<<<<<|co_MoiraD3|>>>>> By: Steven "BigD" Derkson When: February, 2007 --------<>---------- Short Story: I dunno. You're on some kind of terrestrial facility. Apparently there is a core that could meltdown. Things aren't working. Aliens have infested the place. Yay! Long Story: Moira is a planet. Lifeless and barren, wreaked by windstorms the surface air is so dusty that it is unbreatheable. A small mining facility was set up on this "dead" planet to dig up rare metals and the planets most luxurious offering: large, clear, diamonds, unlike any known elsewhere in the galaxy. The crust of this planet is like swiss cheese, yet the rock is very solid. The engineers who designed the facility decided to take advantage of these properties and build the facility through the natural caverns. Deep within the planet, pockets of gas regularly vent through these caverns, and even more conveniently, the gas is a very breatheable mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. Again, the engineers decided to take advantage of this, leaving the deeper pits open so as to let the planet breath. This also saved on the air purification systems required to cleanse the dirty air from the surface. As is standard for such a remote location, the facility was equipped with a class 7 fusion reactor. It's quite large, to power all the mining equipment required to drill in the extremely hard rock. Rock solid reliable too. It's been going for well over 60 years now. It provides power to the entire facility. Then one fateful day, a tanker ship destined to take a load of the precious ores crashed onto the planets surface. Immediately the facility personnel went to the crash site, but the wreckage was brutal and the weather worse. They found one survivor. Samples of a strange sludge were also taken back to the wreckage. As the man regained conciousness, he related as much as he could remember. The ship, as they had only recently discovered as it neared the planet, was infested with some sort of lifeform. Some sort of bacteria was growing all over the ship, sucking away at their nanite supply. Small creatures suddenly came out of the bacteria, attacking the crew. Madness ensued, the crew was small, ill equipped to deal with such a situation. He locked himself in an airlock and hoped that he could warn the facility when the auto pilot landed. He didn't anticipate a crash landing however. Then warning lights started flashing. Something was wrong in the fusion reactor. The core was overheating. A technician ran in screaming about the sludge samples spilling on the floor and spreading like a fire. He needed someone with clearance to reset the computers or the place could blow. But the security chief for the facility, having heard the tales of the Kharaa, quickley made two orders: 1) Send a distress beacon. 2) Evacuate not only the facility, but the planet. As fortune would have it, the TSA was already on their way, they knew that the tanker had brought the Kharaa to Space Station Nothing in Sub Sector 77, they knew it was headed to the richest diamond mind in the galaxy and they were scrambling to stop it before the infestation spread further. And no sooner had they reached orbit, they recieved a distress beacon... "Moira - The deity who assigns ones fate." --------<>---------- Thanks: -A BIG "thank you" to POKEY for the fantastic readyroom music. Creepy, ambient, with a touch of lemon! -Many of the textures in dwad.wad I made are based on NS artwork. -Thanks to everyone at OldF (www.oldf.net) for helping with testing and feedback! -On that note, thanks to Darwin and Funka! for their great servers Life Support (ls.oldf.net) and Prune Juice (1.0x-3.1 R.I.P. PJ) -Thanks to the guys in the ns mapping forum for giving me the idea of implementing semi-dynamic infestation! (Soul Rider for the initial idea!) -The sky was made by Chalupmonk for ns_ayumi. -And thanks to YOU for playing! --------<>---------- This version (D3) marks my move to the newest build of the Zoners compile tools (v3.4) which are now maintained by amckern. (All us mappers should thank the brave souls who've been maintaining the code over the years!) Settings of interest: hlcsg.exe"-cliptype Simple hlbsp.exe"-maxnodesize 640.0 hlrad.exe"-bounce 2 -chop 32 -dscale 1 -fade 2.5 -scale 1.5 -smooth 80.0 -sparse --------<>---------- Changelog: Version: "D3" -LET THERE BE LIGHT! More lights and an overall brightness increase (-scale 1.5) makes seeing critters easier. -Fixed (I hope?) the atrium fps stutter experienced by some. (Smaller ambient mp3 to decode might have fixed it.) -Moved the alien side lightswitch to the area that is affected by the switch (so people don't weld it and say "what did that do?") -Reworked particle systems (inotherwords