BloodGate map by map description/analysis

[Leo T_C_K]

I have posted in the past the synopsis/story of the BloodGate mod/pack I was developing between 2002 and 2005. Technically only 2004 marking the last time.

But I never divulged into full details and synopsis of the maps. I did release the little bits like the very first versions or one of them, the little tidbits that got saved and survived the big crash if the harddrive (where the guy repairing it got drunk and rescued a different portion of data than he was meant to) and i kind of fully restored the first map into that coop exclusive pack for 3's server(as it was based on gateway.unr anyway).

So let's break it down, what was lost was the last progress on the mappack and my earliest true mods like csnali and gott (which i recreated starting late 2004/through 2005 anyways) and some mods for mappers like I had a package with special skaarj variants based the ones from the extreme maps and such, I forgot by this point how I called the package, I meant to publish it on unrealeditor.cz forums and such but never got around to it when the crash happened. I do remember the very first version of the stargate talisman pack from 2003 also, it was a demo of one third of the pack actually and was quite different at places (it actually had english audio too). It was a limited release and one of the things also lost in the data loss afaik. Most everyone only heard of the 2004 version and then of the improved special 2005 version. As I said in the stargate search topic there was also a map that I believe was not lost and should be around that was not of czech production.

Either way just like the other czech packs even mine featured czech translator messages (but by 2004 i had planned to change it to english over time as I started to speak it better with time). This is also the time of when I experimented with my IRL friend and he might have wanted to contribute a map or two to the project as well, as he started to make maps based on the ued.cz tutorials. We didn't seriously get into it all yet though on this level, but he did create a gimmick map using water zones and breaking glass, that could eventually fit into some of the bloodgate narrative or part of a map.

Also bloodgate was using one "new" weapon only at the time, the quadshot, which at some point I started using the xs version(that was overkill though) and was experimenting with combinations like oldquadshot (also used by rys that was in developement). These days I think I would have left just the plain quadshot for authenticity and include mutators to replace like upsxquad, "newquadshot" (oldquadshot fix) or people that prefer the 227 quadshot could just play using the patch and nothing else!

So, finally let's talk about the maps and what the plan was. Not every single of the maps I will list was made and some only existed in primitive state. And given that my memory is beginning to get frail on this after such a long time, it is better that I finally talk about it, about what I remember.

The first map was simply just called bloodgate. There was no intro just like regular unreal had none, though i considered adding one especially given that one was made for unreal at one point too but quickly dropped, with only manual referencing bits of it and some computer magazines.

After all it was technically possible to do machinima with plain bots on 200 see "powerout" and such. They were still scriptedpawns. Also BloodGate was initially developed on 200 as I had no clue about all the patches yet etc and I liked the old feel for quite a while.

It was all a slow and learning process so of course my first map had to be a modification of existing unreal map and what better place to start but something that wasn't even properly used. GateWay by Shane Caudle of course! I wasn't the first and I wasn't the last to do it.

I was not unsimilar in age to other "kids and teens" trying to break through, like Turboman, dots etcetera. And we all know the quality of some of these early efforts.

Back then I wasn't even using the nickname Leo TCK as such, it was just "leo" at first and only by 2003 I added those letters, at first without the last dot behind k, but after the "crash" I added that dot there as a way to make it more unique so instead of Leo(T.C.K) it read Leo(T.C.K.), which confused some people and I've since had people try to "correct" it, but it wasn't a clan tag either, it was just an artistic choice.

But in my ignorance I named the protagonist at first just "Leo" as well, even though he was not based on me (except for little bits that I will talk about later).

I have to also mention one important bit and that is, I started this when Unreal 2 was in developement and one of my sources of inspiration was actually Unreal 2 in a way. Because I followed it closely, the developement and articles and what not. I would often be allowed just few hours of internet per week and I used this often to look up information on the game. But unlike Unreal 2 this was to use of course all the textures that Unreal had at its disposal. No true new content at first, basically this was like a new expansion pack of sorts, no true big ambitions, just a more story-driven approach (there's a reason why Unreal PSX clicked with me after all) with a single character as opposed to being ambigious.

