Title:			3rd Space Beacon
Initial Release Date:	24 Jun 00
Filename:		DM-3rdSpaceBeacon.zip
Author:			Bert de Jong (a.k.a. bertroid)
E-mail Address:		bertroid@home.com

Description:

Note that 3rd Space Beacon is not a new map.  Rather, it is a slightly modified 2nd Space Beacon.  I had a few goals in mind when modifying the map:

I wanted to play around with UnrealEd2 without getting sucked into doing a brand new map.

I also wanted to improve the bot AI, particularly for sniping.  This map was designed for sniping after all.  I realized that I screwed that up big time in 2nd Space Beacon.  Going outside with bots around is now much more dangerous.  Some of the strong bots, those with a propensity for sniping, will see you from very long distances when perched in many sniping spots.  You better duck.

I improved some of the pathing as well.  Some of you level builders may appreciate how hard it is to have bots move through odd-shaped tubes, pain zones, operate lift buttons, and make difficult jumps in order to access obscure places that humans have no trouble doing.

The bots often behaved poorly in warp zones.  I found this annoying, so I eliminated all warp zones by concentrating all the geometry together.   It hurts the eyes to view the wireframe projections in UnrealEd, but no significant geometry changes were necessary anymore, so it didn't matter.

I have eliminated the translocators and chainsaws from the map.  I moved a few weapons around a little to improve balance in the map.  Jumping/translocating onto the surrounding mountains from the power station roof is now longer possible unless you enable translocators in the game settings.  The chainsaw is just plain useless.  There are still three warhead launchers, but they respawn more infrequently.  In case you think 3 warhead launchers are overkill, note that they are difficult to reach and this stupid-big map has many hiding spots to evade them or shoot them down. 

I made the pipes in the slime (long and dark with the tank) building a little easier to navigate and provided some additional pipes outside the power station to serve as sightline obstructions.  I provided sightline obstructions on top of two of the silos as well to make sniping from there safer.

I buried a few residual, persistent BSP/HOM artifacts under semi-solid brushes.  I couldn't get rid of all of them, but neither could Epic on many of their maps.  You can't know how much of a pain in the ass this has been for all versions of the Space Beacon.  There are other strange artifacts that occur only during netplay that don't happen in local bot play.  I did my best to mask them, because I couldn't fix them (i.e., movers being rendered midway between keys after they have been used once;  disappearing movers until activated for the first time).  Also, lightning seems to go wild in netplay.  This can be seen on-line from high places when looking down at the clouds outside the crater walls.  I couldn't find a way to fix this.

I also tried everything (short of taking the "curve" out of the architecture) to improve the frame rates.  To this end I reduced the number of textures used and rearranged the geometry to reduce the number of zones and polygons somewhat.  The uncompressed size of the map has been reduced from 17,838KB to 14,538KB.  (It's easy to use too many textures on a map this large, trying to provide a little variety.  Nevertheless, the map has a rather uniform look to it.  Like it or not, it is the look I wanted.)  The coloured lights in the silos were put in only to help players get oriented in the map.

The result is that the frame rates improved very little.  The bottom line is that the map simply has a lot of open space, complex geometry, lighting, and complicated AI to allow really fast frame rates with most of the PC's out there.  That is the unfortunate price that has to be paid for a massive map.  I like smooth frame rates like the next guy, and can find them on small maps.  I didn't want to make a small map.  There are lots of those.  I also don't consider a large map with no variety or poor bot play much fun either.  I also have a couple of PIII 800's at work, each with GeForce 64MB DDR. The map runs fine on those.

I also changed the preview image.  OK, who cares?

To summarize:  The key improvement is that the map is more fun when playing bots.  I noticed that there have been a very large number of downloads of 2nd Space Beacon from Nali City and other websites, but very few on-line occurences of the map.  I'm sure many of those downloads were made by curious people wondering why some wacko would make a map this large.  I'm wondering that myself.  However, there may be a significant number of people using the map only for bot play.  For you in particular, here is 3rd Space Beacon.  Have fun dying!

