CTF maps

UT99 map originally created for the 20th Anniversary Mapping Contest/Mappack, held at UT99.org November-December 2019. This map started life as a small single player campaign based on a Bioshock theme merged with some other ideas which was fine in concept but since it was taking forever to get off the ground (due mainly to the chore of making original textures and prefab-bits the concept was dropped.

So I decided to go for a CTF instead and used the SP skybox, intro level, and the welcome level were used in the CTF map. The origins of the welcome level are hidden in the CTF for the curious. I think the decision to abandon trying to make a Bioshock game in ut99 was a wise decision, since the old engine is just no where capable of the graphics, shaders, mashes, audio, even water sucks! oh well.

What I've made is a passible as an homage of sorts to Bioshock's rapture-based games (a very simple one). The theme only touches rapture superficially, which should be okay imo since the IP materials, fan artwork, texture samples, found on the web are not "free", so I ganked very little, and what I was able to produce on my own is really sub-par for Bioshock.

The non-bioshock specific textures I made are fine for what they are and fit well into my hybrid theme. Downside of this is all that craziness meant I did not get the damn map finished for the contest, or even the map-pack. (no big deal really imo). Upside is at least there exists now a NEW FNB map, instead of one of those old beta maps!

Okay, this is still technically a BETA map - It's just a pretty polished one! I will get back to this eventually, since it is very close to complete. Trouble is COVID-19 happened :( And so, other priorities I'm afraid.

If you do want to check this out then I would suggest trying the map with 11 masterful BOTs in 2 teams. You can use up to 16 bots but will need more health and pickup IMO. If you like, you can leave feedback at UT99.org thread: "FNB All Good Things BETA Feedback" https://ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13713. Any feedback is much appreciated! Hope you enjoy this map! Cheers

The orignal DM-ClusterFuck was one of the first unreal custom DM maps I played back in 1999. It still remains one of my keepers to this day. The idea of a CTF version occurred when I startd to play UT-CTF in 2001. When I first started mapping in UED2, I made an experimental CTF conversion (along with several other Unreal maps) but it didn't really work all that great since I was basically a noob mapper. I never planned to release anybody's maps but my own so never sought permissions from authors for their work that I desecrated in my various experiments :P

Well years later, when HellScrag AND Lightning Hunter (of Unreal.sp fame) released his big collection of DMU map-packs (unreal-dm-to-ut99-dm) I noted that he had included this ClusterFuck map in one of the packs. That immediately reminded me of the old CTF conversion. So once again interested in a CTF version, I banged out a proper conversion using the DMU map which resulted in this current map. Since I was by this time well established as a UT mapper, I tossed the DMU-CTF back on the shelf where it has sat for years (until now :P)

Recently I loaded up UT99 after a long time and was randomly playing CTF maps and loaded ClusterFkk map and found it was actually a fun and challenging CTF match for 6 vs 6 masterfuls. So I then tried to find the author Jeremy Graves and no luck. So thinking about this, with very few people left that play the ut99 game, I figured I'll just give this crazy little CTF map to them to enjoy. Might be a nice surprise for some folks. I have to think Mr. Graves wouldn't mind too much to have people fragging away in what is still very much "his puppy".

Work/Changes: Basically used the DM map as a team base, duplicated and flipped, connected using a short passage on each side and added a small corridor on the bottom level. Added team markings and appropriate lighting. Fixed several texture errors and bsp holes (there were several unsnapped brushes in the original map. Added "lava" lites to make the lava, well, look more like lava. Optimal lighting levels at 5/10 (F11 key).

Replaced the Unreal-specific pickup and actors with UT actors. Completely re-pathed the map for CTF, adjusted pickup for teams of 4 to 6. Added several SmartAltPathes (the version fixed by "Sector2111" at ut99.org). Bots and FC will use all levels. FC usually tries the upper level most of the time, but will jump down on occasion.

Teams: Best with 6 vs 6, imo. As I said, I did attempt to contact the original author to obtain permission, but to no avail. So if the author sees this map and wants to contact me then by all means please do :)

Modified for UTR XPickups during 2010 for speedier CTF action. Also plan to include a version for Normal weapons on release.

Liandri Towers is still W.I.P. however I did implement many of the feedback suggestions from swanky and some others folks. There are no more dead ends in the little stores. I will also work on modifying the mall artwork to be non-reality now.

Hopefully people can feel free to make suggestions regarding stuff they see or think would work better. I'm not keen on any more csg/bsp changes (I'm at 60 zones and ~3500 brushes) but lighting, textures, decos, pickups, ammo, weapons, sounds, etc, can now be added/tweaked/replaced.

Non-gameplay changes I'll focus on after beta rounds. I played the shit out of BETA-2 with masterful and then inhuman bots, 11 and later on with 15 and found the matches fairly even. Most times when I would return with the flag my own flag would be gone. We all know the panic of that!!! They did come back after me in force and a few times knicked me and got their flag back!!!

Completed for the UT99.org 2018 AMC (Awesome Mapping Contest). Very Large Deep Space Processing Facility supports 16-32 Players. The download archive package includes TWO versions: One map with UTR XPickups, and the other with regular Normal weapons.

Huge CTF set in a Deep Space Industrial Processing Facility. Completed for UT99.org AMC mapping contest. Big and Ugly was one of the first maps I designed and some of the geometry dates back to year 2000 when I started editing in the original Unreal editor. During 2001 the map was converted and expanded into a large UT CTF layout using UED2, where the crazy behemoth began it's real journey, eventually evolving into the beast that was finally unleased in the AMC contest!

Over the years this map evolved into something completely different than originally envisaged, even ported into UT2004 at one point as a VCTF, lol! Of course I never finished that one. Fact: Huge CTF maps are boring. Adding UTR XPickups into the current build make Big and Ugly playable and somewhat interesting - Cheers!

The CTF-6H-BigAndRusty contest map was barely completed and full of BUGs -BUT- was a pretty impressive bunch of brushwork map for a 6-hour time limit! The map was more or less finished early in 2004, with most of the BUGs fixed. It even featured these "Yellow" Submarine movers for transport in and out of the lower base areas. Kewl!

If there was a problem, it was the framerate was quite poor (approx. 40 fps average). It also took forever to CAP if you could live that long. So these issues led to the idea of building a new map based on Big and Rusty, but half the size (50%). This was easily done using the MapScale tool. After resizing and re-finishing all the lighting, sound, textures, placements and BOTs, the map CTF-FNB-Rusty was released.

Rusty was still quite LARGE and had considerably BETTER gameplay and performance that it's giant predecessor. The map was generally well received by players online at the time, and feedback was provided to further improve the gameplay. the result was CTF-FNB-Rusty][ which is the BEST rusty map, without a doubt. The BOTs are very aggressive in Rusty ][ and can snipe you, deemer you, kill your a$$ good, and grab and CAP by randomly using multiple routes - thanks to the Bot-40 smart Alt-path actor!

