============================================================================== Title : The Horde of Zendar Date : 18th December 2013 (version 1d) File : zendar1d.zip Author : Simon "sock" OCallaghan Website : http://www.simonoc.com Description : Large city block bathed in moonlight Feedback : Negke, Spirit, Tyrann Special thanks to Tyrann for his new compiler, this map would have taken years to compile with my original compiler and now only takes 20mins! ============================================================================== Story For many years the trail through the Grendal Gorge was a dangerous place, the path was plagued by thieves trying to help travellers part with their gold. At the request of the Merchants Guild the King built several small keeps along the trail and one of them was called Zendar. As traders used the stone keep for refuge from the packs of thieves roaming the paths below, the tiny keep of Zendar grew into a hodge podge of housing bursting at the seams of a once simple stone keep. The cramped living conditions were unbearable and the citizens of the city were at each others throats. With the accidental death of the captain of the guards, the remaining silver knights tore the city apart looking for culprits to blame for their leaders untimely demise. No prisoners were taken, Zendar did not have any jails, anyone foolish enough to be caught was buried alive in the city walls as the place descended into madness. The lucky few who did escape were found wandering the Gorge screaming ... The Horde of Zendar takes no prisoners! ============================================================================== Installation * Create a new folder called "zendar" in your Quake folder * Copy the Zip file into the new folder * Extract the contents of the zip file * Create a shortcut to your preferred Quake engine * Add the following to the command line -heapsize 96000 -game zendar +map zendar * Run the shortcut (click icon) and make sure the engine loads * The first part of the map is a skill selection area * Remember to record a demo once you start the map! * If you want to play the map with *your* original quake settings delete the pak1.pak file. It contains the extra models (items) and the quake.rc file with my recommended engine settings. ============================================================================== Skill Levels EASY (0) : Is designed for sightseeing and relaxed gameplay. There are no shortages of ammo/health and the monster count is very low. NORMAL (1) : Is designed to be a challenge with upgraded monster types and there is no shortage of ammo/health. HARD (2) : Is designed to be a tough, unforgiving in places and will require the player to conserve ammo and use monster infighting. Each skill level has different monsters types, in different positions and can be played progressively for a different experience of the map. All weapons, ammo and health are the same on all skill levels. It is assumed the player will be more frugal with ammo/health consumption on higher difficulty settings. ============================================================================== Map Waffle The map started out with such grand plans! A large hub with a giant royal palace perched on the top, two large city areas on either side for the gold and silver keys, a large vertical gothic style church and a huge city facade overlooking a deep canyon with an iron bridge! Crazy plans!?! I started with the central hub and palace section as I knew this would require the greatest amount of planning to get the routes right. Each side of the map was going to have an unique theme (gold = city streets, silver = cemetery) with the player being led along a lower path and returning to the hub on an upper path with said key. Typically maps are linear with a few extra routes to spice things up, but generally the player goes from point A to point B in one direction. I wanted this map to be different, I wanted the player to be able to go backwards through each side of the map and I needed to find a good way to do this without it being totally obvious. The hub was setup to be a simple loop with four large pillars to support the weight of the palace above. I already had a large church built in a scrap map and it was quick and easy process to connect it to the far end of the hub area. I wanted the backward routes to be indirect and not obvious to the player because they should be something for game++ sessions. I thought it would be better if they started in the church and then crossed over the hub to the upper exits from each key side of the map. At this point there was no clear direction on the city architectural style and the hub seemed like the perfect place to prototype elements that could influence the rest of the map. Each corner of the hub needed some city detail and at this stage it was ideal to work out how best to use the textures with specific brushwork shapes. The city style was based on a layout from a European city, with a large stone wall backbone and all of the housing being squashed into the remaining space. The houses are stacked vertically with various floors spilling out over into the street space creating the impression that the daylight is at a premium, a luxury that is owned by the upper floors. The house stacking system has many benefit and it is perfect for creating ledges and walkways for the player to climb over and discover places. It is also very easy to shift the layers up and down by small amounts to break the overall horizontal line and create construction variety. The initial hub design was symmetrical from left to right and that needed to be broken by reversing various elements. The far corners next to the church had bridges for the backward routes and it was a perfect opportunity to break the lines. One bridge was reversed and the lower area was nicely blocked off to create a cool secret area. With the basic structure of the hub routes in place it was time to add the icing to the cake, the palace section. The original palace layout was a