articles • Lost projects - A mapping history Released: January 2006
Screenshots
Introduction
This article deals with the history of my maps.
There are several projects I started but never have finished. At the end of this article you'll find a pack which contains selected canceled maps including some textures and models. As a bonus it also includes the source of Frescenzy.
The fallen project
The fallen Project was supposed to be another mod set within the Black Mesa universe. The hero would wake up in a room and would arrive at Black Mesa when the incident already had happened.
One probably won't believe it, but this was the mod that later became Times of Troubles. Those of you who visited my very first homepage may recognize the screenshot on the right.
That deathmatch map ...
After becoming more and more familiar with Half-Life's level editor, I wanted to create a deathmatch map.
It was loosely based on a sketch of a Quake 3 map I saw in a magazine. The first attempt didn't have much in common with the sketch and didn't look very good. Then, I recreated that map for the german magazine GameStar. This time I closely kept to the sketch and I was quite satisfied with my map.
When Valve released their Deathmatch Classic I decided to give the map another chance.
I re-textured it completely and also changed smaller things. But one thing didn't change: until now it never has been released.
Excessive
Excessive was a multi-player mod made by a colleague and me. While he was responsible for the coding, I did the mapping. At early stages it featured frag grenades and a cool grapple hook. We also wanted to have different game types like Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch. As you can see I re-used my deatchmatch map for this mod and began to convert it to a Capture the Flag map, too. As the team grew larger, it also began to collapse and so Excessive was canceled.
Critical Mass
After I finished Times of Troubles, the team leader of Critical Mass contacted me asking if I could contribute something to their modification. I agreed and began to build a map based on the descriptions they gave me. It was fun, but due the lack of time I had to quit the team before I completed my contribution.
Black Mesa's Working Class
The idea behind this modification is almost as old as Times of Troubles. You were supposed to take the role of one of Black Mesa's construction guys who have to do the crap job during the experiment.
A pal of mine and I started working on it at the end of 2005. A great part of the introduction map was complete along with some placholder sounds. However both of us were busy with real life issues and so the project was cancelled. In 2007 I used both, the map I made for Critical Mass and my work for Black Mesa's Working Class, as a base for E.T.F..
Times of Troubles: Source
As you can already guess from the name this was supposed to be a conversion of Times of Troubles for Half-Life 2. I did it to learn more about the Source engine of Half-Life 2, but I soon realized that this would not be worth playing.