But as I said just like with Unreal you'd be thrust into "action" right away. The idea was that you wake up with a bit of an amnesia after awakening in the ship that had the gateway looks while everyone else had already evacuated or been dead when the monsters started invading in a bit of contrived circumstances. It smelled of a trap. Some of the crew had worries about you and would have left messages that they forgot you back there and realized it too late (and supposedly explosions rocked the place, leading you to get unconscious and presumed dead). There was an experimental portal technology being employed but everything got disabled except one hidden portal/way out that you need to find in this map. You'd ridiculously get all the weapons here as I also intended the map to be played fully in deathmatch too but didn't really set it dm only. All weapons except the quadshot. Later on in the pack I planned all the weapons to get lost from you anyways, so it didn't feel like a big issue either way...

Map two:
ShotArena

There were many many revisions of this map and the latest got lost and earliest too. The name was quite frankly terrible and I later renamed the title to something like
..hell I don't know anymore but it was meant to be a munitions depot of sorts. I created two deathmatch variants of this map separately, unlike the first map as this was more complex. One of the versions had all funky warpzones implemented that lead into an idea of creating warpzone oriented map in the pack in the point of loosing all your weapons. This other map got fully lost though.

This is the map where you get quadshot and there was tons of them, thanks to it being a weapon storage area. But the early versions of the map all had the quadshot skin on the walls of the main room (lol) and the pillars had the grey textures from unreali (that got moved to unrealshare so it would get defaulttexture on patched versions). The big column/pillar that was important to progress had instead textures of...amplifier icon. Such diversity, right?!
What was I thinking?

Either way the last version had this dropped in favor of real textures, the back wall given a door texture (i believe of the starship set but i might have been toying with decayds too since the map used it a lot already) as I had planned to turn it into a mover later when you'd revisit this map and this would be one of the few maps to be possible to revisit. And this big door would open up to a new part of the map.

Another new addition was the masked walkways and staircases I would add and crates to give the place a bit more purpose and less randomness. Although it introduced more tightness at places. I felt it being such a novelty and was proud of the idea. But it wasn't very nice to navigate.

The original version(s) required jumpboots to progress instead and jump on invisible collision hull near the amplifier pillar (oh god) connecting it with a hallway inside.

You started in a water/portal tunnel i believe with playrshp textures and xfx being teleporter to the big room with pillars.

well this pack of old screenshots still contain bits from this map

https://web.archive.org/web/20140213164 ... 2001-2.rar

Yes it had some human enemies as bots too and they each had unique names (in group or team or whatever i added it as back then). They were supposed to be grown clones within the game story and there was supposed to be room with vats with them being grown but i think this room would only be accesible once you'd revisit this map.

Once you'd revisit this map you'd actually return to one of the tunnels via a back-door, the room full of pupaes/trap would get exposed and eventually you'd get to open that big door and continue the pack there to access the hangar section. But normally, the map would end into (after a broken elevator fall) a mine installation.

Map 3: The Mine Installation (forgotten real name/title)

This map was inspired heavily by the fusion pack mine.utx maps. Like bits and pieces of those maps thrown together with rrajigar vibes and extremedark-like twist at the very end.

The objective was to disable security/power close to a section of the start that would get you acess to a sewer system and slide down a waterfall in the next map.

After the power was disabled the lights would turn off and some sections of the map would become unacessible while others accesible as a result. So really think of dig/dug/foundry themed map combined with dm shrapnel and dm letting (one room was based on it). The concept was very fleshed out but sadly its just not out there and the map was never finished. This was the first less-experimental and more consistent map.