thin mirrored area across the top ending in a large Gold Key door. Once through the Gold door it was up another lift to the final arena fight and through the exit portal. At this point the final arena was just a simple square block so that the floor space boundaries could be worked out. (Quake 1 has limits on map co-ordinates, -2048 -> 2048) I often find it is better to leave some parts of the map to last, because the best brushwork/texture shapes often come once the map style has been established. With the hub taking shape and most of the routes connected it was time to plan the gold key side. With this area being a close quarter street layout with a second return layer across the top it was easy to take brushwork ideas from the hub corners. After weeks of just working in the editor and the map still growing in scope it was becoming obvious that this map was not going to compile quickly. All routes were sealed up and the first full compile was started. The compiler was started on a Friday night and was still going on Sunday! This was going to be a problem. I knew this map was going to be difficult but I did not expect days/weeks for compile times, something had to change. Luckily a new compiler by Tyrann had just started using detail brushes to reduce portal/compile times and I knew this was going to be best solution. The map was cut up into small pieces and the core brushwork was simplified while the detail was converted to detail brushes. Eventually after several days the whole map compiled in less than 20mins, including a full light pass. It was looking like the map would work but there was more problems to come. The BSP format has limits and this map was quickly approaching them and half of the map was still not built! Something had to be cut and the easiest solution was to remove the Silver Key side because it had not been built yet. This had the added benefit of changing the way the keys worked. No longer did the player have to find both keys, the silver key could be used differently, for secondary objectives instead. Even with the Silver key side gone there was still the final arena, the facade to the city and a skill selection area to be build. Something else had to go and then a cool idea happened, why not use the hub as the final arena? It is circular, a large space and fully detailed, it would be perfect! The palace section was re-arranged to have more floor space and link nicely back down to the hub for the final battle. The roof space at the top of the map was slowly building up with more detail and looking so tempting to play in. I knew when everyone would see the rooftop section that they would want to go there and play. With the roof space becoming an active gameplay area, the detail boundaries had to be extended so that when the player is on the roof there is more to see. The original rooftop vista needed its own vista! With most of the map built the last section remaining was the facade to the city and I knew it had to be epic. It needed to set the tone for the map and show how big the place was. The player needed to start low and climb up to the city under the bridge and then across it. The flow through this start area needed to feel like a journey, a slow build up to all the combat to come later. As always the time consuming part was the rocks, getting the vertical templates setup and merging them together in interesting ways. The floor of the start area originally had a small stream with various waterfalls, but the default Quake water is never nice and is usually full bright which makes it look really odd in night time maps. In my previous map I experimented with fake texture blending and I thought it would be awesome if the river was dry and the edges were blended instead. With various texture trickery the blends worked out really well and with gl texture mode nearest set they looked awesome! With most of the map built, the only section left was the skill selection and the final exit and then I thought, why not make them the same, but with subtle changes instead. It would help with the BSP limits and give the map a beautiful symmetry of starting and ending in the same place. The building of this map has been a journey of its own, with plenty of map limits broken and crazy compiler issues I am surprised it has seen the light of day. Hopefully everyone will love the map as much I have loved creating it. ============================================================================== copyright: The source map file is in the zip file for viewing pleasure. Please do not use any of these assets in ANY COMMERCIAL PROJECT. Remember to give credit if you use any of the assets. additional The majority of the textures are based on existing Quake assets compilers and BSP/VIS Compilers - TYRUTILS v0.14 by Kevin Shanahan Dev tools: Coloured light and LIT support by Bengt Jardrup & MH TexMex 3.4 by Mike Jackman (organize textures) engine: Designed and tested to work with the following engines: FitzQuake 0.85 (http://www.celephais.net/fitzquake/) QuakeSpasm (http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60452) ============================================================================== Map Information: Game : Quake SP only Coop/DM : Spawn points exist, not tested. Difficulty : Easy 96, Normal 160, Hard 224 - Monsters Textures : zendar.wad (included in zip file) Editor : SDRadiant 1.3.8 Build Time : 10 weeks ============================================================================== Distribution / Copyright / Permissions Copyright (c) 2013 sock, mememe[at]simonoc[dot]com All rights reserved. Quake I is a registered trademark of id Software, Inc. This MOD/MAP may be electronically distributed only at NO CHARGE to the recipient in its current state, MUST include this .txt file, and may NOT be modified IN ANY WAY. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS THIS MOD/MAP TO BE DISTRIBUTED ON CD-ROM WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION. ==============================================================================