CTF FNB Space Junk

CTF FNB Space Junk

UT CTF - Large, 10-20 players. Derelict orbital Com station. Released Aug 2003.

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.

DM Space Junk

UT Deathmatch - Large, 4-8 players. Low gravity orbital com satellite. June 2001

Another low gravity floater type map, but this time smaller than the previous two oddity maps, but still quite large. This was a few levels of platforms and ramps, large and small with the main feature being the big comm dish prefab, which I tilted a bit.

I thought this layout might work okay for deathmatch - it looked cool - but it turned out to have less-than-exciting game play and so I didn't bother finished it off with proper lighting, sound or decoration.

This map was used two years later as a base for the red and blue bases in CTF-FNB-SpaceJunk, of course with more detail and some FX added.