I still had plans for the old giant map, thinking if I could make it more exciting, it might have a life. So during January 2011 I converted the monster to use UTR XPickups from UT99.org. Well that worked out quite well. A slightly different CTF experience with XPickups. Might even work well with strangelove rockets or Quantum Fighter Jets.

Anyways, worthy of a release IMO after all these years. Cheers!

CTF-FNB-TheBeatingGoesOn V1 was designed for the UT99.org 2014 512K contest BUT was too big to submit in the current layout. Rather than ruin the map by hacking down any further I elected to just release this as it is and change the name to have "FNB" in it rather than "512K" as required for the contest maps.

There is a contest map, however, called CTF-512K-TheBeatingGoesOn which is a modified copy of this map, and is obviously quite a bit smaller. In fact the ajustments made in that map have created a considerably different layout, although the two maps feel similar.

The contest map is actually much faster between the flags but very difficult to GRAB and CAP due to ease of defence with only a few snipers/shockhos.

This FNB version is much bigger and roomy and lets the FC range a bit more since more time is available to deal with the snipers/defenders. If the FC can get out of the base to the middle he can traverse sticking to the higher ledge and hallways and this greatly increases CAP success rate.

So all that said, this map is good for 8 to 12 players. I recommend teams of 6 masterful bots, regular weapons and for god sakes enable the XLOC !!!!

CTF "The Beating Goes On" V1 was designed for the UT99.org 2014 512K contest BUT was unfortunately too big to submit. Rather than ruin that map by hacking down any further I elected to just release this as it was and changed the name to have "FNB" in it rather than "512K" so there would be no confusion.

So this one is the actual contest map, CTF-512K-TheBeatingGoesOn V5A, which is a modified copy of the V1 map, and is obviously quite a bit smaller. In fact the adjustments made in that map have created a considerably different layout.

Although the two maps feel similar, the contest map is actually much faster between the flags but very difficult to GRAB and CAP due to ease of defence with only a few snipers/shockhos. 4 vs 4 is manageable by most but 5v5 or even 6vs6 with BOTs usually grinds into 0-0 overtime.

So all that said, this map is good for 8 to 12 players. I recommend teams of 4 masterful bots, regular weapons and for god sakes enable the XLOC !!!! If you're a super mobile dodging death-dealer shock-ho you might want to up it to 6 vs 6 masterfuls ;)

This map has two of each gun (but NO redeemer) and has one sheild and TWO udam. There are lots of medboxes and also a number of jumpboots down on the lower floor.

This map took me maybe 10 hours altogether for the "original" V1 map, another 8 hours or so for the V5a contest map.

Thanks to the folks at UT99.org for holding the 2014 512k contest and thanks to Tom_caT for the quick beta tests :)

512K-ArcaneEnigma is a CTF map inspired by Shane Caudle's DM Arcane Temple UT product map. Built for the UT99.org 2014 512K contest, I was planning to do a Temple theme map and after looking for some inspiration I ended up revisiting the 'ol Arcane Temple. While I was running around in AC I saw how it could work potentially for the base layout in a small CTF map.

The initial experiment (a brute force edit) showed some promise but the map was quite a large filesize and so I had doubts it could fit into 512k. Anyways, I decided to give a try and eventually arrived at this extremely simplified layout. So the 512K map was mainly built from scratch but did copy and paste in some sheets and other bits - took about 8 hours altogether including testing and tweaking.

It looks similar to AC in the flag room and the inner base room, where you can do some jumping. So that's it...! Good for 8 to 12 players. I recommend teams of 5 masterful bots, regular weapons and for god sakes enable the XLOC - don't be a pussy, it's an essential CTF tool! Altogether there are two of each gun in the map, but no redeemer or superhealth.

Thanks to the folks at UT99.org for holding the 2014 512k contest and as always many thanks to Tom_caT for the beta tests :)

This version is a very much smaller remake of Juan Pancho Eekels Epic Hall of Giants product map. The resulting map is a medium layout that supports 8-12 players.

OF course I had to simplify things quite a bit and jam it all into 512K! Built from scratch to roughly the shape of Hog, and it's only about half the size. Took about 8 hours altogether including testing and tweaking. I did try some alternate layouts but the plain old same layout as Pancho's worked the best.

If a HoG veteran plays this they will have no trouble adapting to the faster pace. Others might find the original HoG a bit boring after playing this one ;) The zoom speeds are the same though so you really boot out of those zoomers (yeah, i was a bit lazy to slow them down, lol!)

Thanks to the folks at UT99.org for holding the 2014 512k contest and thanks to Tom_caT for the quick beta tests :)

This design was just made up on the spot and took a few nights of work. MEdium-small Urban rooftop themed Fast and furious xloc friendly CTF match good for 8 to 12 players, but imo best when played with teams of 5. Lots of headshotting in this one so you will usually need to deal with the enemy sniper on the way in or out. one of each guns in each base, not too much health - powerups require jumping or xloc... no invisibility and no redeemer!!!

Yeah, I know :P Not exactly a terribly original idea (using a warpzone to see the other base looking in from the top) but wth. I figured i'd make one anyways. It`s a bit fuggly and blocky looking and of course full of lava - but - can be a real challenge with 10 players or masterful BOTs.

Having said that, unfortunately, the BOTs are really not too smart in this one, however they DO figure out how to grab the flag and will cap in spite of their stupidness! Trouble is they do not reliably jump and don't seem to know how to shoot through the big warpzone (like humans would).

So, the team with the human _SHOULD_ always win. Humans vs humans i suspect could be quite difficult because they will shoot "UP" at the FC, who is always in sight.

Thanks to Tomcat112 for the play testing and suggestions and thanks to Blito3 for having the 2014 300k contest :) Note the contest map was Normal weapons, but the map released here in January 2014 features UTR XPickups.

The original Shane Caudle "Gateway" level is from UNREAL and was not a part of the regular game. I remember (back in the day) at some point I loaded it into UED1 and my jaw fell off, lol ;)

Well, all this time later, early in the UT99.Org XMAS 2012 mapping contest I was experimenting with ideas and "gateways" was one of the maps I decided to fiddle with.

I ran over it quickly with a boatload of tech textures and mashed the thing into a CTF map to test the concept and try out some theme ideas but it didn't pan out - I ended up building DM-XC-EpicTown instead.

After some time passed I decided to complete this, as a tribute of sorts to Shane Caudle. As a CTF, the map isn't bad, but it's not super gameplay. A bit too "in your face" for my tastes and it has a few quirks. But it does work and gets a bit more interesting with teams of 5 or 6 masterful or adept BOTs. More than that and it can get really spammy. So this one is more of a "nice looking themic map" good for a few plays, I'd say :)

Many thanks to UT99.org and the makers of UTR XPickups; to Switch' and Johnny6 for the swJumpPad actor; to Bot40 for the SmartAlternatePath actor, to Pandemonium, Creavion (and my regular bunch) for textures; and of course to Shane Caudle for blowing my mind way back when ;)

Music is GateWays (of course).

