mp_valhalla.pk3 (Valhalla)

==RTCW MULTIPLAYER MAP====================================
Title : Valhalla
File Name : mp_valhalla.PK3
File Size : 9,115 kb
Author(s) : Reggie 'Panzer Dragoon' Carolipio
Date of Release : 7-08-02
Recommended number
of players : 24-32

Type of map : MP only

Email Address : dungeonbuster@hotmail.com
Misc. Author Info : This is my second map. My first
didn't turn out quite so well
so I started from scratch
with this one. The first one
was a concept similar to this
one where the Allies would
fight through a small town to
get to the bunker beneath SS
headquarters at Nuremburg.

Description : (disclaimer: there is no truth to
the following save that the Nazis
did have the beginnings of an
atomic program which was aborted
after the destruction of key assets
during the war, such as their heavy
water experiments)

Operation Gotterdammerung
Target: VALHALLA

It's February, 1945. The Allied advance
through Europe on the West and the Soviet
rush through the East have caught Nazi
Germany in a vice. The failure of the
Ardennes Offensive has nearly sealed the
fate of the Reich. Refusing to admit defeat,
Hitler continues to direct the war from
Berlin. Allied commanders want to make sure
that he does not escape.

Intelligence gathered indicates that a
command bunker, codenamed 'Valhalla', was
constructed under great secrecy in the late
30's to the early 40's. Location has now
been verified, placing the complex deep
beneath the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden.
At the same time, OSA and OSS intelligence
operations have discovered the existence of
the 'Gotterdammerung' project, similar to the
United States' own Manhattan Project. However,
it appears that these particular scientists
may have actually managed to build a working
weapon. Although we do not believe that they
have the necessary materials to finish the
warhead, we are not taking the chance that
the prototype rocket could be used in
desperation by the Fuhrer against Moscow
or London.

It must be destroyed.

We believe that the Gotterdammerung project
was moved to a secret staging area for the
final testing of the missile components. We
believe that this area is beneath Valhalla.

This provides a rare opportunity for us. The
destruction of the bunker, the last bastion
for the Fuhrer and his cohorts, and the end to
the Nazi atomic program.

If the rocket is being readied, there must
be stores of rocket fuel at the site. Blowing
the stores of volatile rocket fuel should
destroy the bunker. The enemy may have taken
precautions to protect the fuel. Dynamite
planted somewhere in a key location in the
system should set off a chain reaction that will
blow the rocket, and the fuel.

Allied bombing over the site has worn down
the Axis defenses set up over the bunker,
allowing us to send in a team of specialists.
Taking control of the bunker's main elevator that
runs into the heart of the mountain, the team
has entered the tunnels beneath the Bavarian Alps
and are on their way to the bunker.

This is almost certainly a suicide mission, but
one that must succeed.

One thing is clear...STOP THE FUHRER!

Additional Credits to : Too many wW2 films, anime ^_^, my brother
for putting up with my insane map testing
sessions on his machine (Schnell! Schnell!)

Development machine : Dual Athlon MP 1200 with 512MB RAM, GeForce 3

Machine(s) tested on : Pentium III 933, 128MB, TNT2
Xtasy GeForce 4 MX 440
Dual Athlon MP 1200 with 512MB RAM, GeForce 3
================================================================

* Install Information *

Unzip the file to your machine. Make sure you unzip it into a
location where you can get to it. You should see two files:

mp_valhalla.pk3
rtcw_readme.txt (this file)

Copy mp_valhalla.pk3 into the /Main folder located where you had
installed 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein'. You'll know this
from seeing other .PK3 files in there as well (windows 2000 owners
may have to make sure 'hide extensions of known file types' is not
checked under Folder Options to see them). More to the point,
you'll see a bunch of files under /Main that begin with 'mp'. That
is the right place.

Once you've done it correctly and start up a server, you should
see 'Valhalla' listed as one of the maps that you can use if you
wish to host a game. That's all there really is to it.

* Play Information *

Level name(s) : Valhalla

RTCW version required : It should work with any build,
although I suggest the latest
patched version (1.33). It was
tested before, and after, the
GOTY patch and it works fine as
far as I've been able to tell.

New Cutscenes : Yes; ROQ for overview

-=Gameplay tips=-

The map emphasizes teamplay. Working as a team will lead
either side to victory. Lone wolves will have a harder
time at it than a team that sticks together. This is also
a long map to play. The default time for it is 12m to
allow for spawning and running from one end of the map
to the next. It's a huge map. More daring souls might want
to play the map in a much shorter time span.

There are a few things in the map that players should know
about the spawns in order to get the most out of it.

Axis' initial spawn is at the top of the bunker, in the
main entry. This is so they can ready their defenses. This
is NOT a designated spawn area. Axis players will have to
secure the Fuhrerbunker (hit the flag) in order to activate
their mid-level spawn for reinforcements. Otherwise, they
will spawn in the V-5 Rocket area at the extreme bottom
end of the map.