Map 4: The Hub (name forgotten)

Along with Map 2 you revisit this. From this map you revisit Map 2. This is a hub type of map. Has a huge structure in the middle that is similar to the skaarj ship seen in shadows of na pali in map 3 (not counting the intro map/hq), except much much bigger. The landscape is a flat desert with few landmarks. You start by falling out this huge structure via the sewer exit/waterfall that goes down the drain. It is easy to get killed as you need to precisely land in the water and not on the land.

You see a huge tower/castle like structure with locked gates. This is your goal after you revisit this map, you will be able to open this gate (forgot how).

It is an outdoor map for the most part, but with some indoor short sections and a lot of climbing on the outside of this structure and platforming. Again this is what it has in common with that cms map I mentioned, the build quality was also similar but again on bigger scale and with landscape sprawling out. Not very detailed but for desert areas convincing enough. There are some pyramids in the distance too and other vague stuff you might visit later in the pack but can't reach yet.

The goal is to reach the rooftop and open it up, some lever switching and fighting with krall on ledges is required. Once you do reach it, you will have to battle the warlord that will burst out in explosion from within elevator shaft below. After you kill him you have to descend this shaft and end back in map 2 where you'll open the backdoor and do what i described earlier.

Then you return here and somehow open the gate down below or destroy it with explosives found in the hangar. I forgot exactly what the plan was.

Map 5 and 6: The castle/skycity tower and dungeon.

You reach this castle structure but you get trapdoored and plummet down the dungeons. Here, darkness.umx plays (the stuff we used in flp's last map).

A bit of a funky dungeon map that readies you for what comes next. Pretty basic build and a little bit mazey/convoluted.

The next map is the best one so far with temple bits and skycity and castle textures used (all of them, somehow...)
it culminates in a pillar room where you'd meet and fight a brand new enemy, the skaarj hybrids from UT bonuspack. The plan was to have them be able to explode in self destruct after they'd activate their wrist similar to predator self destruct. But you'll end up chasing one down another dungeon, where you'd find a high tech subway like structure that brings you close to a coast of the desert area and be able to visit something you saw in the distance of the enormous landscape of map 4.

*yawns* i'm sorry I can't continue on. I will try to remember how it exactly connects after this. The next map I can't remember much except that it would be a bit like the underwater bits of asp-frigate that yrex made combined with a huge hangar for all kind of ships both water based and air based. But still mostly on the coast/beach side rather than going all underwater. So that's map 7 already. I'll reveal the conclusion to that map in the next post hopefuly. Or something happens and it dies with me....forever. Then someone can reconstruct part of this maybe as a tribute to me if I one day pass away. Those are all things I thought of/experimented with as a teenager.

[Leo T_C_K]

also there's this "past the abandonment" phase sound file

https://web.archive.org/web/20140213164 ... Signal.rar

I liked making custom sounds back then.

that I potentionally could have used if I decided to fully go back to bloodgate. But truth is past the data loss I never worked on the maps again only on some misc stuff that could potentionally end up there. And I became more ill and everything and had to back then catch up on school and all that.

[Leo T_C_K]

I haven't got a chance to get bak to this I've been pretty ill, ;lets suffice to say that.

But I'll try to explain the next part. Now I don't remember if the "sub" thing was supposed to take next or the skaarj jet fighter flight as a cutscene.

Let's first describe the skaarj jet thing then. It wouldn't have been like ONP where you'd actually take control I believe, but more like a cutscene experience like the outro of Unreal. Except it wouldn't be an outro but perhaps you could loose your weapons (and then again later) in a crash.

Fact is, you'd fly over the ocean, the destination would be an island with a medieval nali town. Now I had considered at this point asking Kew for permission to use some of his illhaven stuff but of course could find no working contact (it was strange that he appeared later during 2012 though it was like dream coming true) and I might have made it sort of illhaven crossover here because I found the potential of Illhaven to be still explored (even though the 2012 was lacking on the grand scheme of things save for the last maps but that's probably due to the author's long absence).