Liandri Orbital Resort Complex. Well, sorta looks like it could be a spaceport if you don't think about it too much :). CTF4 action for up to 24 players (or 4 to 6 players per team). With bots it's best to use Masterful or Adept skill setting, otherwise capping may be too easy. The map features slight Low-gravity so it feels more zippy than floaty, and when combined with jumpboots and a x-pickup doublespeed powerup you can launch like a freakin' rocket!

Note this map requires the CTF4 mutator (not included), which is available for download from http://www.uncommonplace.com/games/ctf4.html.

This CTF space port map was developed from DM space port, back in mid-2001. After some experimenting with CTF flag positions, I ended up adding these large platforms to the corners of the highest cargo level (right below "street level") Level 4 of 7. At first there were the regular two flags, where the map worked okay as a CTF, except for half the map being ignored by BOTs and horrible bots network bugs. Some time during 2003 or 2004 (can't remember now) I added two more flags and set up the four color CTF lighting, textures, and defense points for CTF4 teams.

In 2010 I added UTR XPickups to the maps (CTF4, DOM, DM) fixed the terrible BOTs and polished the maps up a bit! TA-DA! I find the maps old-schoolish and fun to play every so often. Pretty weird design actually - very noobish in some ways. Having said that, from a mapper perspective this design is far far from simple. I would not wish the beast on anybody. As far as players go, some liked it, some absolutely hated it. (purists dweebs!) It's just a fkking map -. don;t like it don't play it... pfft!

Large alien world enclave CTF4 map supports Good for 12 - 24 players. This is adaptation of CTF-300K-GOMP that contains new path network, sounds and also music. There are TWO maps in the ZIP file: a normal weapons version and a UTR Xpickups version. The UTR version contains a WildCard base located in the middle of the map which spawns random goodies. There are also DoubleSpeed powerups in each base for speedy action.

UTR Xpickups is available for download from UT99.org . Music is unreal4.umx from the game Unreal.

Notes: CTF4 mutator is available for download from UncommonPlace, or from one of several online Unreal Tournament archives (google!)

Medium sized CTF Future Tech installation, good for 8-16 players. Built for the 2-Face Xmas 2010 contest held at Unreal Playground during late 2010. Erm, This is some sort of future derelict automated northern Atmosphere Generation Station, now used for Unreal Tournament WOOT matches... meh... :)

Map #2 built for the 2_Face Christmas 2010 mapping contest held at Unreal Playground November-December 2010. Built mostly in late October thru early November, it didn't seem like a very Christmassy theme so I put it down for a while to build what became CTF-XMC-SnowFaced. After SnowFaced was released I decided to just finish this for the contest but not as a specific christmas themed map, so there are a few XMas contest banner images in the map. So Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from FraGnBraG :)

This WOOT map was based loosely on my Medium Layout BETA map from the 2006 TDC contest, and as such is superficially similar in routes to CTF-FNB-TDC-2374, the original map that resulted because of that contest. Of course, this AplhaWOOT map is very much WOOT and flows that way - it's wayyy faster gameplay than it's older Egyptian cousin ;)

It might not exactly meet the WOOT guidelines, but it is pretty quick getting from flag-base to flag-base so I think it qualifies. I started the map in late October 2010 and it took around 20 hours - more or less - but a lot of WOOT testing was needed.

A CHRISTMAS STORY:

Way up at the North Pole Santa's elves were Restless. Having just finished all the preparations for Christmas (building toys and making Candy and such) they needed to blow off some steam!

Everyone knows Santa's elves still like to play Unreal Tournament '99 so they built two giant facing snowmen on a snowy mountain-top and carved out the interiors to look like the famous Inoxx Face temples!

Elves also like Christmans movies, christmas trees and lots of colorfull presents so they decorated the snowman bases with lots of pictures of their favorite flicks and characters!

Once the elves were finshed they split themselves into red and blue teams for big Face battle on Christmas Eve!

Hope you enjoy the Ho-Ho-Ho-HEADSHOTS!

This was map#1 built for the 2_Face Christmas 2010 mapping contest held at Unreal Playground during November-December 2010. SnowFaced is available in two versions: a Normal weapon version, and also UTR xPickups version. This is more-or-less laid it out like the original face product map, except this one is a bit bigger and obviously a totally different locale and design approach.

Altogether SnowFaced took me about 20 hours from mid-November to mid-December for all the screwing around with terrains and actors, finding and then making custom textures, playing lots of old xmas maps :) and then finishing lighting and decorating etc.

A CHRISTMAS STORY:

Way up at the North Pole Santa's elves were Restless. Having just finished all the preparations for Christmas (building toys and making Candy and such) they needed to blow off some steam!

Everyone knows Santa's elves still like to play Unreal Tournament '99 so they built two giant facing snowmen on a snowy mountain-top and carved out the interiors to look like the famous Inoxx Face temples!

Elves also like Christmans movies, christmas trees and lots of colorfull presents so they decorated the snowman bases with lots of pictures of their favorite flicks and characters!

Once the elves were finshed they split themselves into red and blue teams for big Face battle on Christmas Eve!

Hope you enjoy the Ho-Ho-Ho-HEADSHOTS!

This was map#1 built for the 2_Face Christmas 2010 mapping contest held at Unreal Playground during November-December 2010. SnowFaced is available in two versions: a Normal weapon version, and also UTR xPickups version. This is more-or-less laid it out like the original face product map, except this one is a bit bigger and obviously a totally different locale and design approach.

Altogether SnowFaced took me about 20 hours from mid-November to mid-December for all the screwing around with terrains and actors, finding and then making custom textures, playing lots of old xmas maps :) and then finishing lighting and decorating etc.

A CHRISTMAS STORY:

Way up at the North Pole Santa's elves were Restless. Having just finished all the preparations for Christmas (building toys and making Candy and such) they needed to blow off some steam!

Everyone knows Santa's elves still like to play Unreal Tournament '99 so they built two giant facing snowmen on a snowy mountain-top and carved out the interiors to look like the famous Inoxx Face temples!

Elves also like Christmans movies, christmas trees and lots of colorfull presents so they decorated the snowman bases with lots of pictures of their favorite flicks and characters!

Once the elves were finshed they split themselves into red and blue teams for big Face battle on Christmas Eve!

Hope you enjoy the Ho-Ho-Ho-HEADSHOTS!

This was map#1 built for the 2_Face Christmas 2010 mapping contest held at Unreal Playground during November-December 2010. SnowFaced is available in two versions: a Normal weapon version, and also UTR xPickups version. This is more-or-less laid it out like the original face product map, except this one is a bit bigger and obviously a totally different locale and design approach.

Altogether SnowFaced took me about 20 hours from mid-November to mid-December for all the screwing around with terrains and actors, finding and then making custom textures, playing lots of old xmas maps :) and then finishing lighting and decorating etc.

A CHRISTMAS STORY:

Way up at the North Pole Santa's elves were Restless. Having just finished all the preparations for Christmas (building toys and making Candy and such) they needed to blow off some steam!

Everyone knows Santa's elves still like to play Unreal Tournament '99 so they built two giant facing snowmen on a snowy mountain-top and carved out the interiors to look like the famous Inoxx Face temples!

