Skaarj WarlordWithout further ado I present to you Frieza's History of Mapping!
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Noob Stuff
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The heading says it all, here you can find my early attempts at mapping. There's some downright horrendous stuff here (naturally). I didn't include every box I made obviously, only the somewhat substantial stuff. I'm sure other people will recognize some of their own first attempts in this. Also, I'll try to give a bit of context to every screenshot or just a random comment.
This the first map I ever made that was more than a simple cube. I think I must've been about 11 years old when I made this. For some weird reason I'm actually somewhat proud of this. Probably because the cool mountain (Floor Lofter!
) I've uploaded this file for download so you can see what the whole thing looks like, and to have some fun at my expense 
Linky
Look mommy! I found the decoration tab under the actor browser
It's a sphere, it's tiny, it has a choice of textures so vile it makes your eyes hurt, and it's crammed with powerups. Ah, sweet recognition..
Second attempt of making a Singleplayer map, some sort of crashed spaceshiplike thing. Some ISV-Kran influences here. I don't think I ever planned any sort of story for it
From the same map as above, crew quarters
Third attempt at a Singleplayer map. It was going to be a sort of chizra temple-ish thing. I was extremely proud of the cogs you can see in the foreground, as they rotate! This is also one of the last things I made with UEd1, UT was about to be released at this time!
To be honest I can't really remember any specifics about this map. I know that it's one of the first things I made for UT. I was really surprised to find this by the way, I had to download city-demo.utx to even get it to run
From the same map as above, note the lovely porch at the bottom that I tried to create by rotating a bunch of straight cylinders. BSP hell obviously!
I only had an old pic of this map on one of my backup discs. I remember posting some pics from this map on the NaliCity forums at the time. The illustrious DavidM commented on how 'ghey' the coronas were
More terrible stuff. The workfile for this map was called 'blubberreet', which, translated to English, would be something like 'blubbery arse'. Such a fitting title...
Fugly as hell. Was meant to be some sort of temple assimilated by the Skaarj, hence the two layers of architecture.
The final map in this category (Thank god), I think this was the produce of a little 'make a map in 2 hours' contest I did with a friend. It's fully botpathed! There's actually some pretty nice shadows present here, but I had to enable rmode 6 since the rest was so damn dark.
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Fugly and/or useless stuff
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In this category I put all the things that aren't exactly noob things, but are either: a tiny random hallway or room, ugly larger maps that I wouldn't classify as terribly noobish, random fugly things that I created for one reason or other. Don't worry, it gets better after this category!
The above to shots are both from the same map, it's also the probably the first map I made that looked atleast somewhat decent (but still ugly). People thought the overdose of coronas was a bit too much, justifiably so.
Not fugly, but still useless. Proph should recognize this as I did a little competition with him to create a 1024 * 256 * 256 hallway. He created a nice looking temple-ish thing, and I created this weird corridor. Needless to say, Jae686 (if anyone remembers him), who was our judge, liked Proph's one best, however, I got + points for originality!
All hail the revolve tool! Maybe a good idea for a logo?
This isn't that old, was going to be a compact DM level. Obviously never got any further than about 2 hours of work. No intentions of finishing it either.
This map is completely finished, botpathed and everything. I made it for the UT clan I was in at the time. [sD] (steel Dragons). It's not that terrible, but it really hurts my eyes nowadays. If you want I'll upload it, there's a nice chompy chompy trap along the shortest flag-to-flag route! Oh and this was the first map where I extensively used trims! Can't imagine mapping without trims nowadays, they're so important.
A Bunnytrack map I made in about an hour. Not much for looks obviously. And it's not that hard either. UArch found some massive shortcuts in it when he tried it out.
Another BT room. never got any further than this one room. It's actually somewhat nice looking (bit dark), rather useless though
I don't know what possessed me to make this, was it MDK?
My equivelant of FindTehGheyBall and all those other April's Fools maps. Half of the surfaces were set to mirror, and you can't miss those awesome disco effects
High poly 3DSMAX mesh I made imported into UnrealEd and then textured. It was more a test than anything. Looks nice though
I like the bridges in this. It was going to be a map situated in some foggy nali docks. Stopped working on it after about 4 hours.
