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The Horde of Zendar (Q1SP)
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For many years the trail through the Grendal Gorge was a dangerous place,
the path was plagued by thieves trying to help travellers part with their gold.
At the request of the Merchants Guild the King built several small keeps
along the trail and one of them was called Zendar.
As traders used the stone keep for refuge from the packs of thieves roaming
the paths below, the tiny keep of Zendar grew into a hodge podge of housing
bursting at the seams of a once simple stone keep. The cramped living
conditions were unbearable and the citizens of the city were at each
others throats.
With the accidental death of the captain of the guards, the remaining silver
knights tore the city apart looking for culprits to blame for their leaders
untimely demise. No prisoners were taken, Zendar did not have any jails,
anyone foolish enough to be caught was buried alive in the city walls as
the place descended into madness.
The lucky few who did escape were found wandering the Gorge screaming ...
... the Horde of Zendar take no prisoners!
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The map started out with such grand plans! A large hub with a giant royal
palace perched on the top, two large city areas on either side for the gold
and silver keys, a large vertical gothic style church and a huge city facade
overlooking a deep canyon with an iron bridge! Crazy plans!?!
I started with the central hub and palace section as I knew this would
require the greatest amount of planning to get the routes right. Each side of
the map was going to have an unique theme (gold = city streets, silver = cemetery)
with the player being led along a lower path and returning to the hub on an
upper path with said key.
Typically maps are linear with a few extra routes to spice things up,
but generally the player goes from point A to point B in one direction.
I wanted this map to be different, I wanted the player to be able to go
backwards through each side of the map and I needed to find a good way to
do this without it being totally obvious.
The hub was setup to be a simple loop with four large pillars to support the
weight of the palace above. I already had a large church built in a
scrap map and it was quick and easy process to connect it to the far
end of the hub area.
I wanted the backward routes to be indirect and not obvious to the player
because they should be something for game++ sessions. I thought it would
be better if they started in the church and then crossed over the hub
to the upper exits from each key side of the map.
At this point there was no clear direction on the city architectural style
and the hub seemed like the perfect place to prototype elements that could
influence the rest of the map. Each corner of the hub needed some city detail
and at this stage it was ideal to work out how best to use the textures
with specific brushwork shapes.
The city style was based on a layout from a European city, with a large stone
wall backbone and all of the housing being squashed into the remaining space.
The houses are stacked vertically with various floors spilling out over into
the street space creating the impression that the daylight is at a premium,
a luxury that is owned by the upper floors.
The house stacking system has many benefit and it is perfect for creating ledges
and walkways for the player to climb over and discover places. It is
also very easy to shift the layers up and down by small amounts to break
the overall horizontal line and create construction variety.
The initial hub design was symmetrical from left to right and that needed
to be broken by reversing various elements. The far corners next to the
church had bridges for the backward routes and it was a perfect opportunity
to break the lines. One bridge was reversed and the lower area was nicely
blocked off to create a cool secret area.
With the basic structure of the hub routes in place it was time to add
the icing to the cake, the palace section. The original palace layout
was a thin mirrored area across the top ending in a large Gold Key door.
Once through the Gold door it was up another lift to the final arena fight
and through the exit portal.
At this point the final arena was just a simple square block so that the
floor space boundaries could be worked out. (Quake 1 has limits on map
co-ordinates, -2048 -> 2048) I often find it is better to leave some
parts of the map to last, because the best brushwork/texture shapes
often come once the map style has been established.
With the hub taking shape and most of the routes connected it was time to
plan the gold key side. With this area being a close quarter street layout
with a second return layer across the top it was easy to take brushwork
ideas from the hub corners.
After weeks of just working in the editor and the map still growing in
scope it was becoming obvious that this map was not going to compile quickly.
All routes were sealed up and the first full compile was started.
The compiler was started on a Friday night and was still going on Sunday!