Elves also like Christmans movies, christmas trees and lots of colorfull presents so they decorated the snowman bases with lots of pictures of their favorite flicks and characters!

Once the elves were finshed they split themselves into red and blue teams for big Face battle on Christmas Eve!

Hope you enjoy the Ho-Ho-Ho-HEADSHOTS!

This was map#1 built for the 2_Face Christmas 2010 mapping contest held at Unreal Playground during November-December 2010. SnowFaced is available in two versions: a Normal weapon version, and also UTR xPickups version. This is more-or-less laid it out like the original face product map, except this one is a bit bigger and obviously a totally different locale and design approach.

Altogether SnowFaced took me about 20 hours from mid-November to mid-December for all the screwing around with terrains and actors, finding and then making custom textures, playing lots of old xmas maps :) and then finishing lighting and decorating etc.

Capture-The-Flag in a huge Liandri Corp warehouse, featuring UTR Xpickups (from UT99.org) for a cool experience.

To begin with, DM-BoxesRuS was a large sniper deathmatch map I built originally in early 2002 after playing a few months on sniper servers. I'd always liked urban environments, especially if they were convincingly done. I thought I'd try one of my own and so decided on a urban warehouse locale where I had the building as the center surrounded by buildings from which players could snipe.

Boxes-R-uS was my first map design to use more than 1000 brushes,but it suffered from some nasty HOMs and overall poor framerates when inside the warehouse (one huge zone). Remember that computers in 2002 were not good at rendering large polycounts without lagging. I think the map had about 600-800 polys when you were up high in a corner and looking out across the warehouse.

I eventually fixed most of the bugs in the map, and deleted most of the outside areas to get more flow into the gameplay. These reductions improve a bit but the map was still pretty big for a regular DM map.

A that point I reconfigured the layout for CTF, which the map seemed at the time to be better suited for. The CTF version was built in April 2002 and was eventually released as a BETA at Unreal Playground in November 2002. I did get a some feedback which led me to modify the map layout slightly and added more deco and detail for a second version.

This final CTF version pushed the brush-count to over 2000 brushes, however, the improved CTF was never released since it still had less than optimal performance, (adding more brushes into the map was NOT really a good idea) and I wasn't happy with the results so it went on to the shelf for later. I think the next time I loaded the map into UED was sometime during 2005. I had decided to check out Hourances Pitores and HourIndus texture sets to use in other projects, so I essentially retextured the CTF-FNB-BoxesRuS-v2 map using the Hourances sets to play with them and at the same time I made a few layout optimizations before I retired the map again.

Fast forward to today - Earlier in 2010 I was spending a lot of time working on the very complexed DM/DOM Fallen Angel map and really needed a break from that one - so I switched gears and decided to try and finish the Boxes-R-uS map once and for all. Well now it's as finished as I'm willing to make it :)

This is a medium sized CTF map based on the UP4EVER domination map I designed for SuperChaz UP October 2009 Mapping Contest. The theme was a mix of old and new FNB type stuff - basically an urban / tech / industrial theme.

Around 30 new textures were made for the DOM map, mostly based on a few 2k4 tech packages, and some more were added for the CTF.

For CTF, I experimented with using the DOM layout as the basis for each team base. I added in a small middle section to properly connect the two sides, and the resulting gameplay was quite fun.

So I went ahead and developed the CTF version. Since the CTF map was modified considerably from the contest DOM map I decided to release the map as a FNB map rather than an OMC titled map.

The map features a custom music track which I created a few years back using ModPlug tracker called RezZonatioN_OverDrive.

Earth Outpost ORION STATION, 2473 AD (PART-2) The battle for control of Orion Station Continues! Following the events of Orion Station Part-1 (an Assault map) the station was invaded and has key areas held by a hostile force. You and your station fellows managed to evade capture during the initial attacks, and fought to contact the Earth Fleet... The main force of the Invaders is fast approaching Orion Station, and will arrive before the Earth Ships can get there! You have been ordered to disrupt the enemy and try to retake control of key areas in the station - starting with the Operations Center! So take their flag and as many of them along with it!!! GOOD LUCK!

This map is based on the first three sections of the assault map AS-FoT-OrionsCursePart2, duped and flipped, with the middle being formed out of the last section flipped. Funny thing about all that is there's still seven sections of the Part-2 assault map left over, lol! All that means is the Part-2 assault map could still be finished sometime, but as a much smaller map. That map took a long time to make but became plagued with bugs to the point I wasn't getting anywhere with it and this caused long delays for everyone else, so I decided to suspend the effort.

Not wanting to completely waste the work, I offered TWC a CTF version of Part-2 which they accepted, so here is CTF-FoT-OrionsCurse-Part2. Needless to say I was personally disappointed with the failure of my assault map, but I don't think that hurt the mappack at all since Revelation's AS-FoT-Chronoshift more than made up for any short-comings :)

Regarding CTF-FoT-OrionsCurse-Part2, if you have current hardware you should have NO performance issues at all, since I have no problems running it. The CTF took about 24 hours to complete over a two week period. Following the map-pack release, I had plans to release a smaller (simplified) SE version of the OrionsCurse-Part2 CTF map having one section of each base removed to "shorten" the flag-run but this never came to pass so I ditched the idea. It is what it is... so be it!

During that time I produced a music file for the map - Requiem4.umx, which contains a short remix of Requiem for a dream from Clint Mansell. The original track is found all over the internet and youTube already so I had no qualms with using it in a map. The original piece had 4 movements and when converted to an umx the file was EXTREMELY large! So I cut it down until I had just the 4th section, but decent sound quality. Sounds great in this map, but turned out perhaps a bit short in duration, hence it can get a bit repetitive during a match.

Special thanks to Revelation for the Spawner script, which he provided for my assault map (but I kept it in the CTF map :) For additional credits and information, please read the Readme file.

Music is Requiem for a Dream by Clint Mansell (Part-4 Remix by FraGnBraG).

In Feb 2006, UT mapper and NaliCIty reviewer Nahand held a Theme Design contest at Unreal Playground. Open to all mappers, the idea was to take a DM layout (by Nahand) and then modify the map for any theme you liked. I asked Nahand if I could do a CTF instead and he said okay, as long as the bases matched the DM layout.

So after releasing three ALPHA maps (SMALL, MEDIUM and LARGE) to explore the gameplay, I went with the MEDIUM layout since it was best for 6 vs 6. The theme was a hybrid of some gothic forms and Egypt-Tech ideas. I couldn't think of a map name so I called it "2374" - the year mentioned in the UT-99 intro city movie. The map is a temple of sorts, in some futuristic alien city, somewhere in the UT-99 universe.

I never completed the map in time for the deadline, so I put it on the shelf for later and moved on to other projects. Every so often I would do a bit of work on it but the map never interested me sufficiently enough to get much attention, until lately. During July 2009 I decided I'd get it done and managed to finish it in spite of having no free time to map! One thing I wanted to do was to keep the brush count to below 1000 brushes, to avoid map complexity, and give the map better framerates (it ended up at 1070 brushes) The original volumetric lighting and FOG was also dropped for performance reasons, but it still looks okay even though it is less atmospheric as a result.