actually spent a bit of time figuring them out) -Reworked spawn positions for aliens. Closer to cover, better spread and lower to ground. Marine spawns are mostly just closer to the ground now. -Reworked my custom computer screen textures to look better. (Made a couple new custom textures as well.) -Peeled the skin off the wall in the little pit room to expose the fleshy rocks beneath it. -Made vent system a bit more efficient to use. (couple of45 degree corners instead of 90, more passing room, easier to find as well.) -Bit more cover in the hive, pulled the balcony window backwards so as to give less of a view out over the hive. -Stupid F#@$&%$#% invisible stuck spots should be gone now. Mostly. (Fingers crossed...) -More detail all around. Optimizations. Continued my quest to de-blandify some areas. _______________ Version: "D20" -Bent some pipes. -Atrium has more vis-blockers on the bottom floor that allowed me to add more detail, and not give such a long LOS for the marines to shoot critters. -Same idea with wall on the top floor of the "level over level" room. Notice the new computer consoles that don't look quite so much like ass. -Updated most vents to not look like the last minute additions that they were. -The vent going under ground, along the upper portion of the atrium to marine start has been ripped apart and redone. (And yes, a gorge can get to marine start through this vent, though at one point he can't go back. If you go onos up there thinking its another hallway... well... HA!) -Added a little generator thingee to maybe catch you if you burst out of the vent above the small pit of doom. Mostly, it'll just mock you as you try to grab on to it at the last second, but hey, I tried. -Redid most of the computer screen textures. Bigger and clearer, should hopefully be readable to those with weird video cards. -I'm now using more different textures throughout the map. Though you wouldn't know it would ya! -Dynamic infestation! Well, sort of! Basically, over the course of 15 minutes (standard game length I figure) more infestation will grow along the floor and wall! -Added some thingamajig to the hive to give more cover. Angled the window back a bit so it doesn't over look the whole room quite as much. -Fixed tons of stuck spots and sticky corners. (If you can find more, let me know on the ns mapping forum thread of this maps name or likewise in the oldf forum.) -All around more clipping was done to smooth out movement. Vents are also easier to access and navigate. -Redid my .rad file after my old harddrive died and while the map was backed up, the .rad file wasn't. D'OH! -The "lightswitch" weldable has been split up. There is one switch controlling the marine side of lights, and another switch controlling the alien side. Weld times were correspondingly cut but overall longer. Gives the welder a bit more use anyway without sitting in one spot. -R_speeds have gone straight to plaid. That's ludicrous speed. All that extra detail came at a cost, but nothing should be over a thousand anyway! Needs more cow blockers. I mean vis bell. I mean... ahh... nevermind. -It's said that one of the doors can be opened... and it leads to all the pies you can eat! Oooh! Can you find it! _______________ Version: 2.1b7c BRINGED DOWNED DA ROOF in the atrium, well partially. Should be a bit more toight like a toiger. Additional detail and lighting tweaks... like everywhere. Less bland. R_Speeds are well under 900 everywhere and hit 800 in a couple small spots (as opposed to areas) If it hurts to play this map, you need to invest in a new box. Inserted final version of POKEY's readyroom serenade. IT IS DELIGHTFUL WITH A CAPITAL EVERYTHING. Marine start and hive received more tweaks as well. _______________ Version: 1.9.foxtrot.D.2007 I completely gutted the readyroom, keeping only a portion of it. It's not as huge as it used to be, but in my opinion it's a helluva lot better looking. I recieved a "beta" of the new readyroom music which really inspired me. (Thanks POKEY!) Added additional vent into the atrium this time from the north side of the room. Put an additional vis-blocker down on the bottom level of the atrium. What this equates to for those who play the map is a bit more cover. Rebuilt the back entrance to the hive. Looks better and has lower r_speeds! Various other tweaks and fixes made as well. _______________ Version: 0.11 -Added exit from long vent into atrium. -Fixed two sounds that weren't playing. -Added a bit more detail to the atrium. (Enough for now.) -Added in info_locations. _______________ Version: 0.10 -First version to be tested by someone else. --------<>---------- To Do: -Update whichbot waypoints! -Sit back and play the damn map! <<<<<|co_MoiraD3|>>>>>