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CTF-UCMP-Aquatica_LE
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General info
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Game:		Unreal Tournament 2004
Mappack:	UCMP
Title:		Aquatica Submarinal Refuel Station
Filename:	CTF-UCMP-Aquatica_LE.ut2
Author:		Jos 'Sjosz' Hendriks
Webpage:	
Gametype:	Capture the flag
Version:	1.0
Release date:	

File Installation
-----------------
Place the contents of the archive directly into your UT2004 folder. The files will automaically organize into the right folders.

Map info
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Singleplayer:	No
Multiplayer:	Yes, obviously
New textures:	Yes (courtesy of Dregs)
New meshes:	Yes, both new and altered (courtesy of Dregs)
New sounds:	Not in the LE
New music:	Not in the LE
Known bugs:	Performance may not be completely evenly spread throughout the map  
New stuff:	Altered Fogring, made by Dregs
		Fogring texture, made by PostPunk
		Textures, made/converted by Dregs/me
		Meshes, made/converted by Dregs/me

Author info
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Name:		Jos 'Sjosz' Hendriks
Age:		19
Location:	Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Maps:	UT2003	DM-1on1-Frenzy
		BR-Templus
	UT2004	BR-Templus2k4
		CTF-Templus2k4
		DOM-DMP-Templus
		DOM-DMP-Dissipate
		DOM-DMP-Enchanted
		cDOM-DMP-Dissipate
		FD-Dissipate
		DM-SG-Scarab
		DM-SG-Minefield
		DM-SG-Grinder
		CTF-UCMP-Aquatica
		DM-UCMP2-Taron
		CTF-OSR-Gladius
Contact:	Sjosz@cdom.net
		Sjosz@hotmail.com
		jos@aconygames.com

Description
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The sea, rough and ruthless on the surface, tranquil and serene within. The ever turbulent waves are a mere façade for the silence of the deep. Little is left of the serenity of the sea nowadays, for human creation has corrupted it's gently sloping and rolling hills of sand, rock and coral. Originally built to fuel ships of war for their pointless ventures, Aquatica Submarinal Refuel Station landmarked human defilement of nature like no other. Closed down due to low budgets, but still in near perfect condition, the installation was easily bought up by Liandri, turning the structure into a Tournament venue, with the sole purpose of fueling the hunger for bloodsport of millions of fans. Now, peace of mind in this eerie place can only be obtained by emerging victor over your enemy....

Changelist
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- Removed content for packages Fish.utx, HourDinora.utx/usx, AmbModern.uax, Aquatica.ogg
- Removed music track
- Removed all ambient sounds
- Removed 595 light actors to increase performance
- Removed all decorative/useless emitters
- Removed all decorative/useless static meshes
- Removed all decorative/useless terrain
- Removed all shader materials
- Reworked antiportals and zoning for better performance
- Added 128 UU of length in the flagrooms
- Added 67% of length to the mid section
- Added 100% of length to the spawnroom corridors
- Added 30% of length to the spawnrooms
- Replaced ramp in flagroom with lift (made by Axeman)
- Reworked item/weapon placement
- Reworked spawn locations
- Reworked BSP lightmaps for smaller filesize
- Reduced map filesize from 29.4 MB to 21.2 MB
- Reduced map archive filesize from 31.5 MB to 7.04 MB

Credits
-------	
First and foremost, Dregs for providing me with crucial feedback, new textures, new meshes, new sounds and lots of fun while constructing this map. Secondly, to the entire UCMP crew (Dregs, Moonflyer, Arcadia Vincennes, JuggaloKyle, BIOS, Stormblade, Saka, MichaelM, MsM, and the others as well) for testing this map and giving lots of feedback. Third to my little brother Rik 'Bunnyslayer' Hendriks, for testing and for busting my ass every time I didn't improve the map like he wanted me to. Additional credit goes to Hourences, for letting me use his HourDinora stuff and for being part of my inspiration; Alexander Lehmann, for letting me use his Incuvasion stuff; Spoondog for letting me use his Abyss-Lite stuff, and Rich 'Lord Heisher' Black for letting me use his Tydal stuff. Saka receives a fair bit as well for catching me some fish, and PostPunk deserves credit for his awesome fogring texture, and aquatic plantlife textures. Bellasadda receives thanks for explaining to me how to implement the breakable glass feature + helping me with implementing network emitters. Please forgive me if I forgot to mention anyone else that helped out, but you know I appreciate the help.