Late Axis members coming over to the game will spawn at
the bottom of the map, if the mid-level spawn was not
activated by securing the Fuhrerbunker (taking the flag).

There is usually more than one way to get to a particular
section of the bunker. Some ways are sneaky, others more
obvious.

The support scaffolding around the rocket can be climbed.

The silo motor objective is there more as a bonus than anything.
If anyone is crazy enough to try for it (if you have to get
every point possible on the map), it's there for you.

================================================================

What follows below are most of the technical aspects of the map,
problems encountered, tips for beginners like me, and a list of
resources that I had used to create the map. You don't have to
read the following to play the map.

================================================================

* Construction *

Base : New level from scratch

Editor(s) used : GtkRadiant 1.2.1 - 1.2.9 and assorted
nightly builds, Ydnar's Q3map,
www.planetpointy.com for WolfCompile,
bobToolz, portalviewer

Time to compile using
GTKRadiant's q3map
-vis -light : 1h34m

ROQ facts : Screenshots for pjBmp2Avi taken at 800x600

This produced fast, nearly 'real time' results
and dramatically reduced the size of the ROQ
in compiling. Your mileage may vary depending
on your machine, settings, etc..

Final TGA sequence exported at 256x128

Inolen's ROQ creator appears to be able to
support sequences of about 400+ images.

Scripting : Examples taken from mp_beach and lessons
learned

Total construction time : Off and on, three months

Known Bugs : Lighting is very off in several areas.
As a result, players may look a bit
overexposed in areas where they should
not be or exceptionally dark. The same
with the red lights scattered about.
In some areas, they work correctly.
In other areas, they obviously don't
(the ducts). This affects only the
dynamic models, although the Recreation
Room suffers from a severe case of hard
shadows on dynamic models. I am still
trying to figure that one out. Even using
more junior lights did not help.

There were some funky flag bursting
problems. I have one instance where this
works correctly, but for some odd reason,
my map won't accept anymore (i.e. they
compile wrong and DON'T explode, the
invisible part of the flag flickers in
and out, etc.). If you see a flag and it
doesn't explode when you shoot it,
it's because I made it 'unshootable'.

The V-5 rocket area used to have catwalk
brushes with the fence texture, allowing
the player to look through the texture,
and the 'missile clip'texture, allowing
players to shoot through it. However,
compiling the map introduced some odd
problems, such as some of these floors
turning solid (you could still see through
them), making them no longer 'shoot through'.
Fixing the problem floors solved the
problem with those floors, but broke other
ones, and vice versa, for some reason after
compiling them. This happened with the q3map
that came with GTKRadiant(1.2.9) and with
Ydnar's own q3map. I soon gave up trying to
get this particular feature to work and
replaced the catwalk textures with solid
steel and wooden planks. Sorry, but at one
point it felt a lot like playing Russian
roulette with the compiler (can I shoot
through the texture or can't I).

Glass doesn't work right (i.e. it's not
transparent), but it's destructable.
As a result, the glass suffers from a
severe case of glare and is opaque. You
can shoot out the glass, though.

Shadows have very rough edges in several
cases (pixelicious). The lightgrid was
raised to 512 in order for the map to compile.

Given the size and complexity of the map,
it's also unstable from a .map point of
view? The addition/use of new textures (new,
as in using more textures from the existing
RTCW list that have not been used anywhere
else in the level to any great extent) and
additional brush changes have caused severe
problems in some backups (i.e. the map
compile failing at the last stage of
StitchVertexLighting, the dreaded
'MAX_SHADERS_EXCEEDED' issue, horrible
performance issues, spawns no longer
working as they should, etc). This, more than
anything else, is probably why I am more
than a little wary of making even small
modifications to the map at this stage. Some
of the issues faced, though, seem focused
more on RTCW mapping than anything else from
what I have read in the forums.

Most of these issues surfaced at the end of
this particular development cycle and it was
either scrap the level or spend weeks more in
tracking down exactly what caused the
errors above (Argh! But it worked yesterday
and removing that brush STILL didn't fix it).
Whatever the invisible edge was, I managed
to get back on the safe side of the tracks
and decided to release the level as it is.
Hopefully it will be fun for someone out there
as it stands.

Since this is my first 'official' map, there's
probably a ton of other problems that I haven't
noticed but lots of others will pick up on.
Please let me know and I will see what I can
do to help. Thanks!

================================================================

Lessons learned:

There were a few things that I learned the hard way. I'll list
a few of them here if you're a beginning mapper and need some
tips on where to get started.

