I have Half-Life 2 and it shows up as a missing texture as well; might want to re-check your pack again.

The npc's work fine, except maybe the strider, who can't interact with the player all that well because it's trapped behind a wall, and the player can play in the rest of the map without it noticing him.

The area looks fine, but you still need to buildcubemaps in console. I don't care if it's just for a test release, all released maps should have 'em built.

I think the map needs an introduction. How did the player character get there? Did he wake up in an alleyway with an HEV suit on?

The area looks almost believable and the architecture is nice, but I'm unsure of what exactly this place is. For example: there are tons of explosive barrels, yet, it looks like there are enough storefronts, and apartment building fronts leading around a central square, like a park. A park with explosive barrels? I've never heard of that, and there doesn't seem to be any indirect reason to have them there except for gameplay reason, which shouldn't be the case.

I think you should also change the soundscape. It's too repetitive and doesn't sound like anything. I'm supposing it's supposed to sound like distant wind, but just sounds like my grandmother breaking wind.

The lighting seems rather dull, except for maybe the blue lighting from the combine spotlights on the distant buildings, but I couldn't tell ya what time of day it was. Just very generic.

There is plenty of debris to make the place feel abandoned, and it seems properly placed. The decals are a nice addition and help to break up the redundancy. Although, some of the Combine decals and poster decals seem to be too close to the ground to be logical.

The gameplay by itself though is very, very hard. Even with an rpg clip of 9, and rockets strewn about the map, it just seems very unlikely that it's fair to the player to have to endure all those enemies one after the other without a break.

Overall I like how this map is progressing, and you're right, the npc's are a nice and needed addition, otherwise the map feels dead. I think adding an appropriate city soudscape will help that even more, as well as some interesting lighting. It needs a good story to belong to. Give it a reason to exist! Good job, keep it up!

I am now in the finishing stages of this map (Thank hell), and know this: It took me a weekend to make the brush based world of this map, plus the relevant environmental entities. The other couple months I have been fighting tooth and nail to get N.P.C. type entities working properly. Now to all you multiplayer mapping naysayers: Entities aren't binary, it is not a case of "If you set them up correctly they will work". This is simply not true. They are completely non-linear in their operating. They have wasted me countless hours slaving away at the computer. I won't give any examples because inevitably ppl will say "Did you try this..." and I can't be arsed to put every single workaround I tried in here. But I got everything working moderately well. Now this is the fun bit- I am asking you to play the level! Yes, that's right. I have decided that the best way to test balance is for a few ppl to play the map. As this is a computer gaming website, I am sure that won't be a problem

There is a custom texture included in the .bsp file (I zipped it in with pakrat)

http://s24.quicksharing.com/v/9669366/Courtyard.rar.html

Warning: You need WinRar to open this one.

And for those of you who don't want the hassle of WInRar:

http://upload2.net/page/download/imPXvjJs423WkMY/CourtYard.bsp.html

Happy now?

Haha. Knew there was something weird about that. Try this:

Okay, I have made some updates here mainly spawned by comments on V.E.R.C. forums:

Download link: http://www.fast-files.com/getfile.aspx?file=2266

Image of a building:

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r233/Flynn_bucket/courtyard0006.jpg