But if not, it would at least be stationed at a similar harbor town and an island area. This is the point of the pack where it heavily shifts theme into horror/gothic. Like Illhaven but darker in atmosphere even. The story in this part would center around the mystery of the titular Blood Gate, where sacrifices/murders were made and there would be a heavy supernatural element, upon opening or almost opening this gate, you'd stumble upon a powerful force, entities that would come from another world/realm and would posess the monsters/people/nali. There would be a group of slaid humans that would get reanimated/possesed. I remmeber around this time I saw the film Event Horizon too, so initially there would be the assumption it is demons but later it would be properly revealed its not but only at the conclusion of the pack.

Maps 8 to 12 would most likely all take place here and would be a continuous experience with a subplot.

There wasn't much made with this in practice and this only existed in concept form, not real playable maps. Some of them would be more Quakish though in style with the medieval/blood/sacrifice themes.

At the end I suppose you would get to a more technological place a bit away from the main island and this could be map 13 already.

Now the next map, there was some experimentation going on so I could count that the next map was actually made so map 14 then...

Basically it would be the sub map (but its position could be switched with the cutscene of the skaarj flight). Because I did very early find out that if you place a playerpawn in a map, it would in singleplayer have you play as that from a fixed position. Without need of coding a new gametype or whatever so this was handy.

But by this point I knew how to create classes and do some basic coding (in 2004), so because of lack of experience with actual new gametypes, the solution was to create a playerpawn that would have altered attributes, he would be the submarine himself.

So this was a large watertank level and the submarine would be the introship model playerpawn LOL. Perhaps with a changed/switched skin so it looks a little different.

It was a simple solution to a problem and lack of coding skills. But still very experimental and the problem with keeping/losing weapons would pop up here as it was really disconnected from the rest at this point.

Map 15/16: The pyramid.

Now I forgot how you end up there. The inside of the pyramid was made first. It has only temple looks on the outside. In reality it was a mercenary underwater base, kind of like cryox. You'd get into the pyramid, get lowered down in water and you'd have to quickly figure out how to exit, there was some kind of puzzle half implemented, the map started as a huge cube room filled with water or something, the earliest "test" if to call it might have even been part of the files. I remember even using that dm pad animated texture but underwater to give it impression of really being underwater and distorted.

But yea there would be like an opening down below and it would lead to a more traditional terraniux like doors and stuff. The mercenary pyramid would have been one of the heights of the pack, since the beta recovery of 2005 I suppose no longer so original due to existance of cryox, but still. Then after you complete this/get out again...at some point you get knocked unconscious (kind of like half life, I was by this point very familiar with half life having starting to play the half life games since 2002 at the very least with my first game being blue shift).
Map 17: the bizzarnix
But yea, you wake up in a temple room and there's like mirror in front of you but the walls/hall repeats itself infinitely using warpzones. This was the warpzone map I refered to earlier when talking about dm versions of shotarena. The concept for this started very early.

Basically you'd be trapped until you destroyed part of the mirror/slipped by a hidden side corridor.

This is the kind of map that sounds awful on paper but was actually really cool and probably one of the most unique maps in the whole pack.

Because then you'd enter a vertically repeating part and you'd need to get above yourself but first falling down to get there, to enter a niche and then enter an entire mirror labyrinth that you need to get through and flip some levers at the end/destroy something. This was kind of like portal before portal come to think of it (I dunno why its so overhyped though like those ideas would never be thought of before, like umm...prey or something would have used similar stuff I believe).

This is more of a show-don't tell map so I feel bad about describing it but given that it doesn't exist as such in any form now...

well that's the best I can do. But the exit would be again in the vertical room, you'd actually reveal/break the mechanism (I suppose part of it could have been done using the warpzone switching that Unreal supports since 220). But back then I didn't even know of that feature so this was not finished/implemented at all. I probably planned to place a teleporter instead that's get you to identical looking area but now with the ceiling being broken and not repeating anymore (while the lower half of the room would still take you to the top). Pretty surreal thing.