The map plays okay, but it is quite easy for a human to CAP, even with the bots at masterful. Playing with 8 vs 8 inhuman BOTs makes for a much harder match, but guns might be in short supply depending on where you spawn. I could have spent more time on the BOTs but I didn't want to bother since the extra effort could make little difference. Could be a very different experience with people playing it. Many thanks to Bot_40 for Smart Alternate Path Actor and to ElyVision for the SkyCity (Sky13) Skybox images. For other credits please read the readme file.

The music track is T.Y.R.A. for Team Vortex (NP-ty.umx) by Toxeen.

Vertical CTF in a Mechanized processing station. This is a CTF conversion of my "Barrel Of Fun" DM map from March 2004. The CTF was done right after the DM map was completed and was basically an experiment in vertical CTF. I never released it mainly due to a perceived imbalance in gameplay favoring the team that had the upper base position, but tbh, I didn't test out my assumptions to any great degree :)

I wasn't really worried about releasing a CTF version BarrelOfFun anyways, after all the DM project was already "old" (from 2001) and I'd had to get really arsed to finish it off after three years on the shelf - so I was quite DONE with the BoF business!

Well, I was going through my map folders the other day and there it was - The Barrel Of Fun CTF project zip. Dunno why, but I decided to play a few matches. Interstingly, after all this time, it didn't seem all that bad. I know I've played far worse CTF maps and many CTF levels can get really boring after just a few plays. The more I played this map, the more I realised it is a challenging match, and also a bit quirky - but quirky goes both ways.

Once you figure out where you're going it's fun to do a flag run - the bots put up a good chase - I found no clear advantage to base position (i.e. going up or down) and the test matches played out pretty evenly, with blue and red both able to win regularly. Of course, could be completely off-balance with humans only :) We'll probably never know :D

So I spent an couple of hours tweaking the map a bit, making sure the base markings were obvious and removed a few of the warpzones in the middle level (Level 3) which removed some short-cutting. Adjusted player starts and fixed some bot bugs and mover lift bugs. I did not bother fixing the crazy jump-pads around the center because they are not really relevant anyways. Other than that I made no other changes to the map. If there's any goofy sh$$t in there then it's still in there, lol!

Vertical CTF may not be everyone's Cup-Of-tea, but this one might be worth a look. Certainly not your typical CTF map! Well, that's what I think anyways :) If you do try it, I would suggest 5 vs 5 or 6 vs 6 masterful bots. The music track is IsoToxin from the game Unreal.

Map #8 for Blito3's Annual 300k Contest, Nov-Dec 2008.

Some sort of abandoned Arctic Glacier Monitoring Station, purchased by Liandri for the tournament! Look out the windows, man is it ever cold and frozen out there! Better keep running around shooting guns to keep warm! (There you go, the 30 second story :P)

This map was blocked out at the time of the 2006 Blito3 300K contest. It was more or less an alternative to the layout that became CTF-300K-ElectricDream, only longer and with more route options - it ended up too fat for 300k, and so I went with the smaller layout. This time round I removed some areas to shorten the distance between flags - I also removed walls to open up the flag room. This was good because the map became smaller in filesize and also created a more intense fighting area for the FC.

You can have a good time 5 vs 5 against masterful+ bots - 6 vs 6 though, you'll have to work pretty hard, lol! Good map for sniping the enemy flag, quite fun until you get stormed by the enemy - the bots can use the side routes so you will not be able stand and snipe them all the time, at least they eventually came after me :) Design, builds and tweaking took altogether maybe 6 hours. Gameplay's not bad - I like it 5 vs 5 against masterful bots. Might be really hard with people though... xloc skill a must!

Thanks to Blito3 for having the contest and to Tom_caT for testing the map.

Music is Foregone from the game Unreal Tournament.

Map #7 for Blito3's Annual 300k Contest, Nov-Dec 2008. Actually, this map had a somewhat Shakespearian feel to me, hence the title :) A dusky medieval CTF arena, this layout is an extreme reduction of a big valley type layout I was playing with at the time of the 2004 Thunderstrike 400-Poly contest. I ended up abandoning the terrain map went with a small DM that evolved into DM-FNB-DeadlyWorship.

So, I figured I'd give this valley CTF a shot for 300k, just to see if it could even come close :) It was over 1000K (with lights and all) so I scaled it down to half-size, then went a few rounds of simplifying it by rebrushing using a larger grid (i.e. less triangles, but bigger ones) Well it almost worked - got it down as far as 450K but that was just the skybox, terrain, flags, nodes and some lights - no ramps, buildings or deco.

So I chucked the terrain idea and made the thing an arena, with a little bit of rock along the sides. This worked out, and it feels more or less the same mood as the original map, just a helluva lot smaller and a helluva lot more fighting ;) Sorry about the skybox - it went a bit funny but I'm not arsed to fix it - this map is as good as it'll be. Altogether took about 12 hours, including the time on the original terrain map.

Thanks to Blito3 for having the contest and to Tom_caT for testing the map. Music is BotMca9 from the game Unreal Tournament.

Map #2 for Blito3's Annual 300k Contest, Nov-Dec 2008. Urbanish rooftop themed CTF, complete with Lift-jumps! This was another idea that popped up a while ago, and I decided to play around with it for 300k. I didn't think I could do it but decided to give it a shot anyways - when I finished building the first cut it was over 600K! Oh the PAIN of having to delete a lot of nice brushwork just so I could squeeze the map into 300K! Managed to do it though, and generally speaking I'm satisfied with the result. The layouts ok, I guess, 6 vs 6 masterfuls or better is hard. The Lift jumping is fun though, If you have time to do it, lol!

This one took about 3 hours to make, then another 2 or 3 hours testing and tweaking, so we'll say 6 hours altogether. Note that Only humans can use the Lift-jumps... And the bots tend to not use the upper route (no alt-paths in the map). Most of the textures are set to Low shadow detail and the ambient is fairly high, so the lighting is a bit bleached looking, oh well, that's the price of doing 300k!

Many thanks to Blito3 for having this FUN contest, and to Tom_caT for testing the map! Music is Nether from the game Unreal Tournament.

Map #1 for Blito3's Annual 300k Contest, Nov-Dec 2008. Speedy fast-n-furious CTF set in an ancient Egyptian Temple. I had this idea for a while and decided to finally make it for the contest. There are zippy mover platforms that zing you back and forth from one end of the map to the other, along ten tracks. Flag carrying is never a tedious endeavor, unless you get knocked off and find yourself on foot - then you'll have to fight like hell to get home - and at that, you could get sniped right before you cap!

Okay, it is a rather strange design of temple, long and skinny, with two levels of z-axis all the way, and it is spammy as hell. So if you're not a very agile player you might not like this game play (well, because you'll be dead a lot!). Bots could be better, especially around the side routes - these aren't very well defended. The bases are though, so just because you can get there easily, it's harder to get out. That said, the map could be a lot of fun on a server, 5 vs 5. OMEGA took about 3 or 4 hours to make, then another few hours of testing and tweaking.

