Updates

» Machinima movie - Life On The Edge

What it is? - In short: a very funny movie about mister Grunt, who's literally living in the map The Edge, his world. It's a rude awakening when suddenly he discovers that there are more things besides rocketlaunchers and splash damage. A classic Quake2 movie that is a must-see for every Quake2 fan that loves the game for its characteristics. (Don't eat or drink while watching this!)

From the author: "It's kind of a take on deathmatching, and romance, from a poetry angle. Don't ask how those go together, just watch the film. It rocks!"

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» Yay:) Got some new Q2 scenery ready: 'Sub Zero'. It must have been years ago that I first got the idea for a large map with a good looking winter theme so I'm glad I can finally kick this thing out the door. About halfway done I nearly scratched the whole idea, for Q2's openGL lighting doesn't do white snow textures good. Without soft colored ambient light you couldn't even see the white crosshair. Without going over the more intricate details no other map has ever given me so much headache as this thing. Take it from me it's not a whole lot of fun to work with "natural terrain" in Q2 on this scale. Once in place, reshaping even the smallest area is tedious because doing it in the wrong order will misalign or mess up the brushes. And then I'm not even mentioning the texture alignment and lighting problems I had with all the irregular brushwork. That said, it feels good to finally get the map done. All in all it feels like a fun and original map, but for a fun game you'll need a good player load (and preferably no cows.)

» It's available in the 'mymap' list on the Vanilla server. (Video settings: the bright textures will look the most detailed on intensity lower than 3).

» Over the last couple of months whenever time permits, I've been working on rebuilding 'The Edge' for Quake2World.
(It's taking long because working on this map entirely depends on my motivation and mood. The free standalone game project that Jay Dolan & Co are developping has more or less been dormant for awhile and of course it's not easy to keep people interested while the developpers and mappers take their time. However I still feel that Q2W is going to spark the interest of group of old Q2 players that love the doublejumping and can appreciate some sweet eyecandy once version 1.0 is released.

» Secondly, a 'Torment II' duel map has been sitting on my hdd for quite some time so I really should finish that one. At some point I wasn't happy with the way the map's layout was going so I scrapped it and started with something else. Was almost a fully playable map, but in my opinion a map's layout has to feel natural all the way, and not too artificial and stuffed... which is easier said than done!
From what I remember during the makings of all my previous maps there always came a point where I didn't know what to do and then I ended up with one or two unnatural and poorly designed areas in the map. So, not this time. But I just keep trying and hopefully with some luck I'll create a simple and interesting layout that feels right all the way through.

» Released a new map 'Torment' for Q2. Most if not all of my previous maps were designed for ffa (free for all) mode but this time the map is designed for tourney (duel) mode. This sounds super interesting but it basicly means that the map is just smaller in size and more thought was put into the item placement.

Downloads

# files & editing tools
- LOTE : (Life On The Edge)		In my opinion one of the funniest Quake2 videos since the existence of the game. Don't eat or drink while watching this.
- PakScape		Solid and easy to use PakEditor.
- Qped 2.11		Versatile PakEditor and viewer (see screenshot in zip). Views .pcx, .md2, sprites & wav planetquake.gamespy.com
- Custom crosshairs x		Collection of 21 new crosshairs for Q2. Preview images included. (You need a PakEditor to update your crosshairs in a .pak file).
- Wally		Texture editor. Designed for the Q2 palette (256 colors).
- PhotoShop .wal plugin		Plugin for Photoshop to read and edit Q2 textures in .wal format. (It's best to convert textures to indexed color mode and save as tga. Then convert to pcx with Wally).
- KeyGrip2		Edit your recorded Q2 demos with this program.
- Demoplay		Instead of placing a downloaded demo in the baseq2/demos folder, and typing 'map demoname.dm2' in the console without quotes, Demoplay makes it easier to play demos from any location just by doubleclicking the .dm2 file. Plus it has playback options like fastforward, pause and slowmotion.
- Q2 Scene Builder qsb19		QSB is a full featured program that allows you to compose scenes made up of models from Quake2 - http://qsb.planetquake.gamespy.com//index.html
- Q2Text		Little config tool to make those flashy but annoying multi-line textbinds and symbols.
- Hjsplitpro		Program to split almost any file into smaller pieces. Handy for email attachments that are too large to send at once. (See screenshot in zip)
- QERadiant 1.47		Map Editor - Solid and fast to work with once you know the hotkeys. Although old still my first choice.
- QuArK 6.4		Map Editor - Supports a multitude of games with extended interface. For newer versions -> http://quark.sourceforge.net
- Build tools		The 'latest' compilers for compiling Q2 maps. Qbsp3 1.09, Qvis3 1.03, Arghrad 2.01
- Q2Beaver		Recommended if you use QeRadiant. It's a Windows-interface that frontends the compiling utilities used to compile Q2 and HL maps. (Screenshot in zip)
- BSP to MAP converter		Winbspc.exe - Converter from the 'Gladiator Bot'. Converts BSP to Map & BSP to AAS
- Q2dm1 source map		Backwards converted and bugfixed MAP file of q2dm1. You need a mapeditor to view this.
- NumBrush		Entity and brush numbering program for MAP files. Useful for deciphering compile warnings and crashing errors when invalid geometry is present.
- Quake2 Modeler		The standard Quake2 model editor.
		* Due to copyright reasons TS had to take down the Pak0 files... I will find another host for the files and put new links up soon.
- Pak0-basic.zip (60MB) *		This zip contains the (singleplayer) maps, textures and models. - No sounds.
- Pak0-sounds.zip (30MB) *		This zip contains all the stock sounds.

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Curved/spiral staircase tutorial
Step by step this tutorial shows you how to make those neat spiral staircases using regular brushes.

keyGrip2 tutorial
Only one tutorial for now: Retrieving the 1st-person view from 3rd-person demos. I figured this could come in handy since KeyGrip is not exactly user-friendly.

Mapping site
My old Map page, no longer being updated but some of my older shit can still be found there.

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(c)2011 DJ 'Panjoo' Bloot.