Tiny room I made to test the anc.utx texture pack and interpolation points. 'nuff said
Tiny section of a rather expansive labyrinth I made for a project at school. Pretty atmospheric!
A small DM map with lots of jumppads, situated in a dock. It proved no fun to play, and it looks like shit. So I stopped working on it.
Trust me, I don't know what this is supposed to be either.
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Kinda Nice Stuff
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Now we're getting to the better sections. Most of the work here is post 2003, but there might be some exception. These are all pics of things I still like or that have merit in one way or another. The chance of me ever doing anything with them is very small though.
This was to be a remake of the first map I ever released, DM-1on1-Oxygen (more on that later). It's not much to look at, but I like it because it presented me with a clear sense of progress in my mapping, since I could compare it to the original. I think it dates from 2002. (Old stuff!)
Another oldie, this one got me noticed by Jae, SeeD and the other guys of the now extinct Project Clone team. I still like this Skaarj hallway, even though most of the architectural futures are really rather nonsensical (Seriously, who adds holes to support structures?
)
This one I made following this well known tutorial by Bot40. It really was an eye-opener for me in many ways, and permanently improved my mapping. Obviously I deviated from the tutorial and gave it my own spin, but in essence it's comparable. Also old btw. 2002
Part of a tutorial level I created for the now deceased Project Clone, introducing such things as the translator, health packs and flashlights in a hands-on approach
A corridor created for a Skaarj map in BfNP. I dropped the map and consequently this piece of mapping. I think it's quite nice.
Another piece of mapping for BfNP that won't be used anymore. I was really really proud of this at the time, as it was the first time I created a piece of good looking terrain. You can still see this as background to the Team UnrealSP site.
The last bit of BfNP mapping that I can spill here. Huge terrain made by Kaka for one of my maps. Unfortunately it was ridden with all sorts of BSP problems and turned out to be too big resulting in Distance Culling setting in and creating lovely HOM effects in the distance. I since re envisioned the plan and am in the process of creating a new terrain in Max myself.
My last and most recent (still 1,5 years old orso) at making a Bunny Track map. It's not really a looker, but for BT standards it's pretty good
You can't really see it in the screenshot, but it involved an endless stream of movers carrying pieces of wood that you could jump on. The special mover script being courtesy of the ever resourceful UArch naturally. Never finished it..
This should really be under the Fugly/Useless category, but I just 'kinda like' it
This map never progressed beyond this single room. I think it really presented the best of my ability back when I made it (something like 2004), and even for todays standards I think it still looks pretty ace.
Scary stuff! Obviously Quake-inspired with it's pit of nasty teethlike protrusions. Never progressed beyond a days work. The fog might be a little much
Closing this category is this map, which I made in an attempt to quickly create a lowpoly, yet good-looking Singleplayerlevel for a small campaign me and UArch were building involving some contrived plot starring Xan Kriegor. Like all my SP maps, this one never saw the daylight, and it probably never will.
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Stuff I wish I had finished
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My favorite category, yet also the most painful one for me. All the maps here are all maps I really regard highly (and also the category the missing map I mentioned in the intro belong to). They all represent me at the best of my ability at the time of creation. And maybe in the far future I might do something with them, be it in a new incarnation on a different platform, an adaption to a MP or SP level or a finished version. Also expect the longest descriptions here
Oh, and sorry if I come across overtly self-indulgent (not like this thread isn't a bunch of self-glorification to begin with )
Kicking off with the oldest one in this category, another unfinished SP level (like most in this category). Even though this corridor must be like 5 years old, walking around it it still doesn't look dated. Heaps of atmosphere. I didn't really define a story, though I'm sure I had something in my head at the time.
The above two shots I created for an Unreal Playground contest revolving about Star Trek futurism. I created this map in an effort to create what the earth might look like in 200 years from now. Even though there are obvious shortcomings, like some dodgy lighting, I just love the design I created for it, it just turned out in a really original way. We only had one week I think to create this map, I stayed up till 2 AM at the night of submission, but I couldn't get it finished unfortunately. After the contest was over, I never looked back. I really regret not going back to it and finishing it and releasing it. Ah well..