This was going to be a problem. I knew this map was going to be difficult
but I did not expect days/weeks for compile times, something had to change.
Luckily a new compiler by Tyrann had just started using detail brushes
to reduce portal/compile times and I knew this was going to be best
solution. The map was cut up into small pieces and the core brushwork was
simplified while the detail was converted to detail brushes.
Eventually after several days the whole map compiled in less than 20mins,
including a full light pass. It was looking like the map would work but
there was more problems to come. The BSP format has limits and this map
was quickly approaching them and half of the map was still not built!
Something had to be cut and the easiest solution was to remove the Silver
Key side because it had not been built yet. This had the added benefit
of changing the way the keys worked. No longer did the player have to
find both keys, the silver key could be used differently, for secondary
objectives instead.
Even with the Silver key side gone there was still the final arena,
the facade to the city and a skill selection area to be build. Something
else had to go and then a cool idea happened, why not use the hub
as the final arena? It is circular, a large space and fully detailed,
it would be perfect!
The palace section was re-arranged to have more floor space and link
nicely back down to the hub for the final battle. The roof space at
the top of the map was slowly building up with more detail and looking
so tempting to play in. I knew when everyone would see the rooftop section
that they would want to go there and play.
With the roof space becoming an active gameplay area, the detail
boundaries had to be extended so that when the player is on the roof
there is more to see. The original rooftop vista needed its own vista!
With most of the map built the last section remaining was the facade
to the city and I knew it had to be epic. It needed to set the tone
for the map and show how big the place was. The player needed to start
low and climb up to the city under the bridge and then across it.
The flow through this start area needed to feel like a journey,
a slow build up to all the combat to come later.
As always the time consuming part was the rocks, getting the vertical
templates setup and merging them together in interesting ways. The floor
of the start area originally had a small stream with various waterfalls,
but the default Quake water is never nice and is usually full bright
which makes it look really odd in night time maps.
In my previous map I experimented with fake texture blending and I
thought it would be awesome if the river was dry and the edges were
blended instead. With various texture trickery the blends worked
out really well and with gl texture mode nearest set they looked awesome!
With most of the map built, the only section left was the skill selection
and the final exit and then I thought, why not make them the same, but
with subtle changes instead. It would help with the BSP limits and give the
map a beautiful symmetry of starting and ending in the same place.
The building of this map has been a journey of its own, with plenty
of map limits broken and crazy compiler issues I am surprised it has
seen the light of day. Hopefully everyone will love the map as much
I have loved creating it.
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| - | Create a new folder called "zendar" in your Quake folder |
| - | Copy the Zip file into the new folder |
| - | Extract the contents of the zip file |
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| - | Create a shortcut to your preferred Quake engine |
| - | Add the following to the command line: |
| | -heapsize 96000 -game zendar +map zendar |
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| - | Run shortcut and make sure map loads |
| - | The first part of the map is a skill selection area |
| - | Remember to record a demo once you start the map! |
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| - | The map was designed and tested to work with the following engines: |
| | Mark V - http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60831 |
| | FitzQuake 0.85 - http://www.celephais.net/fitzquake/ |
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| Map Type | SP (Single Player) only |
| Difficult | Easy 96, Normal 160, Hard 224 - Monsters |
| Development | Ten weeks |
| Textures | Some by ID Software and some repainted from Heretic2 by me |
| Skybox | Night time desert skybox or night time ID skybox (depends on client) |
| Source | Map and texture WAD included in the PAK file |
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| - | ID software for creating Quake |
| - | Additional map feedback and testing by Negke, Spirit and Tyrann |
| - | BSP/VIS Compilers - TYRUTILS v0.14 by Kevin Shanahan |
| - | Light Compiler by Bengt Jardrup |
| - | Coloured light and LIT support by MH |
| - | TexMex 3.4 by Mike Jackman (good for organizing textures) |
| - | AdQuedit 1.3 by Hicks Goldrush (perfect for pak files) |
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