But basically you'd reveal that no this is not an afterlife, you'd slip by past the grating/mechanism/portal technology and see that this was planted actually by humans, by your own people basically. But why are they against you now and why did they do this?

So you break out from the simulation (think movies like Cube etc, another thing i have seen around this time). There were those starship textures (part of the vent/portal would have had that grating). But it would get into technological area full of starship and playrshp textures, almost exclusively human. labs etc. Inspired by some half life mods like umm...what was it called I believe you ended up fighting a stationary kingpin monster there or it was the one where you could kill gman. I got inspired by one of those maps. But ofcourse turned into Unreal setting.

But yea, you'd be fighting humans here and you'd get a glimpse of who is responsible by the end, before going to a transport to beam you up back to the ship from the first map of this pack....
it would be your defacto commander. It turns out they wanted to drive you insane if you'd survive their test anyways. You were too much of a risk and it turns out they have lead the skaarj and other monsters on purpose to that ship and after all crew was killed they'd have released nerve gas to kill all those monsters which they did.

So all of those deaths were for nothing. This is like a more twisted version of the Aida strider wars victory.

map 19: final showdown

You get your ass to the ship you started at by beaming in (this time ending up at that center pad originally of gateway.unr).

This is where all the tropes of Event horizon etcetera culminates in. And later on I got inspired by playing unreal 2 for the first time (with unbearable fps), so part of this betrayal story also is like from there.
Even though originally that wasn't quite the plan even though there was meant to be a plot twist all along.

It is revealed that those entities are the point of interest here and the commander would take the ship finally away from na pali here while doing exposition and fully revealing his plan (you would be temporarily restricted while this play out so you can't kill him).

He would unleash them and some black hole business would play out too, I forgot the details, maybe some of my earlier story reveals on multiple forums would reveal more, if those posts still exist anywhere (i believe i talked about the pack on buf too)...

But yea he would either merge with one of the beings or it would take complete control over him. But before doing so, he would have revealed to you that you are not who you think you are. They assigned you a low duty job on that ship because you got meddled in too much(there would be a prequel pack planned too at one point, in fact over years I planned making six separate blood gate packs someof them maybe for later Unreal games) and they erased your memory/planted fake ones. In fact during your disobedience the commander personally knew you, you were a higher ranking officer and once you were threat to him he took over, raped your wife/disposed of her and took sadistic pleasure knowing you'll be forever subservient to him in some of the lowest/hardest jobs possible on that ship working in engineering. He knew he would let you die anyways with the attack of the skaarj and monsters that they have set up, but given that he was a sadist, he made sure your suffering and humilation is greatest. Nobody really knew you on that ship, all the crew was expendable to him as you used to work in different sector of space before. That's why noone could really tell.
So you get here combination of total recall like plot (with some of my irl experiences/traumas like the rape of someone I knew getting mixed to the story), event horizon, everything i got influenced by at the time and I really can't remmeber it all now. I don't know exactly how it would play out next, all I know is that you'd fight the entity posessed commander and then somehow detonate the ship perhaps with combination of black hole, get into escape shuttle...and while you get into the shuttle and fly away the blast/hyperspace would send you really way off...

but then in the end you'd wake up...floating in the orbit of..earth....and that's when "to be continued" would take place and bloodgate 2 would be teased.

Which is another story altogether. Some other time maybe but here no map by map stuff would exist as only one map was fully thought out/started to be made in some form. The rest was all fantasy and anything could have changed.

