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Map Information

Version:          v1.0 (Final)
Title:            Ancient Remains
File:             map-ancient_remains-1.0.pk3
Date:             January 14th 2007.

Author:           Ben 'DASPRiD' Scholzen
contact:          http://www.dasprids.de
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Background

Ancient Remains startes as a test map for Sock's great terrain and
rockwall tutorial. After some time, the map grows bigger and bigger,
and I decided to create a map for Tremulous out of it.

The first parts of the map were only a small canyon and a cave entry.
As I decided, that Tremulous game play was needed, I took my pen and
created the initial map layout. After that, I pre caulked the outer
walls in the map to test the entire size for usability.

After that, I began to make some rockwall templates. With them, I
filled the canyons and created some small hills on the floor
out of single brushes, instead of templates. This way, the map grew
to that, what you can see now.

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The Cave

The most interesting part of the map for me was the cave and floor blending.
Trying to create organic structures is time consuming but ultimately more 
rewarding than duplicating man made designs. I spent several days creating 
different designs but the best results always came from contour lines 
arranged to match the height of the landscape.

For game play and visual reasons the terrain landscape had to be smooth, 
because most games don't have suspension physics applied to the player. 
In all the tests I did, bumpy landscapes just felt like the player was 
stuck on a plank and rolling across a bumpy field at speed. For visual 
reason the bumpy terrain landscape just looked too low resolution and 
felt awkward.

When designing the cave I wanted to create something which was cramped, 
dark and very spooky. But this is not a good recipe for game play and drop 
down points had to be added to all the intersection points. I spent ages 
thinking of ways to create convincing looking ledges and holes in the
ceiling space, but none of the designs really felt right.

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Atmospherics

Once the map theme had been decided it was time to squash the silence and 
finally add the flesh to the bones. In order for the environment to be 
believable and atmospheric a certain level of ambience was needed. The 
outdoor areas needed to be alive with a wide spectrum of animal sounds 
and the cave needed to feel cold, dark and lonely.

Each environment in the map had a certain role to play and the right 
combination of sounds was needed to bring each section of the map to life. 
Each key area was given a primary background ambience sound with additional
random triggered sounds on top for added variety.

All physical map objects like torches were setup with subtle sound loops so
that the background ambience gradually changed when passing them by.
Unfortunately some objects had to have their ambient sound removed because
Q3 can multiple volume levels based on entity proximity and portal space.

At a certain point in the cave constant wind loops were added to compliment
the architectural style. Long corridors and various junctions with open 
skylights were perfect wind traps and constant samples with random quick
gusts fitted this location well. At a certain point of the cave low 
frequency rumbles were added to help increase the feelings of cold and fear.

The final icing on the cake was really long sounds of a distant 
thunderstorm approaching. This initially starts with distant rumbling 
and then develops into the odd crack of thunder in the distance. These samples
are played infrequently and add great depth to the overall sound landscape.

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PLEASE NOTE: The texture used in this map are not to be used under
any circumstances in any commercial products. YOU are not allowed
to make any money directly/indirectly from their use.
This situation is not open to discussion and if I find them in
any commercial product I will insist they are removed.

I believe that if someone is paid to make artistic resources for
computer games, THEY should do their job professionally and
not steal resources from the community.

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******************************************************************

Textures:         Mostly based or taken from Sock
                  Exceptions: Sky and wood1 - Randy Reddig (ydnar), 
                              Wall torch decal - Greymatter (RTCW)
Models:           Plant leaf model by Lloyd Morris
                  Original tree model by Lloyd Morris
                  Optimised/Reworked/Textured by Sock
Brush Prefabs:    Original torch design from RTCW by Greymatter
Sounds:           All custom sounds by marauder
Mapping Music:    Various albums from Metallica, Amon Amarth and AC/DC

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Special Thanks

* WolfWings for the great help by optimizing the grass for low-end PCs.
* Ydnar for the Q3map2 compiler and his great tips in the forums.
   This map would not have been possible without your compiler.
* Marauder for all the custom sounds.
* Lloyd Morris for the models.
* Sock for his great tutorial on terrain editing.

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Game play

The map is supposed to has a good game play with 6 up to 16 players.

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Construction / Compiler

Editor:         GTKRadiant (GTK 1.4)
Build Time:     16 weeks
Brush/Entity:   6211/355
Compile Time:   50 minutes

Compiler Light: -light -bounce 2 -gamma 2 -compensate 4 -fast -fastbounce -filter -samples 3 -patchshadows -dark 

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Final note

I always wanted to create a great terrain map, but I did never get it
done. I created nice looking test maps, but never more. This time,
I did really finished something, which I hope will be liked by the
community.

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Distribution / Copyright / Permissions 

Copyright (c) 2007 DASPRiD
All rights reserved.

Quake III Arena is a registered trademark of 
id Software, Inc.

This level may be electronically distributed only at 
NO CHARGE to the recipient in its current state, MUST 
include this .txt file, and may NOT be modified IN 
ANY WAY. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS THIS LEVEL TO BE 
DISTRIBUTED ON CD-ROM WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION.

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