The story of Rosewood isn’t as extensive as that of Starisland. In reality, it’s the project encompassing this map that is. :)

Introduction

RP_Rosewood, short for RolePlay Rosewood (Garry’s Mod map naming conventions typically start with the prefix of the gamemode used), is a North American-themed roleplay map, more specifically Canadian. The creation of this map served several goals, the main one being to radically break away from Starisland.
The first objective: to offer a well optimized map, usable on game servers.
The second: to utilize displacements (terrain elevation), by creating a map surrounded by natural reliefs.

But before diving into the details of its creation, a bit of context is in order.

The Very Beginning of the Map

After finishing Starisland, I carried out several map experiments. The limitations of my website don’t allow me to illustrate them properly without causing confusion with Rosewood, but among these tests, there was one map whose goal was to create a road with the illusion of being "infinite" in length, using a teleportation system similar to the one used by Valve in Half-Life 2.

This test proved inconclusive. The teleportation system had a technical limitation: entities would lose their inertia after teleporting. The player retained theirs, which made the system viable for pedestrian use, but it broke immersion when transporting entities.
However, I believed it was possible to work around this limitation using a gLua script. That’s why I continued developing the map.

At this stage, it was not yet Rosewood, nor a terrain-based map, although the idea of using mountains as natural barriers was already present. The file I was working on was called rp_prototype_1, and dated back to October 2019.
As the days went by, the prototype progressed, until I decided to survey the GCA Discord server community. Unfortunately, I lost the questionnaire, but it focused on players’ interests regarding key buildings in a map and the characteristics of an ideal map.

The result was a two-level map, with a North American theme, and a multitude of planned buildings.
The name Rosewood came to me quite naturally: "I need a name that sounds American..."
After watching Beverly Hills Cop 3, the name Billy Rosewood popped into my head as the perfect fit. The map was going to have lots of trees... wood, Rosewood. The name was found. :)

The Map Gets a Name and Objectives

The name was set, and the foundation already laid. At this point, the main avenue with the red brick tunnel was already present. The first building on the map hasn’t changed: it’s still that one-story building with the same brick texture as the two-lane tunnel.
Fun fact: this building came from an older map I had started (for payment) for a Garry’s Mod server called Lococity RP. That server shut down during development, so I was never paid, and the .vmf file was shelved. That’s why I had no qualms about reusing some elements from that map. 😂

With Rosewood, I was aiming big.
Starisland had performance issues? Rosewood would be a showcase of optimization.
Starisland was too flat and lacked terrain? Rosewood would feature mountains taller than those in Rockford.
Too ambitious? Maybe. But honestly, it seemed doable.

Time passed, the map progressed steadily, and an idea came to me: to create a server that would accompany the map. A server capable of enhancing the gameplay experience and offering features never before seen in Garry’s Mod at the time.
Unfortunately, I didn’t yet know how to code in gLua. It’s not that complicated, but between dedicating time to map-making, which I already mastered, and learning a language that seemed very abstract to me back then… the choice was easy. 🤡

This was February 2020. The first holiday after Christmas was approaching.
That’s when I met someone who knew the basics of gLua programming. This person, known by the nickname Porka, won’t be credited on this project because he didn’t work on the map itself. The same goes for all the other people I’ll mention. The Rosewood RP server project is covered on a separate page. ;)

Anyway. I shared my server idea with him, and he was on board.
That’s when we began designing the broader and much more ambitious project known as Rosewood RP.

An Unexpected and Unbelievable Event

If you’ve been following along, we’re now in February. And as you surely know, on March 13, 2020, our dear President of the Republic gave a speech that would leave a mark. 🫠

The first lockdown was announced.
From an economic and health perspective, it was a disaster. But for us, it was a godsend. 😂

Indeed, my schedule, which had previously been dictated by high school classes and school holidays, suddenly became completely open — at least for two weeks.
Well, in theory. Because in the end, we never really went back to school (let’s not talk about the so-called online classes xD).

Map development accelerated tremendously. Almost the entire map was created in two months, between March and April.
What can I say… It’s quite difficult to describe the step-by-step process, as everything went by so fast. 😅

But what’s easier to analyze is the result.

A Poorly Thought-Out, Poorly Designed Map

Rosewood suffered from my lack of experience in building creation and architectural imagination.
Having not studied a real city beforehand for inspiration, the map suffered from major architectural inconsistency.

The buildings shared neither theme nor style. The materials used were often very different.
I created buildings based on the textures I found. Some came from GTA IV, others from packs like Real World Textures 1 & 2, and sometimes I recreated or copied buildings from other games or maps.
The only two buildings that were actually the result of prior research were the car dealership and the McDonald’s restaurant.

It didn’t take long before people pointed out that the streets were very empty, the buildings uninteresting, and that the map would ultimately be not very fun to play.
Despite the beautiful viewpoints it offered, it was clear that it lacked detail.
Around the same time, the map Southside was released, in complete contrast to what Rosewood was.

After discussing with my friends Porka and Snox (whom I had met earlier during the creation of Starisland, and who had joined us on the Rosewood adventure), we decided to abandon the map and create a new one.
This new map is called West Rosewood, and it is meant to fix all these issues.