[Leo T_C_K]

I do feel like, part of the reason why this failed (apart from the data loss back in 2004) altogether is that it fell out of scope, I also wasn't keeping in mind co-op and such back then and since then I improved a lot, I mean late 2004 was when I regularly started to play on zora's servers and seeing all kind of custom maps with bugs that made it annoying or stuck, really made me think about it all. This is one of the reasons why I kind of worry about any packs include vehicle sections. In my case it was a submarine/ocean fight map, but it was very improvised and hacky and the replacement playerpawn wouldn't work online (well i suppose it would if I knew how to mylevel some scripts etc).

But it might break under a custom gametype or what not. I do hope that they keep that in mind now when making the SD community edition and including a space battle map. Because I have to be reminded of the "underwater battle" fiasco of my own making. I'm not trying to shit on this concept or whatever I just am speaking from painful experience. See how zenith vehicle maps are also completely unusable for anything coop or w/e. Even when I was making a coop version of zenith for 3's (and didn't fully finish it before i lost the roof above head and again).

Either way, I still wanted to talk about Bloodgate2. There was some test stuff I was trying to build for it, but it only came down to a single map in practice.

Well, in my mind Blood Gate 2 would mean a radical departure. Where Blood Gate 1 would be more like a traditional expansion set of sorts, more "Unreal", Blood Gate 2 would be a total conversion. Yeah, I obviously had no idea where to stop in my plans and this was really not in my skill set at all to pull off in any way. I am glad I got a more grounded approach over time. I knew well though that blood gate 2 would happen years later after I got better but it didn't stop me from writing the story and pre-planning things. Except I guess it was wasted time and potential.

I was impressed at the time by all kind of lighting methods/alt methods for lighting and tricks and this pack was going to use that, think of shrak4 map with its light beams shining through the temple and more. Eventually kajgue would become really good at this stuff when I visited his server, using movers and tricks to create realistic shadows and lighting. And this was going to follow on that and the HDR lighting or whatever it was called at the time was becoming a thing (like featured in half life 2 lost coast).

Well, as you know Blood gate ended with you being in orbit of earth, but the shocking twist of Blood Gate 2 would be that this is not your earth. Initially it might seem as if you traveled back to the past of earth as you'd find yourself in a medieval setting, but it will turn out the incident at the end of blood gate pushed you through to alternate reality altogether. So the entirety of Blood Gate 2 is you finding way back to your own reality (which would eventually happen and I forgot exactly how it was planned).

None of the weapons from unreal would be returning. That's already a death sentence for a project that would be worked on primarily by a single guy but hey I knew no better. There was someone who was partly interested in joining me though.

They would be medieval/fantasy weapons. I had planned to recycle few models like the chaosut crossbow was a possibility, but I would have prefered to replace it with my own models over time once I'd get enough skill to make them. My experiments in milkshape were more of embarassment though.

I couldn't make anything but simple models.

There is one project that was worked for unreal that does share the basic spirit of this though. That cancelled medieval fantasy project from tentacle hunter. I tested his project (which happened way after all this blood gate stuff was abandoned for good) and I was impressed because he made his new models just using unrealed and then he simply converted them to models, with animations not being done (yet) sadly, but tricks could be implemented like with that improvised stabbing we did with the impaler2 with codex which used viewoffset hacking, or with the rifle from the "97" game that yrex worked on too).

I still have a backup of his project's .u file but only thanks to voodoo preserving it I believe, but I used to test it live on his server.

But yea...I had played for the first time and last time in 2004 the old vampire the masquerade game and that also kind of influenced me. This alternate reality earth would have fantasy creatures werewolves and vampires existing and all kind of stuff like that.

In fact it was to feature a sidekick character that on some levels you would be willing to play as instead of yourself, when your paths would split or you'd become imprisoned for the time being.

This sidekick character would be like 100 percent homosexual. I felt like that game mods could use some non heterosexual main characters too, hence why I did that.

But the twist would be that he would also be able to shapeshift/turn into a wolf and such. He wouldn't be exactly a werewolf I think but more like a changeling of sorts.

