I was once like you. I thought this was simply a collection of imported models, ripped from a decade-old Wii game. Ripping is incredibly easy these days, I thought.There was no better way to do this kind of thing, I thought.

I was dead wrong.

The first hint I got was that the geometry along the cliff paths was a little wigglier than I remembered.
"Huh". I thought. And nothing more.

The next was the geometry of the map. Noclipping through the map, I noticed several areas where the geometry clipped through itself. "That's odd. Nintendo is usually much cleaner with their polygons."



The eureka moment came when I noticed something ELSE about these overlapping polygons.

The distinct mark of a square lightmap grid, unnoticeable by the smooth transitions in-bounds on the map, revealed by the unnaturally sharp outline of a piece of clipped geometry.

"Props in Gmod are vertex lit. They don't have light maps."



Frantically, I opened my favorite video game reference tool, noclip.website[noclip.website], and loaded wuhu island. The truth was, in that moment, laid bare. The geometry was simplistic. The textures, smoothly blended. The layout of the island? Completely different. The town is tiny in comparison to the island. The beach is as big as the volcano. The bridge was at a 45 degree angle. There was even a path to the beach. Not only was this Gmod map inaccurate, it looked BETTER. (Source's glitchy water notwithstanding, of course.)

Stunned, I switched back to my game to confirm my findings. A simple console command was all I needed: mat_wireframe 1.

And there it was. Lighting up in bright blue, the props were revealed. The trees, the waterfall, the cave bridge, all models--but the island itself? A blinding white cross pattern--the signature of the Source engine's built-in dispacements.



My friends, this is no rip. This map was built from scratch.