CTF AMC Big And Ugly
DESCRIPTION
CTF AMC Big And Ugly
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 IMO.
GALLERY
HISTORY
CTF FNB Big And Ugly ( 2011+ )
Between 2004 and 2011 I worked on this map very little - whenever I felt like abusing myself, Lol! Sometime during 2011 I decided to give it a big push and finised with geometry, details, lighting and audio work.
Next, added Added UTR XPickups and completed BOT pathing and tweaked game flow. Simplified some of the routes to further reduce the path network size.
After a while I became exhausted with all the work and wanted to get on with my other projects, so this went back on the shelf.
At the time of the Awesome Mapping Contest arrived in 2018, this map immediately came to mind. Great excuse to finally put the monster to bed. So after one last grand effort, this crazy huge CTF map was DONE!
VCTF Big And Ugly ( 2004 )
One of the game types I really enjoyed from UT-2004 was Vehicle CTF. After playing 2004 for a couple of months I decided to experiment with VCTF and so chose to convert/import the Big And Ugly map (since it was so BIG in UT99 :P ). One I got the basic map together (still mostly CSG brushes for the most part) I pathed it for VCTF (according to tutorials) and began testing away. Well I'll say this: It was rather interesting but i began to realize "Big And Ugly" was not really so BIG in UT-2004 :P in fact, the overall map was a bit cramped, even though it had been scaled up during the import (I might have used MapScale or some such tool at the time).
The larger vehicles were getting stuck all over the place (or couldn't maneuver to well) and the smaller routes were just back and forth. The flying ones were a bit more interesting, but none of it amounted to any real fun. Long story short I think Epic intended VCTF more for terrain based-maps - wide open spaces - which I noticed were the usual type of VCTF maps people were making. Anyways, experiment over - this one was dropped pronto.
CTF Big And Ugly ( 2001 )
By the summer of 2001 I was playing CTF online fairly regularly and was impressed by the size of some CTF maps. I found the gameplay in those maps usually pretty boring as did most of the others players. Flags runs were a pain So for my first attempt at a CTF map, naturally, this one was a very large layout. In fact, this was ridiculously huge! Big, weird looking, and with loud red and blue lighting, there were 4 elevations for most of the map. The fleeing flag carrier usually looked like a speck! Amazingly, the map actually ran pretty well, likely due to the huge simple geometry.
Since the flags were miles apart (on foot that is), I added some features to try to speed up the travel: long zoom-tubes in the spine; some long-range kickers; some minus-grav lifting pads, Visible teleporters every so often, and also had some very fast moving lift platforms. When you consider a map this size, you'd be surprised how quickly you could go from one end to the other. This map almost worked, but sadly, it had a fatal flaw - the dreaded "1000 path nodes reached" log error which plagued the map when it was nearing completion.
That was a path-network related error that caused bots to become unable to find the flag bases. If a bot actually did grab the enemy flag he would just run around in circles with it as if having a deathmatch, instead of heading for his own flag. Back in 2001, I had no idea how to fix the problem, although I'm sure I could fix it now. Would I bother? Naw. well, maybe someday :)
Note from the future: Hell yeah I fixed it.. It only another took 16 years LOL! The 2018 AMC Contest map was the result...
