CTF CTC WarpCore

CTF CTC WarpCore / SE

UT CTF - Medium, 10-12 players. Liandri warp engine research facility. Released (CTC Vol.3) November 2005 (SE) December 2005.

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 industrial outside areas, control panels, cargo areas, power units, and warning signs! Hundreds of bloody signs!

Well all that said, Warp Core might actually be the best CTF gameplay map I've made so far (judging by the reaction of the map reviewers at Insite and Nali City).

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).

DM Warp Core

Deathmatch in some sort of starship Engine Room : September 2001

This idea came from working on CTF-OrbitalNukes. I needed an engine room for the ship, so to have fore and aft sections (i.e. the bases). I also wanted a sort of central warp core power unit to make the room memorable!

Well the map took on a life of it's own and so I ended up developing it into a separate map. The layout was basically a double atrium arena with platforms, tunnels, a maze area and many curved pipes and rigging. Well the 2dse can easily turn into your enemy, and that's what happened here - this thing ran like crap!

So I added in more big brushes to try and occlude the polys, and also many zones and it still ran badly, so I killed it. Yes, I can blame it on the all the curvy stuff... Well, I suppose I can really only blame myself :P

Later on, I developed this map into CTF-WarpCore, which eventually evolved into CTF-CTC-WarpCore.

CTF Warp Core

CAPTURE THE FLAG match in a starship Engine Room : October 2001

After killing DM-Warpcore, I decided to punish myself further by developing it into a new CTF map. So I went about changing the original deathmatch layout by stretching it lengthwise and adding in two sets of view-blocking zone-able walls, which I calculated would raise the frame-rates into acceptable levels. This worked out pretty well so I then duped, flipped and blocked out a new middle section, creating CTF-WarpCore.

Note that I the screenshot shown above is a placeholder (it's from the original DM map) as I have no screen-shots of the 2002 CTF map. The development maps for this project were deleted after CTF-CTC-WarpCore was released.

CTF-WarpCore had a lot of promise in the game play department due to excellent flow and just the right amount of z-axis for agile flag carriers. The map evolved quite a bit during 2004 and eventually developed into CTF-CTC-WarpCore.