Big thank you to David M. Pochron for taking the long way into this project and creating these now obscure but truly amazing Quake 2 maps. Here is the entire text file that accompanied the original release of the Big Space Gun maps (zip file had this .txt file along with "bigspacegunup.bsp" and "bigspacegundn.bsp"):
Friday, August 27, 1999
================================================================
Title : Big Space Gun
Filenames : bigspacegunup.bsp, bigspacegundn.bsp
Author : David M. Pochron
Email Address : dpoch@mindspring.com
Web Site :
www.mindspring.com/~dpochAdditional Credits to : id Software for Quake 1 & 2
Other Maps By Author : Quake 2: egodruin
Quake 1: rktarena
Unreal: DMLightsOut
================================================================
* Play Information *
Single Player : No
Cooperative : No
Deathmatch : Yes (2-24 players)
Botmatch : No (However Gladiator Bot works pretty good)
Difficulty Settings : No
Minimum System Req: : 200 Mhz Pentium AND a 3D accelerator card
New Sounds : No
New Graphics : No
New Music : No
Demos Replaced : None
CD Track : 11
==================================================================
* Construction *
Base : None
Editor(s) used : QERadiant, DeWan compiling tools
Known Bugs : If you camp at the very tippy-top of bigspacegunup
for a while, the sky cube will start cutting through
the back of the map. Moving forward will bring
the cut off polygons back into view.
There are also some dark triangles present inside
the raised version of gun. I tried everything to
get rid of them, but the darkness transferred
even to plain cubes placed over them. No one
deathmatching will probably care about it.
Build Time : 100 hours split between the two versions of the maps.
Each map takes about 3 hours to compile on my
400 Mhz PII system w/ 128 megs of RAM.
==================================================================
Installation:
Unpack the maps into your Quake2\baseq2\maps folder. (Create the maps folder
if you don't have one.)
==================================================================
Backstory:
It's a big gun on an asteroid with an artificial gravity field. Don't
step off the edge of the gun platform or asteroid - you'll fall into
space and die. In addition to the gun, there is a large fusion core
underneath the platform that powers the gun. The core room was cut
entirely through the asteroid so you can see into open space from the
bottom of the core. (Don't fall into space there, either! :-)
The gun is functional! Go to the control room and fire it up - fry your
friends trying to get at the many items in the gun barrel! The gun fires
a particle beam which is used to cut up large enemy starships.
==================================================================
Author's Notes:
An older version of this map was my first experience with editing in
Quake 2. The older version was an attempt to recreate the Big Gun
as seen in the Quake 2 intro movie exactly. (I was disappointed with
the Big Gun level in the actual game since it didn't look anything like
the intro movie Big Gun...Though I do enjoy deathmatching on it.)
However, I kept running into the problem of the Quake 2 sky cube not being
large enough to hold a full-scale version of that gun. Additionally, the
inside of the Big Gun as seen in the intro isn't very interesting to run
around in. So I gave up on it and worked on other things during the
past 18 months. Three weeks ago, I finally decided to give it another
go, but this time I wouldn't try to recreate the Big Gun as seen but
instead create version that was interesting to run around in and
also a bit smaller. Also, I knew there was no way to realistically
make the ground extend as far as it appeared to in the intro movie,
so I decided to change the setting for the gun completely and put it
on a slowly rotating asteroid. This actually worked out great, since
I was able to make it deadly to fall off the edge of the world.
Therefore nothing from my original Big Gun attempt is in this map; I
decided to get a fresh start as there wasn't anything I could still
make use of from my first attempt 18 months ago.
I had wanted to use the Phong shading capability of ArghRad, however
ArghRad kept locking up my system right after the second pass completed.
I instead used Geoffrey DeWan's qrad3 tool as that also had the ArghRad-
style sun feature but no Phong shading.
After playing the map with the gun in it's raised position (30 degrees,
in case you wanted to know), I realized that while the sheer terror of
running around inside and on top of such a slippery slope is fun, it
also might be frustrating to some players who simply want to deathmatch.
Therefore, I started a modified version that has the gun in it's down
position. This one is easier to move around on, however, the sights
aren't quite as spectacular as the raised version.
If you can get into the groove between the red pipe and core wall just
right, you can shimmy down the pipe and avoid taking falling damage!
As mentioned earlier, the gun can actually be fired! Anyone trying to
get the bountiful items in the gun barrel will be disintegrated if
they are caught inside there when the laser fires. Players have about
9 seconds from the time the first warning klaxon is heard to when they
must be clear of the firing chamber.
These maps have some very large open areas, which means you'll need
a heftier system to handle them properly. You'll need at least a 200
Mhz Pentium and a 3D accelerator card capable of at least Voodoo 1 speeds.
Note that this is a true bare minimum - for experienced players, this
still probably won't be enough. On my 400Mhz PII TNT 2 (non-ultra)
system, I get around 35 fps in the most complex areas of the maps.
Forget about trying to play these maps in software rendering mode!
The software renderer can't handle all the polygons, and sections of
the maps will start to disappear. 3D cards are so inexpensive now you
owe it to yourself to pick one up if you're still trying to play
in software rendering mode.
In the raised version of Big Space Gun, the faster your computer the faster
you'll be able to climb the sloped ladders. This is due to an odd quirk of
the Quake 2 physics engine. If you have a slow system, stay away from the
sloped ladders and use the teleporters instead.
Be very careful when running around the edges of the asteroid! the sloped
rock makes it easy to slip right off the edge into space! (Heheheh. :-)
==================================================================
* Legal Stuff *
These maps (bigspacegunup.bsp, bigspacegundn.bsp) are copyrighted © 1999
by David M. Pochron.
END USERS: You are hereby granted a license to install either of these
maps on your system or download the maps from game servers
free of charge.
GAME SERVER ADMINS: You are hereby granted a license to install and use
the maps on your servers free of charge and may allow
players to download the maps directly from your server.
The text file need not be included in this situation.
MAP COMPILATIONS: Those persons creating large map compilations on FTP
servers, web servers, or CD collections are hereby
granted a license to distribute this level (commercial
or otherwise) free of charge as long as you include this
text file as it appears here.
