A location initially redeveloped for TME, the sprawling network of utility tunnels beneath Ĉiamoro (formerly Mautasisa) are the veins that keep Orflavo's provincial capital humming. Better be careful though, nowadays you'll find more than just maintenance workers down there…
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The iteration of the utility tunnels you'll visit in S&M were originally intended for a scrapped segment of TME, but they weren't originally for either S&M or TME.
Many of the locations seen in our projects have been developed and redeveloped over the course of a number of years–the tunnels are a particularly interesting case.
In 2010 the earliest form of what eventually became them appeared in a map I was making for–of all things–Roblox (back when that was all the rage). Back then this map would've appeared far different as a decade and a half of graphical improvements have managed to slightly polish what it originally looked like. If you squint and blow some sand in your eyes, you'd get a closer approximation of what it once appeared as.
In late 2019, in an effort to teach myself how to use the Source SDK, I began to work on a map that would be based off of the environments featured within the original Roblox map.
For the next few months I continued to work on the map, adding textures and detailing as I began to understand the Hammer map editor. Some parts I'd later return to and rework, but the overarching layout remained fairly consistent.
Here you can see an idea I had for using them as backgrounds for sprites, something that would be used in TME just shy of four years later.
The map steadily expanded over time, and would later wind up on the Gmod workshop. You can find it here if you're interested.
Later on I began to work on an expansion to a gated section of the map in Source 2 after getting my hands on HL:A.
(Original above, Source 2 WIP version below)
At the time there wasn't a platform to distribute it with, aside from the HL:A workshop itself. My computer at the time struggled to run most things, Source 2 included, so it ended up getting thrown out. There was a definite novelty to seeing a map I had developed at various times over nearly 12(?) years at that point in VR, but it lacked any real value aside from that.
There was one point in late late 2020 when I returned to the idea and began working specifically on a series of utility tunnels and sewers that the current iteration draw heavily from, but unfortunately the only images I had of this were hosted on my long-since deleted Twitter. I'm pretty sure the files still exist on my old desktop, but that's 8,000 km away from me, so I can't access them. :(
Needless to say, the influence of Source and HL2 specifically have rubbed off on S&M–and what's a Source game without the inclusion of a section set in a sewer!