Many thanks to Blito3 for having the contest! Music is UnWorld2 from the game Unreal Tournament.

RESISTANCE IS WOOTILE! This map is based on the Star Trek Voyager T.V. show. I'm personally NOT a huge fan of Trek (to me ST is about the same appeal as StarGate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica, or any other Sci-Fi series) although I did watch the various Trek series and bought all the Elite Force games. If you hate Trek, well just never mind this map. TrekWooT has a bit of history: it is a CTF development of the map DOM-FNB-Assimilated, the developed version of a map I made for the Unreal Playground UT99 StarTrek DOM contest during Nov-Dec 2003 called DOM-ST-Assimilated. The Borg Cube map was not completed at that time, but was developed on and off over the next 3 years.

*** IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS MAP HAS NOT BEEN TESTED FOR NETWORK PLAY ***

During 2006, SabbathCat held an Extreme CTF WooT mapping contest, and that's when I got the idea for making TrekWooT. The cube was stripped away leaving just the ship trapped in Borg space surrounded by Borg ships. Two tactical cubes would serve be the flag bases and jump platforms. During development of this map my old P4 bit the dust, and I had to finished the map using Tom_caT's PC which was quite a challenge, lol! Once I got the new computer DOM-FNB-Assimilated was finished up and released some months after TrekWooT.

The two maps essentially only have the starship, skybox and one of the rooms in common. As a WooT map the gameplay is rather terrible! It is simply too big, and is also Low-Grav, so it's not fast-and-furious-and-spammy enough. It is okay as a LG CTF though, providing your PC can run it :) In it, and with 16 bots on masterful or inhuman setting you might find it's not that easy to cap and grab. To their credit, unattended bot play results in a low-scoring match, but they do cap. Very much a novelty map, I released this simply because I spent so much time on it (or various versions of it) and wanted to give people that wanted to, the opportunity to walk around on that ship :)

TrekWOOT is being offered "as-is", try it out if you're curious. The whole things a bit tounge-in-cheek, the BORG theme is plausible but it is stretched. The garish colors in the flag bases fit with the scenes in the TV show more or less but I had to add RED and BLUE into the mix (obviously) for CTF. The map is based on a life-sized replica (in UT terms, 16 uu = 1 foot) of the starship U.S.S. Voyager, which is basically functions as a terrain. Yes, it could be made of meshes, but huge static meshes in UE1 would look very bad and proper collision would have been impossible. I figured it could be done with brushes, and I was right :) Just took a while to do it, lol!

Thanks to the folks at Unreal Playground who provided feedback; and to Swanky for suggesting the flag bases be at the sides of the ship, rather than one at each end. It turned out much better. Thanks to Tom_caT for all the testing on and off over the years and for letting me use his computer when I was computer-less for a while in late 2007 :) For additional credits and information, please read the Readme file.

Music is QueenSong from the game Unreal.

This map was created for Blito3's 300k Contest, 2007 edition! This contest differed from the 2006 compo in that it was CTF only, and you map had to keep the brushes in the released map. This meant lower detail in general, which imo was too bad, since brushes take up quite few K (relatively) in a 300k map, than in a larger map, and that makes a big difference in the looks of the map.

Oh well, I only made one map this time. For all it's simplicity, GOMP took a while to make - mostly the texturing and lighting - cool looking map though, imo. Game play is a bit simplistic as well, but it's a big map and you have a few route options as a flag carrier, and it's not exactly a cake-walk between the flags when you use bots on the higher settings.

A few bot-bugs in the map, but no real show stoppers. GOMP is a weird but visually interesting map, and turned out to be fairly popular, having a surprising large number of downloads for a 300k map! I may revisit this theme idea sometime in the future, dunno.

Music is Enigma from the game Unreal Tournament.

This map was made for the Unreal Playground BOARD GAME contest, held in July 2007. I asked the UP admins if I could make Rock-Em-Sock-EM, which wasn't in the original list of board games. I'd had the game when I was a kid, and thought it would be fun to make. They said yes, and so I got busy trying to remember how the hell it was put together!

After a few cracks at getting started i just grabbed some pix off the web and used those as a guide. The underneath part of the boxing ring is completely made up, but i think it might have looked something like that :P The aim in this design was to try and keep the polys and nodes down so it could be played on-line without problems, so it was tested on server.

It is pretty easy to beat the bots, even at high settings, but with people it would be much harder. As always, sniping campers who like to sit up on the higher perches will pay the price in lost framerate - there's 600 or more polys visible from the upper rope corners! There were three versions of the map, in succession, the first two served more as beta maps, the third fixed a lot of bugs. At the time, I had a P4, and the map ran fine for me, but might have been a bit hard on older machines. Pretty safe to say that on current hardware there are no performance issues at all.

Altogether, the RockEMSockEm project took around 21 hours to complete. Maybe 10 hours for the map and bots and the rest of the time spent on artwork and frigging around with the robots as movers which did not work out and was a major disappointment (this is why they are lying down, rather than standing up punching each other).

Many thanks to Switch' and SabbathCat for swJumpPad; Bot_40 for the SmartAltPath actor; King Mango for the UP Suess colour textures; and big thanks to the admins at Unreal Playground for holding the Board Games contest! It is nice to make something simpler than that dog-damned Orions Curse every once in a while :D Music is Run from the game Unreal Tournament.

Map #4 for Blito3's 300K Mapping contest, held at Unreal Playground Nov-Dec 2006. This one's a CTF set in some old Castle somewhere in the UT universe. Actually made most of this map in one 4 hour twitch, then fiddled with it a bit over the next week or so.

Every so often you used to see a CTF map where the flags are right beside each other, but separated by a glassed wall or some such thing (I know Bot_40 made one, but I can't think of the map name, another was CTF-burning which I remember playing a lot on servers in the old days). When I released CastleFrag for testing, the UP guys discovered a thin wall exploit in the flag rooms pretty damn fast and that made for really short matches, lol! So I had to fix this by making the wall a lot thicker.

Unfortunately for this map, the gameplay is abit iffy - it has a really convoluted layout, and so it is easy to get screwed up as to direction. Dunno what I was thinking, but I don't particularly like the resulting gameplay, although once used to it, it's not that hard. At least there are route options for the FC. You might like it, might not. Is what it is...

Many thanks to Hostile, TarnationSauce2 and Lord Kafer for finding and discussing the FC thin wall death flag exploit :o. (I totally missed it, but the final version is good.) Altogether, Castle Frag took about 8 hours to make, including the fix. Many Thanks to Blito3 for having the 300K challenge!

Music is Strider from the game Unreal Tournament.

Map #3 for Blito3's 300K Mapping contest, held at Unreal Playground Nov-Dec 2006. This time it's an oldish Industrial Facility somewhere in the UT universe. It came about because I had almost a month of time left before the 300k deadline, so I figured I'd bang out a CTF.