Bert de Jong  (a.k.a., bertroid)


I've included the Readme files for both 2nd Space Beacon and the original Space Beacon below.

Copyright / Permissions
-----------------------
This level is copyrighted by Bert de Jong (2000).

Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels.

You are NOT allowed to commercially exploit this level, i.e. put it on a CD
or any other electronic media that is sold for money!

You MAY distribute this level through any electronic network (internet,
FIDO, local BBS etc.), provided you include this file and leave the archive
intact.

UNREAL (c) 1998 and UNREAL TOURNAMENT (c) 1999 - Epic Games Inc.   All Rights Reserved.  Distributed by GT Interactive Software, Inc. under license.  UNREAL, the UNREAL logo, UNREAL TOURNAMENT, and the UNREAL TOURNAMENT logo are registered trademarks of Epic Games Inc.  All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Title:			2nd Space Beacon
Initial Release Date:	22 Dec 99
Filename:		dm2ndspacebeacon.zip
Author:			Bert de Jong (a.k.a. bertroid)
E-mail Address:		bertroid@home.com

Description:

After going public with my first level, Space Beacon, I was pleased to see many people playing it on my server.  This was my first experience as a server admin, not to mention a level builder. For months I had roughly 50 people playing each evening and a couple of hundred each weekend.  A very large number of these were regulars.  I was surprised that Space Beacon was as popular as it was because of the atypical, specialized type of map it is (very large and dark and designed for hunting and sniping).  Over the next few months I got to know quite a few of the regulars on my server and enjoyed many amazing games.  Once the UT Demo came out, Unreal (and Space Beacon) virtually died, so I shut down my server.

Before UT was released I decided to modify Space Beacon in order to learn some new mapping techniques I hadn't tried before, make some improvements to the overall game play, and make it a UT level.  This work was to prepare me for building an all-new level.  I thought it would be a few weeks of work ... NOT!

Nevertheless, I stuck it out and after a few months of hard work (mostly living in BSP Hell), finished 2nd Space Beacon.  2nd Space Beacon is fully pathed for bot play and supports both death match and team death match.  The level is harder on your CPU now, but, I assumed that most of the hardcore gamers must have better hardware than my two year old dino-PC that I still use as a client.  ;-)

Bert de Jong  (a.k.a., bertroid)


_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Title:			Space Beacon
Initial Release Date:	30 May 99
Final Release Date:	9 June 99 (bug fixes and minor improvements)
Filename:		dmspacebeacon.zip
Author:			Bert de Jong (a.k.a. bertroid)
E-mail Address:		bert.dejong@sympatico.ca

Description:

Welcome to my first death match level.  Space Beacon is large, designed primarily for sniping.  I tried to make a level that appeals to those who like to spend a bit of time hunting before making the kill.  This is not a 10 kills/minute kind of level.   I felt that this kind of level is rare and that more are needed.  Although the majority of players seem to prefer closed-in tunnel shooting, I believe there is still a significant market for this type of game, where a kill means something and which doesn't score like a basketball game.

I provided enough complexity to allow the more ambitious strategists the chance to come up with creative attack and defense plans.  There are many sniping locations, as well as counter-sniping locations.  I haven't yet found a spot that is perfectly defensible.  A creative player may.

I have made camping near player start points impractical, placing 80 of them in unmarked locations.  The level is intentionally dark, because it is foremost a sneaking and sniping level.  Playing this level in brightly-lit room will be a detriment.  However, there are some brighter areas in the map where fast, close-quarters fighting is possible.

I spent considerable time tuning the bot performance and inventory balance.  The bots play this level fairly well.  I have been playing  (i.e., beta testing) this level with 15 bots.  The level is ideally suited to 10-16 players.  When the network code allows, these numbers of players should work well.  It is not well suited to low numbers of players, primarily due to its large size.  Skaarj-sized skins are compatible with this map.

Special thanks to Smed for providing feedback during the beta testing.

As for the name...let your imagination go wild.  Have fun!

Bert de Jong  (a.k.a., bertroid)

