CTF-OptiExtract--A CTF map that has also been developed for The Reliquary's UT3 Bombing Run mod.

Created by Caleb "<{Ui}>FB3" Foultz.

GENERAL:

Map size: Small
Map players: 10-14 players
Built as: a fast map that's simply fun to play around with and kill some time with.

INFO: 

This is a first for me, so I took a simple concept and decided to see what I could come up with. Clan map? No. Though it is designed for the online gamer, since UT is an online game and the small community needs some fresh maps to pick and choose from. I'm not really expecting great success--usually first maps don't, though right now I have several big projects on the line for the summer, many BR maps including a BR-Colossus (UT2K4) map remake and an open, yet still very large and winding single deathmatch map set in a more urban environment that will contain a lot of Z-action. (The one I'm pretty excited for) Though for right now, I figured I'd, even though my critical self doesn't really think it lives up to the standards, release it, get some feedback, and in the meantime work on some real projects to get out there.

This map was originally released back in 2008 as Extraction, though I was far from satified with the quality, being unremarkable or unmemorable. So I redid most everything in it except the basics and came up with the first few revisions of OptiExtract. There still wasn't that feeling though--that feeling I really wanted to get across, where the map would be fast and simple, yet still stylish and containing a decent amount of eye candy. Numerous other changes were made, including jumppads so that the walkways wouldn't be so easy to get through anymore, and a lot of cosmetic changes like the biogoop runoff and later with more stylistic changes like the moderate bloom and the addition of skylight shadowing. I never did put that terrain in though--I should've, though I hadn't known how to create terrain back then either...

Since it's meant to be fast and furious and played with around 12 players or so, and since you can essentially see the whole map outside, optimization was difficult though I did everything I could think of to make sure that, at a decent resolution, the large majority of UT3-supported systems should run at decent framerates. There's culling on all the places where I can do it, have removed surface material from all invisible (to the player) BSP faces, adjusted collision appropriately, and changed many lighting settings on objects among other things. Mine's a Core 2 Duo E6750 with 3GB RAM and a single 8800GS, and with 12 players it runs well on mine, though hopefully it won't give you all too much trouble.

And a description? As a first map, it really doesn't have that much of a story since it was largely my personal practice map. It's really an abstract kind of idea so that might turn some people off, though if you just look at it for what it is you should do alright with the lack of big overall theme.

And the file size comes as a result of the custom music and my problems with cooking the map. The music itself is an official UT99 track ("Razorback") though UT3 requires music to be in .wav format which consumes a load of space. It's then complemented by my cooking troubles...It'll cook, though other people have claimed that they couldn't load the map when cooked, so I'm just going to have to settle for this for now. Sorry for the space and loading inconvenience, though there's little else I can do...

Trust me, there's much bigger and better stuff coming, and a freshman in high school who is about to set out into summer is going to have plenty of time to get all of my ideas into map form and introduce many maps that I'm hoping will be hits with the community. Keep watch...this is only the start! And until then, have fun with this one. ;)

INSTALLING (Windows XP detailed--largely the same with Vista): 

1. Extract the .zip file first.

2. Navigate to the following folder on your local hard drive (the one with Windows installed)
[Drive letter]:\My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Published\CookedPC\CustomMaps\

3. Take the map file (.ut3) and configuration/settings file (.ini) and place them into that folder.

4. Fire up UT3 and give it a whirl!

CONTACT:

Any feedback? Bugs? Questions? Comments? I wanna hear it all, so just e-mail me at gorgesucks@icqmail.com and I read through all of my mail and get back to you if necessary.