I made several layouts (right in the editor, rather than on paper first) and came up with a couple that i thought would be good for 6 vs 6. I wanted a smallish layout that still gave the FC some choice, with some open areas to allow dodging and jousting. I did not want a map based entirely on z-axis play, but did keep a few double elevation areas. The map I wanted to make was going to be too big for 300k, so I switched to a simpler and smaller design.

That one became Electric Dream. What's in the name? Well some of the SGTech1 textures I used are the ones usually less-often used in maps, simply because I wanted to see if I could make them work together - yeah, the map has a rather "red" look to it - the actual look of the detailed textures reminded me of older 1940-50's electric company equipment, like stuff you might see in a museum from the vaccuum tube / pre-solid-state eras. Heh, if UT had come with a logo texture that said "General Electric Company" then things would have been perfect. Alas i had ZERO room in MyLevel for anything like that so you'll just have to use your imagination. The gloomy smog-like sky completes the mood :)

I play this one from time to time - it's a good 5 vs 5 match, 6 vs 6 is good too, if you like a spam-fest every once in a while. If this were back in the old days of UT it might have been a decent server map! Notes: The map took maybe 5-6 hours to make, once I chose to make it. Many thanks to Derdak2rot for suggesting I change the floor textures - and so I did, lol! When Derdak speaks, people listen! Thanks also to Blito3 for having the 300K challenge!

Music is Lock from the game Unreal Tournament.

LIANDRI CORPORATION RESEARCH DIVSION WARP-ENGINE TEST LAB! Well that's what this place is! A lot of different things to see in here. Tech sections, control rooms, urban industrialish outside areas, control panels, cargo areas, power units, and warning signs! Hundreds of bloody signs!

Well all that said, WarpCore might actually be the best CTF gameplay map I've made (judging by the reaction of the map reviewers at Insite and NaliCity). I do personally like this map, which is rare (I usually hate them by the time they are released, lol!) but this was a very tough map to make - construction was a struggle, but so were the bots, the lighting and there was a ton of artwork, so I spent a lot of my time photo-shopping.

Originally, this map had spinning gyro worm-hole vortex rings (like in that movie Contact). These looked extremely cool - BUT - having them moving caused the frame rates everywhere in the map to drop very badly! So the rings had to be turned into static deco, oh well :( Anyhow, tough map to make in the end, even with the moderate detail it was hell getting the 3000+ brushes to "mesh" - haha, that sounds weird :) but i guess I've got it all working since you're reading this :D

The SE version replaces the warning sign custom textures with dirtier ones. Also made minor adjustments to the path-network, added the UTX packs to MyLevel.

Special thanks to the UP folks for the BETA testing, and many thanks to Hourances for Indus_X and Pitores_UT texture packs, Bot_40 for the Smart Alternate Path actor, and to Flying_Killer for organizing the CTC map packs.

Music is Totalizator by PsykkoPhobia Bros./Mr.STEWE (pb_totalizator.umx).

I like to write poetry from time to time. Some of it is good, some is not-too-good. Thadaus Lament is a nice bit of poetry I wrote for this map, and is included here. The poem was written while i was listening to Winter, a trance track that inspired this map:

"Thädaus Lament"

As night decends upon this place, The dampness chills my bones,

Eternal stone both cold and dark, The North wind calls this home.

In long ago forgotten times, This land the sword did rule,

These tortured walls still tell of it, The barbarous and cruel.

Infidels, who took this land, In gods name, shed our blood,

Our fathers fought them, gave their lives, upon this frozen mud.

Many came, and many went, And many paid the cost,

Of freedom, for the vanquished souls, Our spirit, never lost.

The cold North wind she weeps and moans, Remembering the past,

No Sentinal will come again, In death, I am the last.

Thädaus

Originally, the environment was a hazy daylight, high clouds, bright western sun, with lengthy shadows of a late afternoon. There were trees and palms around, and rock among the aging gothic structures, advancing into decay at the hands of time. Winter spoke to me of a different environment: isolated, desolate, cold, lonely, dead, decayed, remembrance. The map Thadaus Lament rather became that. Without a doubt, this is the one piece of work that puts me in awe a bit - meaning exactly, that I can't believe I made a map like this. It seems better than me. Okay, maybe I'm blabbering on a bit much about this, so I'll stop.

Now, with the bleak preamble out of the way - this map is big, but straight-forward once you know it. It is good for xLoc, so mobility not hampered at all - lot's of room to manouver in your flag-run. There's a few deep pits around so you do want to watch your step at times. A great deal of attention was paid to optimization in the face of extremely dangerous brushwork. What can I say - no pain, no gain.

I also spent some time leading up to Thadaus, refining and reworking WoT textures collected from the many disjointed WoT utx files (ANC, ANC2, ANC4, ForSakenT, WOTx1, WOT1, others). The resulting package WOTabulous.utx was used here along with some Unreal NaliCastle and Crypt textures. UE1 renders Thadaus very well, except perhaps for the SilverIbex deusEx Eagle meshes when those are viewed at a distance. That aspect aside, I was very satisfied with the way Thadaus turned out in the end.

Many thanks to the UP folks who BETA tested the map; Special thanks to King Mango for (once-again) providing excellent Terragen Skybox images; and to Hourances for the nice natural textures from hourpitores_ut; and to bot_40 for the Smart ALT path actor; and lastly to the creators of Wheel-Of-Time, whom should not be forgotten.

Finally, big thanks to Flying_Killer for organizing the CTC map packs, of which this map was originally released in Vol.3.

I'll say it again, music is Winter by Rickard Sviestins.

Section-22 - Auxilliary Control and Communication Center, DELTA-144 Terrestrial Fuel Processing and Storage Facility Operator: PlasmaCorp Processing Ltd., a subsidiary of Liandri Corp. Yada yada yada - there's a CTF match to play ;)

A rather stupid idea of a story so would you kindly just ignore it :) Long story short, the base areas of this map came originally from a discarded section of the middle of CTF-FNB-SpaceJunk (2003), which was integrated into the original Orions Curse assault contest map, which was later split into 3 smaller maps, which after further downsizing left this section once again discarded (2004).

So, I modified it for CTF, adding side routes, upper areas, lots of curves, a new skybox and consistant moderate detail. I added ShockSystems textures into the mix and modified several for CTF to give the new map a bit more flavor. Fell down on the lighting a bit, but methinks it's pretty good looking anyway :) I really focused on making this map run well, so the scenes are lower polys, there's no HSD, and I used fewer coronas than usual. Improving Frame Rates was a high priority.

For the longest time the map was titled CTF-FraGnBraG as a temporary name, and it wasn't until i got the idea to keep it in the Orions Curse universe that it was given the name Orions Revenge.

So, besides the silly story, this map contains several screenshots of the Orions Curse Part 1 BETA map (shown on the monitor screenes in the big corridors). These images were a kind of shameless promotional storyboard of the upcoming Orions Curse map! As fate would have it, that map would not be released until two years later, and the final map looks very different from the map shown on those monitor screens! Oh silly silly FnB :P

Music is Resurrection by Toxeen (NPResurrect.umx).

