumps
-pits with light bridges that the other player can trigger off by driving over a button (drop your opponent)
-Some light bridges blocking jumps
-Funnels that can suck up your opponent
-Laser grids

In the process of adding:
-Bits to shove your opponent into liquid
-Faith plates
-A burning ring of fire. (win)
-Some rockets mebbah (cheers for that one)
-Turrets with a bigass push force (cheers for that one too)
-Lasers which can be blocked\unblocked to do stuff

There's an issue with portals and world portals though :\
It seems vehicles (well driveable ones anyway) cannot make it through portals. Even world portals.
I'm not sure if it's to do with it being the driveable entity or the game having hardcoded rules for certain vehicle scripts (i.e. if you rename jeep_test.txt to airboat.txt and use that, it'll behave wildly differently, so some parts are clearly hardcoded!). Still, portal has plenty of cool stuff to play with!

This'll be my first antiquated map, so it'll be quite shit or quite nice... but either way it'll take a while

Anyway, I have another idea..

a func_tank to aim at each player, and that shoots an env_portal_laser that isn't lethal, and is a bit slower than the player can drive, so if you slow down for some reason you start getting zapped. idk if you can adjust the speed at which it aims, I've never used them before. Its kinda a "i dont no what a func_tank does but i herd about it alot" situation.

And what about triggers to randomly drop a storm of cubes somewhere on the map (maybe a bit behind the trigger so the person who drives through it isn't hit with cubes, but the person behind them is), so you can ram in to them and be slowed down. Maybe a trigger_once, tons of those cubes with draw and motion disabled up above, and ontrigger <cube name (every cube has the same name in each group)> enablemotion and ontrigger <cube name> enabledraw?

Driving on certain walls could be fun! I did a similar thing in gMod and it worked fairly well but again, there are limitations like in Prey, and the map has to be built with a certain block type. (ALthough at least with a car, the entire level wouldn't have to be rotated!)

So many nice ideas that are such an ass to implement >.<
Dropping loads of cubes on the car though? I like that one. Perhaps they could be primed to explode on impact. Actually, I love that idea! Like a little minefield

@tanger
Heh, maybe not a pre-race.. but the player could hit a trigger that spawns a bomb on the player's car. That'd be pretty fun!

I have one more suggestion that should be pretty easy, which would be for an outdoor map... maybe a crosswalk thing with exploding frankenturrets walking across it in both directions.