He would develop a crush for the main character but it wouldn't go much anywhere (or would it? lol)..

but otherwise he would have been shown to have been living quite a gay life until then.

Well that's it basically. Much of what I can remember. At the end you'd just find some magic/power source and get transported somehow into your own reality earth which would be a modernistic urban nightmare of sorts and it would end in a fancy cutscene where you'd be in a glass building being surrounded by invading squad force because they'd find out you're after some secret government files. But you retained something from the previous reality and that is some artifact/ability that would slow down time for everyone. So the next chapter would focus heavily on "bullet time" battles and such and could have had few unreal weapons returning but with real projectile variants so that its better for the bullet time. The next chapter would be heavily conspiracy themed/based.

It would also end with the hero's apparent death only to pull "tomb raider chronicles" route for chapter 4. I never played that game or the demo but i had magazines with reviews etc so I read about it and got inspired. Chapter 4 would most likely be meant for UE2 altogether though, despite it being a prequel (so that would make it easier to pull off in unreal in poractice but whatever), one of the reasons why though is because I had planned vehicle interaction like a personal hoverbike/scooter kind of thing for the main dude. And end of chapter 4 would switch back to "present" and reveal that you've been revived after all from your "death" leading directly to bloodgate 5 and 6 as the final chapters. And those i remmeber the least about what i had planned as that was purely conceptual most of the time anyways.

What are your thought anyone given those descriptions? Would it suck if it ever got made, would it be good?

[Leo T_C_K]

I'm bumping this thread because I wanted to add some more info. There were more phases/planning of this project though than I initially thought/remembered and now its making a mess in my head, I described this below to jackhonda.

I suppose I might not have implemented the switchable warpzone like I said in this thread though let's act as if that was the case and for any future remake the version with the low grav being there and stuff switched on both ends (bottom and top) would make a lot more sense come to think of it, also because the opening to the mirror hallways was near the actual ceiling of the room, where also the breaking mechanism was).

This is about that stuff i described here as bizzarnix or whatever. I doubt that was the original name though and at one point I did plan this to be in the middle of the game instead of at the end but yea....

well it wasn't outright dead end in bloodgate btw, what it was that it was a vertical shaft and you'd need to find a lever(i think it was one of those standard nalicast levers or something I forgot it was temporary shit) which switched the warpzone there, but it went from a looping never-ending vertical shaft (you end up falling forever or dying trying to get to an area, I took advantage of the heights like you had to loop "one" single time in order to reach the area with the lever, but then it gets turned off and there is low gravity in the switched zone instead, that's what it was...and you need to then jump up to the "dead end" from there to reach a vent shaft and access the area above which reveals it was all a simulation in a tech lab above where they played with the portal technology and decided to trap you there (that similar simulation idea plays in unreal psx with the terrarium map where you turn off the skybox, which is actually a cleverly placed mover with fakebackdrop set on). That was a midpoint twist in the game, in my project I mean. It was ancient/nalicast stuff where the warpzones were and you would end up there after being knocked unconcious (I was inspired by half life and you'd also loose your weapons here)...but instead you'd end up in the pseudo escher stuff with warpzones and fake walls and what not. it took advantage of the tricks and heights. You can even see my early experimentation before I made this in the shotarena map versions (one of the dm versions have warpzones at least). That at least was preserved. though i made shotarena on unreal 200 so some stuff doesn't work correctly or has missing textures and there was one partial later conversion of the old ver...but yea many of the map revisions got lost, older and newer ones.

Its weird how often these old things have more original ideas to them and use tricks in creative ways. I developed those ideas without playing the psx maps first and they ended up using similar tricks like matthew kagle in e2l6 and the skybox stuff in e3l5 or what number it was, 5 i think...

Also I could have used the transporter actor like in extremedgen instead of switching warpzones but yea...that would make it worse for coop so switching warpzones is better for the future.

I might also later try to describe more of some stuff I might remember what I planned in the sequels...