Possibly my favorite in the whole list, and if there's one map I might resurrect it has to be this one. The plot revolved about some warped Skaarj slaughterhouse, turning humans into canned meat. And there was this freaky computer personality not unlike the likes of Shodan in SS2. It didn't really have anything to do with Unreal, though it contained Skaarj. I think it still has some of my best looking mapping in it, though it must be over 3 years old.
This was going to be a tiny village located in a secluded cave. I never got to making the roof of the cave, nor the rest of the village. Oh yeah, not a SP level, but a MP level.
Pretty recent, might still find it's way to a DM level. The terrain is slightly difficult to see on the screenshots, due to the lack of light, but it's some of my best. I don't know why the building turned out pistol shaped, it's unintentionally I assure you!
Ahh, Cellars of Na'Adriel, my discontinued SP campaign that was also in the UnrealSP projects section for a while. The story involved a giant tarantula living deep inside the cellars of the Nali village of Na'Adriel. I never progressed very far with it, but I definitely had some wild ideas. It was going to be focused more on horror than on action. Who knows what will come of it..
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Released Stuff
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This is a short section of the few maps I released for the people that don't know them and for me to discuss what I think of them in retrospect. (Did I ever tell you I am my own worst critic?
)
Let's start with the abomination that is DM-1on1-Oxygen. I released it in February 2001 (At the age of 12, yay!). It's the classical example of a noob map showing a lot of typical newbie symptoms, including and not limited to: using wall textures as floor textures, botpathing that doesn't work, horrible texture misalignments, blatant BSP bugs etc. I didn't even use the 'Frieza' nick at the time (The DBZ fad hadn't even caught on yet
). Anyway, Proph should remember this as he reviewed it (to my surprise) about 2 years after I made it. For those interested, the review is here
The next map I released partially because of this review. I was determined to prove how far I had come since 1on1-Oxygen and spurred on by Proph's 'To the author, I suggest reading some tutorials and honing your mapping skills a little.' comment I set out to create Profacation (Of which the title should have been Profanation, the desecratement of a holy place, but I made a typo leading people to think it should've been the horrible generic titel ProfAction). I tried to create a unique look by using lots of curves and it received pretty favorable reviews. A 6.5 at NaliCity and a 7.5 Insite.
[i]A year later I created DM-Dinashar for a Low Poly contest at Unreal Playground, a forerunner to the Low Poly Mappacks that we're created in the years after. The object was to stay under 400 polys in view, so I had to leave out a lot to achieve that, but I was ultimately disqualified when it turned out there was a particular position in which you could see 403 polygons, which I thought was pretty lame. I left it lying about for two weeks until Hourences HourIndus texture package was released. I went back to the map, retextured it, added additional rooms and detail and released it soon after. As a result of that it was one of the first, if not the first map on NC to utilize it, not that it's really a superior achievement on my side or anything
. Again some lovely reviews, both Insite and Nali City awarded it an 8. Looking back at it I think it still features some of the best lighting I've ever done, but I'm not satisfied with the crampedness of the map.
[i]And that 's why I created my most recent map DM-LP-Oleum, part of the Unreal Playground's Low Poly Mappack 2. Not very high on detail as it had to be low poly, but nowhere near as cramped as Dinashar. Unfortunately with this map I'm probably too far on the other scale of the balance, as some people called it overscaled, and I tend to agree with them. I don't think it's anywhere near Dinashar in terms of atmosphere but it definitely surpasses it gameplay wise, I think it sports my best DM lay-out of the 4 maps I released. Some people called it too connective, but I always regard connectivity as a good thing. Maybe in the future I'll remake it with more detail and release it seperately from the rest of the pack.
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New Stuff
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The last category (are you even reading all this stuff) exists of a whopping one map. Should I get to releasing it I think it'll be the last MP I'll make for the UT99 platform and then move on to UT3. It's been fun but now that there's a suitable replacement I think it's time to put the old UT to rest (With the exception of SP maps of course, since it's still the only viable platform atm). I'm really going all-out on this one to display as much of the skills I've gathered in my 8 years of mapping.
Well that about wraps it up, I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed rummaging through my old work again!
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