OMG, another FraGnBraG Starship map! This is a Terran Defence Force battle cruiser, one of the capital ships in the Earth Fleet. These beefed up warships were built during the Skaarj wars to counter the powerful enemy motherships. This one is cruising through hyperspace on it's way towards a red dwarf star system (having erm, just left a blue giant star system - that's it!) While this is the same idea as in UT's HyperBlast map (where a ship is warping through space and there are fighters in tight formation) HyperFrag has nothing in common with the original UT map - for one thing, HyperFrag is ten times bigger and has nukes, cannons, domes, and big-a$$ engines!!

The first version of the map was CTF-FoT-HyperFrag, which is included in the Flags-Of-Time map-pack released by Swanky (Timewarp Crew) in Aug 2005. CTF-FNB-HyperFrag was the second version of the map - released in Dec 2005 - to fix a serious bug with the path network. The second version is identical to the first except the path-network was completely redone from scratch.

When first released, HyperFrag was a bit hard on old computers when the player was outside in the upper LG area - although tbh I never had any problems with lag, and I had an old P4 at the time. On current hardware there are NO performance issues - it runs fast and smooth.

Special thanks to SabbathCat for the JRM custom meshes (especially the cool FNB-Rocket mesh I used in the bomb-bays), also thanks to XeppitzZ for the red plasma-beam FX, Bot-40 for the Smart Alt-path actor, to all the UP folks for testing and suggestions. Finally, a big thanks to Swanky for including the map in the Flags-Of-Time mappack :)

Music is Philisophical Yellow by ixupi (Sub2.umx).

Space-based orbital missile station CTF. Started off as my answer to the very fun CTF-433, a popular but rather silly looking spaceship map played regularly on Unreal Playground servers. Of course, Spacepods looks awesome compared the much older 433, but does have complicated routes, and thus may be a bit of a challenge for players who want continuous action. Fair to say, not a map for everyone.

This map sat for a year before I decided to finish it. Two maps inspired me enough to get this Spacepods done: CTF-1HS-Orbital2 (Howard Stern) and CTF-SiberiaN23 (kaMi) both quite different looking but both excellent maps. The thing they had in common was they both used UT2003 textures. So this was the first time I used UT2003 textures in one of my maps.

It was also the first time that I used assets from other Unreal-engine (but non-Epic) games. Not something I thought a lot about at the time, since I had downloaded many UT maps already that blatantly used the assets of other games. Yeah, I got publicly slapped by reviewers for doing it, probably because I was up front about including foreign textures whereas all the other mappers just quietly ganked them :( I think it was a bit unfair but alas one good thing came from that experience - I started down the road to making my own textures, artwork, and composites from photos and base stock.

The music track is NYCStreets_Music from the game DeusEx.

Hmmm... the government ordered Liandri (the owner of the plant) to clean up all that rust because it was turning the city's drinking water brown and making everybody sick! So Liandri mixed truckloads of drain-O, CLR, Vinegar and bleach with the water in the tanks to try and dissolve the rust, but it didn't work too well -- so don't fall in -- you'll die instantly!

This is the second version of Rusty, modified to improve gameplay in general based on some suggestions from the CTF player community Main changes include adding killing water; opening up the base areas; adding some pillars in each base; expanding the base-wall interiors; and removing all the teleporters.

I also moved the redeemer up top in a spine along the middle area; added hidden invis and amp pickups in the middle. In the end it's pretty different from the original, but feels the same. Removing the hide-and-seek swimming element of the original Rusty made version 2 much more of a challenge.

The music track is still the same as before: Wheels from the game Unreal Tournament.

No story for this one, it's just some kind of big old rusty industrial concrete and steel ramp-filled CTF-decorated facility or processing plant building, with a lot of water in the bottom (and of course a redeemer down underneath, heh). The BOTS are good and nasty in this map, and they'll give you fits but alas they cannot use the geometry in this map the way human players can.

This map is the "kid brother" of CTF-FNB-BigAndRusty, which was a cleaned up and optimized version of the contest map CTF-6H-BigAndRusty, which was created for the King Mango 6-hour mapping challenge contest held at Unreal Playground during September 2003.

CTF-FNB-Rusty is exactly half the size of CTF-FNB-BigAndRusty, a completed map that was not released due to it's excessive size and boring slow gameplay. That said, Rusty is still a large map, just not stupidly large, and has decently fast gameplay.

Music track is Wheels from the game Unreal Tournament.

During the Skaarj Wars, Earth's Terran Authority commissioned several space-based communication relay stations. These massive platforms were stationed throughout solar systems in the vicinity of Earth and were vital in maintaining active data-links with military starships and transport vessels operating in deep space. Since the end of hostilities with the Skaarj, much of this now-derelict hardware was deemed surplus and earmarked for scrapping. Liandri Corp., always seeking new locales for the Tournament, purchased this floating behemoth for a song, quickly converting it into a CTF arena. Liandri engineers tuned the station's gravity generators to provide just enough zip for quick movement assuring fast-paced CTF action!

This was the second map I released, but not the one I wanted. Ring-Of-Stones was supposed to be the first in a series of four temple maps, but these became bogged down with problems so I opted to do this CTF because I thought I could finish it off in a reasonable amount of time. CTF-SpaceJunk was a concept I'd mused about since building the original DM map in 2001. I wasn't too keen about dealing with another giant CTF map, having had a somewhat bad experience with a few already (mainly due to the troublesome bots and the slow, boring gameplay you typically get in a giant map). So this became a challenge and off I went - duplicating and flipping the DM-Spacejunk Comm-dish platforms, adding in large view-blocking forms, and constructing the large disk-like section in the middle.

Eight long-range kicker jump-pads were used on the sides to provide quick transport between bases. Interior areas in the middle were interconnected using Warp-Zones, mainly for access to sniping positions and a Redeemer. I had a really tough time bot-pathing this map, especially the kickers, and had to redo the entire path network several times. It worked in the end, but there were still some nagging bot bugs at the time of release (bouncing bots anyone?). Generally speaking, the map worked ok, just not super fantastic. I did put a fair bit of effort into optimizing this monster, as can be seen when viewed in the editor. Unfortunately, there were still high poly scenes when you were up high, and the section zoning did not prove effective (so when you see the map end-to-end when you would get lag).

SpaceJunk was not my best work, visually, in fact it was a pretty ugly map - but it was a cool map idea. I didn't spend half the time on lighting as I did in Ring-Of-Stones and some earlier maps. The texturing while extensive, was fairly mundane and uninspired. Not a great deal of deco detail in the map either, since quite obviously having TRIM brushing in an open map that size would have been FrameRate suicide. The skybox nebula looked quite nice, imo, if using the OpenGL renderer. I haven't played this map in years, but it's likely not going to have any performance issues on typical current hardware. Many thanks to the folks at Unreal Playground who provided feedback on the beta versions.

Music track is Organic from the game Unreal Tournament.