LE: Credit goes to the testers of the various BETA builds of the LE version. Special mention goes to Ender and Xios from the Unrealness forums for their continued support throughout development, to 85Bears for starting the development of Aquatica_SE, and to Axeman for creating me the most incredible lift precisely to my liking.


Author Notes
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I really wanted to create an underwater themed map, but I didn't want to use the standard old Oceanic skybox to make it. After playing maps like Incuvasion, Abyss-Lite, DeepSprinta, Deep, and Dinora, I started to create a theme around my plan. The initial layout was bigger than the end result, but due to various performance issues I decided to cut back on layout (the initial layout had 2 big rooms between the current central room and the flag rooms). Dregs and I had very good contact throughout the creation of this map; his feedback, along with that of the rest of the UCMP team, made the map how it is now. Dregs almost deserves as much credit as I do for making the map, because he supplied me with such an enormous amount of stuff to use for the map. 
After tinkering with the layout, I came to the conclusion that static mesh wallpanels would not work out, primarily because of the static vertex lighting on the meshes. So all the wallpanels became BSP, and this worked really well. The cornerwindows might be annoying, but they cover up an invisible collision snag, because I liked players getting stuck behind something visible rather than them getting stuck behind something invisible. The combination of themes worked out quite nicely in my opinion, the only bug that remains in the map is performance in certain areas. It scored well using the Umark benchmark, but still, I found the performance lacking at times. Hopefully someone in the community finds the secret room, no one of the UCMP team did (without looking in the editor or using console commands). Feedback is ALWAYS appreciated, I hope that you have fun playing this map.

LE: The LE of the map has a LOT deleted from it that was in the vision of the original. I made all the requested/suggested changes myself to make sure that I myself would like the end result as well. The changelist should give a good indication that the SE version is by far not just a reason to re-release this map. The final version of the LE is a whole different map from the original.

Construction Notes
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Construction had quite a few snags in it. BSP was redone 2 times completely, the first time to avoid using a lot of meshes, the second time to cut back on BSP nodes/triangles. The layout was redone once, because the initial layout was very bad for performance. Lighting has been redone once, the first scheme was completely worthless. Pathing was redone once completely, since the layout changed a bit too much to keep it. Then there was the horrible and time consuming error that occurred halfway during the map's construction, it was only playable on my own rig, not on any of the testers'. After a frustrating amount of manhours, Dregs found the cause, mixed up texture references in a few meshes (note that I had 1200 meshes at the time)

LE: I can tell you that it's not a smart idea to start building an LE, or a version suitable for competitive play when the map has already been completed. This has a lot to do with the fact that all the changes you make in a completed map often have a lot more influence to the existing geometry and stuff than a WIP map. For that reason the additional length in the mid section was a pain in the ass to acchieve, but it all worked out. 

Legal stuff
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This level is copyrighted by Jos Hendriks 2006. Borrowed custom content is copyrighted by the respective authors.
Authors may NOT use this level or its content as a base
to build additional levels, without the author's explicit permission!
Meaning, please consent use of custom stuff in this map via email, people
that release this map's stuff without consent/permission will be horrendously
flamed/sued/spanked/shot at and disregarded as nice people. Please ask permission!

Unreal® Tournament 2004 ©2004 Epic Games, Inc. Unreal is a registered trademark of
Epic Games, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. All other trademarks are the property of 
their respective owners.

Please just ask permission before doing anything with this map, and WAIT for a yes/no.
I usually reply emails within a day. This map is part of the UCMP mappack, permission for
use of certain elements may have to be decided by more people than just myself. This can
take longer than a day. Use one of the contact addresses in this readme.