------------
INTRODUCTION
------------

A few weeks after Syncerror appeared to save the community, he started to gather some of the talents he recently met through his support for the mod-teams to form the "creme de la creme" of q4 modders for a yet unannounced mod : DeltaCTF !
Thats when I was asked by Donnie if I wanted to contribute to or join the "Angryporcupines". As I just had entered the Qubism CTF mapping contest at that time, I willed in because I thought it would not be that much more work on top of the stuff I did for XBM and GTR. I was really happy and eager to start work with such a big and talented Team :drool:
Syncerror and his wife Lilie had planned everything for a long time and allready had most concepts on paper as well as a good framework for us developers to start with. As I joined, the mod still had to be announced to the public but we allready had an release date set : QuakeCon 2006 !

-----------
INGREDIENTS
-----------

4 kg of coffee
3 kg of sugar
1 mobo
A burned hand


-----------
EARLY PHASE
-----------

With so many people allready involved in big projects and the experience they had gathered we had a real quick start compared to other mods. It was really satisfying to see how quick the early phase was over and we had a playable internal beta within some weeks. It really payed off that Lilie was managing everything outside our modding duties really fast and that she always knew what she wanted from us and for the mod. Syncerrors liason to id software helped us too but it was his dedication and endurance (4 hours and less of sleep) that made it possible to keep up the fast pace despite being on different sides of the globe. The first thing I did for DeltaCTF was to modify some maps so we could test some features early on. For that purpose I flooded "Tremors" and "Mind the gap" with some water for our internal tests. after we had something to test I could begin to adopt to the gameplay which is completely different with grapple thrown in. This got me thinking about the layout I had for RampRage because some things were not nearly like in Lilie`s mapping docs and so I had to change the layout a few times until I was satisfied. I wanted Ramprage to have that Cybergothic look from Q1 and Q3 and started the map with custom textures in mind. I quickly made some textures without worrying about their quality too much, first goal was to have something to begin with and then refine the quality piece for piece. That was the mistake that finally made me drop out the Qubism contest because I couldnt bring them to the Quality I wanted.


------------
CONSTRUCTION
------------

As we reached internal betastatus our team had growed again, I convinced Tom "phantazm11" Perryman to join Angryporcupine and it was a good decision as 3 wonderfull maps go to his credits. Further I had helped Pummelmeister on his first map and as a present he gave us the "rights" to this map which I took under my hood for some change of clothes. The large scale and worldwide betatesting was nice (and very stressfull for Lilie) although I didnt participate most of the time. It helped to get feedback during running around the map on the server very much. It was obvious the base had the "Cheese Hole" syndrome which basically means too much exits and too complicated. I had to rethink the layout again and for quite some time I only experimented around with the layout but nothing worked out like I wanted. So I didnt made great changes and only made the left and right side unsymmetric to keep the stuff I liked in the map but still closing one or two holes that were too much. It turned out to be a good approach but the map still had some parts which would not be used due to bad connectivity and mediocre layout of the lower perimeter although I placed very important items there. All in All I made slower progress then I wanted due to the featureset of the mod expanding very quickly. On the other side coffee decided to not like me anymore, first it burned my hand then a whole cup fell into my open and running computer :( By a miracle it still worked after I took 3 days to completely clean it from the ton of sugar I usually have in my coffee.
Why was my case open ? A week prior to this my MoBo had died and I was still adjusting some jumpers on the new one because its some crappy asrock that would clock my 2800 xp-m at 800 mhz. Oh did I mentioned my Zbrush plugin for normalmaps was producing wrong lighting output and I had to redo all my textures ?
Enough whining now, I quickfixed the texture issue by turning them upside down and continued on other parts like the trims, decals, lighting and clipping. Meanwhile a patch was coming upon us and Clanbase wanted to have an updated FPS mappack so I wasted a month on that but its a different story. After that pause I needed some change and began to modify Security Breach, the Layout was really good and it was easy to add the DeltaCTF specific stuff. The greatest change came when Matt "Lunaran" Breit released his powerplant texture set which had the perfect Q2 Feeling that we aimed for DeltaCTF. I still had to optimize much brushwork on the map as it was obvious that Pummelmeister pulled a great Layout but was not a mapper per se. I have to say that I really like touching up maps from other people because im not tempted to change the layout constantly like I do in my maps. So I can concentrate on the looks solely without wasting too much thoughts on gameplay. When I started to learn mapping back in the q3 days I mostly did it for myself and there was no gameplay at all. Now in Q4 when I build a map that will be played I try to completely forget the graphical part until I have finished the layout with only a general Theme in mind. That makes more complex and playable maps but then I find it really really hard to add eye candy afterwards. I really treat gameplay and visuals as two different things and seperate them too much, I will have to work on this flaw. Anyway Security Breach was well accepted during betatesting and we were approaching public beta with lightspeed and I still had no idea what to do with Ramprage`s layout. I then took a little break to clear my mind and started playing some q3 and warsow CTF and analyzed the q2 ctf maps in hope to find some inspiration. The other members on the Team all had really good maps of every shape, size and theme and I felt I was falling behind the quality standard they had put up. Sync knew exactly what he was going for, Spectra worked on a remake of wcp9 and w2, Method is far more advanced as a mapper anyway and phantazm never ceased to come out with amazing stuff. But that motivated me to push myself even harder, so I analyzed my map again and jumped on a server with some testers to get toughts about this and that. Finally a solution started to shape in my mind but I had just no idea how to realize it and bring it into my map. I then used the left/right symmetry break-up technique I mentioned earlier and completely changed the lower perimeter and even stripped the water out *sniff*
That was a week before Quakecon, time was running away and I still had to finish my textures ! I decided to take allready existing textures to replace the ones I could not finish so I could stay within schedule.



----------
CONCLUSION
----------
After a lot of experimenting and some radical changes to the map I am finally happy with the result of Ramprage even if its not what I had as vision when setting the first stone ...err brush. I think the workflow we had was similar to what you have in the game industry with a deadline and not the usual "when its done!" mod-mentality which most gamemakers just cant afford. We had to start with only an idea of the exact gameplay and constantly change and update the map during development of the code part. Everytime the coders had a significant change we had to check out if it worked out in the maps and eventually adjust it, additionally Sync came to us every now and then with last minute stuff like initial spawns, Lockerrooms and changed mapnames (dude where are my textures?). It was an exhausting experience that left me feeling like I had done somnething big and remarkable which is really great and satisfying.



-----------
FINAL WORDS
-----------

I have finished my work on Security Breach and Ramprage as I write this and started to give the wcp9 remake a new face. DeltaCTF is in its final state and nearly ready for a more then perfect 1.0 release with only some touch-ups to be done. I really had fun working with this talented team and even though I allready worked with many people through other mods this was the best developer environment I had and I learned much from the mapping talks with Sync, Method and Phantazm. For the next big Delta update we will probably try working on maps together and share up the the work between us beside building our own maps. I think this experience will be great and will push the quality even more. I hope DeltaCTF pleases you and that it can replace regular q4CTF in most leagues and revive the glory days of CTF !
Thank you for reading and youre interest, sincerely yours Martin "Drach" Vigneron.