15.10.99 ================================================================ Title : Mel Soaring 2: Star Rancor BSP Name : alk03.bsp Author : Shaun Ross aka [Kona] Release Date : October 1999 Email Address : alkali@ihug.co.nz Home Page : http://render-seed.cjb.net Map Description : Control galactic villain Mel Soaring take down an alien palace - built on a small asteroid floating through space! Storyline : You've been living on the Strogg planet named Meeylark for a number of years since you took it over. There aren't many Strogg left on it - you wiped most of them out when you took over the main base where the leader lived. Since then you have defended your planet along with a number of Iron Maiden, who surprisingly took your side in defending the planet. "Mel, you better take a look at this," requests Keldar, as she stares into a computer monitor. "Our radars have detected an alien structure. It has been built on an asteroid and is floating toward us. It's definitely not another Strogg ship, but I have no idea what race has built this structure, or if they still live on it." "So, Mel, what do you think we should do?" asks another Iron Maiden listening next to you. "Obviously, we'll have to go check it out," you respond. "Maybe I can take over another alien world," you gleefully announce. Typically, you can only go alone. An Iron Maiden is not strong enough, they would not last long if this structure were full of Strogg - and there are not many of them left on Meeylark anyway. Also, there doesn't appear to be any place for a ship to land on this asteriod, so you will have to be dropped off on the edge. From there you can explore this alien structure and report back if there are any lifeforms on the asteroid. Not before too long you are all packed and ready to start your new mission. As you fly towards the asteroid in one of your Strogg ships, you are reminded of a long time ago, when you were flying towards Meeylark - all alone and ready to take over a small planet ruled by the Strogg. This time you'll face a new deadly species - the Xen... Other maps by Author : Mel Soaring - Hear Me Roar (Quake2) The first of Mel's adventures, where he took over the Stroggos palace on Meeylark. Mid 98 - The Alkado Adventure (Quake) Episode of seven new levels, new textures, skins, weapons and all new sounds and was featured in 'The Quake Bible' cover CD (by PC Powerplay). Good Things Come To Good People Royal Sacrifice A couple of very short unreleased Doom2 levels made in 1998. Other Info : ** Read the storyline before playing this level, or you might get bored at one stage... ** Some of you Q2 level designers should check out Half-Life editing - I found it to be quite different to Quake/Q2. Mel Soaring 3 (yes i've already started it) will be the more traditional Half-Life style - humans and base... Next I will somehow move the story into Daikatana, then perhaps Fakk2 or one of the 3D Realms games (Prey, Max Payne, Duke Forever) and not to be forgotten - Half-Life 2. I'd love to do Q3A or UT but it depends if bots are fun enough... I think the things which let my last level down have been cured here - not so difficult, not so many different textures (mainly because the half-life textures were boring), the story in the text file carries on into game, there is no backtracking (thus not such a good layout) and it mostly flows with the same theme. It's all still quite cramped though, which is how I like levels - so you better be quick with the trigger as there's nowhere to run! :P I believe making the fights more cramped makes it scarier. This level actually has five levels (so you could call it an episode) but each level has no more than five rooms and since all are flowing into each other it's really supposed to be just one big level but cut up to make it run quick. One thing you may notice, though, is that each small level takes on a different theme to the other. Eg. The first is the palace on the asteroid surface, the second is the tech stuff (pump and power generator), third is on the cliff/edge of the asteroid - which is like the part in Valve's level 'Surface Tension' (that part was the best in the game). The fourth level is kind of a mix between the palace and the tech, the fourth is Xen style! R_speeds can get a little bad - on the first level wpoly gets up to 600 which is ALMOST too high. However it is a detailed first level. Also on the third map epoly gets quite high too, although never above 10k. Unfortunately, epoly is quite high for most of the level, but that is that price you have to pay when you have alot of aliens! BTW - no humans in this level, hopefully a good change from the usual SP levels. If you play this map you are required by law to email me and tell me what you think so I can do better next time. Additional Thanks to : Ben Morris for Worldcraft, ID Software for Quake, Rust for their great tutorials Jiang, Brian (Buddy) and Eoghan O Neill for final testing - thanks guys! The sky texture, from the project "USS Darkstar", produced by Neil Manke's team http://www.planethalflife.com/manke ================================================================ * Play Information * Game : Half-Life Single Player : Yes Cooperative Play : No Deathmatch Play : No Difficulty Settings : Yes * Installation * Unzip all files into your .../half-life/valve directory If there is pak1.pak file already, then rename my file to other number. For example, pak2.pak or higher, or remove or rename your file to random number and my file leave the same. Run Half-life with the following parameters: hl.exe +skill 2 +map alk03a Or you can just start Half-Life then type "map alk03a" (without quotes) at the console. Skill you can choose as you want: +skill 1 - easy +skill 2 - normal +skill 3 - difficult * MAP Information * (before refinements from playtesting) Alk03a Alk03b Alk03c Alk03d Alk03e Total Solids : 577 295 242 506 326 1946 Faces : 3525 1809 1416 2869 1902 12595 PointEntities : 109 79 56 109 45 398 SolidEntities : 29 19 10 23 11 92 * Construction * Base : From Scratch Construction/BuildTime : Started 30.09.99 Level Construction Size Qcsg Qbsp2 Vis Qrad Alk03a 3 days/20 hrs 732k 14 31 291 142 Alk03b 2 days/15 hrs 452k 6 11 1651 44 Alk03c 1 day /6 hrs 506k 7 22 429 53 Alk03d 2 days/15 hrs 491k 9 10 100 61 Alk03e 1 day /7 hrs 490k 8 8 255 34 Total 9 days/75 hrs 2.67mb 44 92 2726 334 Adding Monsters, Items - several hrs Compile machine : P3 450mhz, 128mb RAM, Riva TNT2 Editor used : Worldcraft 2.0 Known Bugs : Hmm, none. The end would of been better, but I couldn't get the end level entity to work with trigger_relay. So instead you actually walk to the cave opening, rather than it ending with the last monster dieing. Oh here's a proper bug - func_breakable is lighter than everything else so you kinda know what is gonna happen in the fourth level while the camera is moving around. Oh and another bug, for some reason there are two controllers on the first map that seem to be picky whether they should appear or not. Sometimes both appear, sometimes just one or none! You may note that these are all Valve's bugs, which couldn't help but go in my level :\ * Copyright / Permissions * You may NOT use this level, or anything in it, to build additional levels. You may distribute this BSP in any electronic format (BBS, Internet, PC/Game Mag cover-CD, etc) but you MUST inform me before you do this.