Beginning mappers (me) should try something out small first and then
move onto the bigger stuff later. Much frustration and confusion
can be avoided. :)

Read. I cannot stress this enough. Read as much as you can on the
do's and don'ts of level building. If you can, work at the same
time that you are reading the tutorial for it to sink in. Play
with the editor. Make silly stuff before getting serious. You'd
be surprised by how many times you find yourself doing things
you said that you wouldn't be caught dead doing early on...even
later on! There's a lot of GREAT resources out there and the
community is growing all the time. There's a lot of incredible
talent that is willing to share their knowledge out there.
Learn to find it, use it, absorb it. Make a printout and carry
it with you to the bathroom. ;) Just don't sit on your butt
expecting to be the best mapper in the world without consulting
those who have already gone before you. I left a list of resources
that I tapped below at the end of this readme.

Don't rely on only one tutorial. Some tutorials explain things
better than others, but combined may give you the answer you're
looking for (i.e. my search for hint brush explanations and
implementation demonstrations). I found out that there is
really no one 'right' way to do things. Learn as much as you
can from what everyone has posted and experiment!

Search the community forums. They're chock full of great info
from other mappers, programmers, designers, etc.. They're
one of the best sources that you could ever rely on out there
and will keep you up on the latest changes and problems that
other mappers/designers/programmers are having. Issues you
are dealing with might be someone else's problem, too.

If you get massive performance issues when testing your map, be
sure you've exited your editor so it's not up in the background. :)

Level building is a very different animal than traditional CAD or
3D content creation. Since you're making an interactive environment,
there's a lot of nuances that you'll run into. GtkRadiant usually
won't tell you if you've gone too far in many cases, until you decide
to go ahead and try to compile your map. Be sure to make backups
and to 'test' compile your map using BSP with no flags just to
see if it compiles correctly or spits out errors for you to track
down. This is best for when you're getting into the scripting part
of it. A leaky map is easy to fix, but some of the more esoteric
problems (MAX_SHADERS_EXCEEDED, your script suddenly NOT working
with your map even though NOTHING was changed other than compiling
a new map, etc.) are a little more tricky. Test, test, test! Especially
when you start with lighting.

================================================================

Other Changes:

The GOTY edition/patch of the game changed a few of the textures,
de-Nazifying them. I can understand why it was probably done
(PC reasons). For the sake of keeping the level in it's original
state, I have included the original textures, renamed so as to
be used in the game. The textures that I used that had been
changed were:

brick_c04 (now orig_brick)
wood_c22 (now orig_wood)

No shaders were changed to accomodate these textures, but
they appear to work just fine.

The original textures shipped with the original copies of RTCW
and were changed with the GOTY patch from what I was able to
gather.

An insane amount of thanks to the following:

Id Software
www.idsoftware.com
-for just being Id

Qeradiant
www.qeradiant.com
-for the excellent forums and providing the community with
a wonderful tool.

Tram Design
www.planetwolfenstein.com/tramdesign/
-for their excellent tutorials on many of the basics; their
spawn tutorials solved a big problem I was having with
the spawns on my map. They also have a good tutorial on
how to make AVIs out of your demos, some of which was used
in the making of the ROQ for Valhalla

Shaderlab
shaderlab.com
-for Ydnar and his excellent q3map tool. I hope to see the
next one out soon!

Planetpointy
www.planetpointy.com
-for WolfCompile

Return to Castle Wolfenstein 4 Dummies
www.kan.org/michael/RTCW/
-for Ifurita's excellent RTCW FAQ. If you need the basics
explained about RTCW in general, this is a great resource.
It is where I found out about Inolen's ROQ creator, and the
rough procedure on what goes into making one.

Inolen
www.inolen.com
www.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?madness/q3progs/roq.zip
-for his ROQ creator front-end

Paul Roberts
bmp2avi@cherryjam.prestel.co.uk
-for his pjbmp2avi program that helped put together some
of the demo footage for use in the Valhalla ROQ; unfortunately,
the site that he indicates for the tool is no longer working but
the package is available from Tramdesign in their rtcw2avi
tutorial.

Surface
www.planetwolfenstein.com/surface/tutorials/objectives.html
-for eyeronik's great tutorials

Gonnakillya's Smackdown Schmeglio
www.planetquake.com/smackdown/hinttutorial.html
-for finally putting into simple terms what hint brushes
actually do for a map and more importantly, how to
implement them. A must read for beginner mappers like me. Thanks!

Bubba's Arena Mapping
planetquake.com/bubba/mapping.html
-another must read for beginners and experts.
Great foundation materials for getting started mapping.
I started off with a lot of what was in here and am still
finding more stuff to do.

V2Rocket.Com
www.v2rocket.com
-for the wealth of knowledge about V2s and the WW2 launch
footage used in the ROQ

If I have forgotten someone or something, please let me know.

* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels.
THIS LEVEL IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY NERVE SOFTWARE
OR GREY MATTER INTERACTIVE STUDIOS. ELEMENTS TM & (C) GREY MATTER
INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, NERVE SOFTWARE, AND ID SOFTWARE.

You MAY distribute this level, provided you include this file, with
no modifications. You may distribute this file in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file
intact, with NO charge (other than incidental charges for time spent on-line).