Binary Bonsai

Well here I am, last day of housesitting for my family. It’s been a wonderfully relaxing week, but now I figure that I’d better get back to doing something. So here’s a small update of sorts. In a nostalgic trip (I get those every once in a while) I went searching for reviews of old maps of mine, and here’re some of the links.

First up is ZeistDM1 (Zeist – The Coming), a small tournament map I made in a week back when Q3 was quite new. Personally I love playing on it still, not to stroke my own goat or anything. the gameplay is fast and furious. It can be downloaded from Fileplanet which at time of writing has 1300 downloads registed. Weee. Mod on Demand’s Review of ZeistDM1 (Score: 8 of 10)

“I think we have to keep an eye on this Karma”

LVL’s Review of ZeistDM1 (Score: 8.52 of 10)

“The action is fast, and the weapon placement is not bad at all. Three is more than enough for a fragfest.”

“Eine großartige Map. Ich denke eine der besten 1v1-Maps überhaupt. Sehr schnelles und gutes Gameplay.”

(“A Great Map. I think it’s one of the best 1v1-maps out there. Very fast and good gameplay.”)

Yogibaer‘s Review of ZeistDm1 (Score: 88% – German)

“The optimal solution for a fight between two people.” (Translated from German)

“Quake3Stuff’s Review (Score NA)

“[…] should be downloaded instantly. Nuff said. Go get.”

The other map I have available is my Poseidon Incident map. Now let me just quickly break down the situation surrounding The Poseidon Incident. The thing with it is that at the time when I was making it I was also the leader of a Half-Life Total Conversion called USCM: Infestation. At the time we were busy working out what kind of levels we were going to have. One of the ideas was to have an underwater habitat very much like Deep Core in The Abyss. Chris Ashton (who is now with Valve) was working on the texture set and I was trying to come up with the basic design of the habitat. At that time the Half-Life Editing Resource Center (which has now relocated) held a mapping competition, and I thought WTF and entered the small teaser level I had done. And I won… (Link to webarchive, no images)

And then the mails just started pouring in, I must’ve gotten several hundred mails asking me when USCM: Infestation would be out and where to get more and so on and so forth. And then 3 months later Fox shut us down for "copyright infringement". Which is fair enough I guess. Either way, this is all that ever came of the project officially. Some of the models, most notably a marine was later released as a playable model for Half-Life, Chris Ashton asked if he could use the textures for CounterStrike, where they now officially recide I believe, and the Poseidon Incident is pretty much the only real trail left of USCM: Infestation on the net. Oh well. Overall people seemed to love the level but hate the shortness of it :|

3dmr’s Poseidon Incident Review
“New textures compliment some nice architechture and good use of ambient sounds to produce a very atmospheric environment.”

I Am Half-Life was too lazy to post a review so posted the readme instead :D

I found a few other links as well, but it seems that time has taken its toll on the Internet :) Oh well. Now if only I can find a copy of it to post here as well.

Worth noting by the way, that I had in fact done about 50% on a full version of the Poseidon Incident back in 2001 when my HD crashed and left me with nothing. I might go back some time and finish it simply for the nostalgia of it all.

Yes I know, for a guy who likes level design as much as I do, it’s pretty damn sad that I only have 2 maps available for download. But unfortunatly I just haven’t been able to find the time to do any more between school and my work. So for now this’ll have to do.