From: rick_clark_at_acsdal-settlement@acs-inc.com To: , Reply-To: ml@qoole.com Date: Fri, 10 Apr 98 10:55:13 -0600 Subject: Re: New Map (Long Part One) OK, this is a bit rough but here is Part One. Snowman had a great idea. Here's some flesh around the idea. I've broken it up into parts so it wouldn't be too long. Skip down to Begin. The name is lame but I couldn't think of another and it fits the story. If you have a better title, let me know. Remember, no polish here. This is straight from the gray cells so ignore the grammar and misspells. Use it if you want (with credit to Snowman and myself please. :) Rick Clark ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: [q2mapediting] New Map Author: "Quake2 Level Design" at internet Date: 4/9/98 1:09 PM Here's the idea: For some reason, you are on a Strogg spaceship, in prison. For some reason, they let you keep your blaster. You must escape from your cell, fuck the ship royally (i.e. blow up the engine room, destroy the cockpit, maim the weapons systems, etc), then escape to the surface in an escape pod. From there you visit the Meat Factory (fact2 on steroids. I LOVE those machines!!), the military base (buttloads of bad guys), maybe more torture levels, I don't know yet. Right now I am working on that spaceship, since it is a stand-alone level. The Snowman snowman@apk.net icq 5187759 http://junior.apk.net/~snowman/ ----BEGIN---- A Better Mousetrap, Part One Richard Clark and The Snowman The bullets sang around me like a swarm of angry bees, so I quickly ducked my head down below the level of the rubble that was hiding me. I saw what I needed to see: The escape pod hatch was across the hangar bay. It would be a short run of a dozen steps. The problem was though, there were a half dozen uglies trying to make me a trophy for the mess hall. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes till this whole show went up in flames. The det packs I hid on the reactor core would cause a nice little coolant leak rupture and the reactor would go critical in about five seconds after the coolant stopped flowing. Five minutes or mom's favorite son would be just a memory. I heard the "ker-thunk" of a grenade being lobbed my way. I looked around wildly but the grenade hit the top of my rubble pile, and bounced back down to the floor. The boom was followed by grunt. Yeah, man. The Stroggs may be powerful, but they sure were stupid. I raised my machine gun over the rubble and sprayed the bay with bullets. I heard a scream and a thud. One more ugly sent to Strogg hell. I looked over my inventory and sighed. Half a dozen clips for the machine, a dozen rounds for the shotgun and a couple grenades. Great. I raised my head and took a quick peek. The uglies were spread pretty much evenly in the bay. A trooper saw me and let fire. The ruble in front of me jumped. A round hit one of the machine-gun pukes and he turned and smacked the trooper. The trooper hit the ground and didn't move. I ducked back down, with an idea forming in my pea brain. It was crazy, but I had three minutes till it wouldn't matter anymore. It's times like this that a part of your brain asks these rhetorical questions like, "What in the world you were thinking, to get into something like this?!" Dad wanted me to take over the family hydro farm. Hell, I wanted to take it over. I loved the farm and doing that kind of work. My ancestors, as far back as the Old Wild West, had been farmers. It was in my blood. However, the Stroggs had other ideas. A well placed asteroid ended any hopes that I would be taking over the farm. I was away on a trip to Mexico getting some hydro replacement parts when the asteroid hit the Midwest. The asteroid was only a mile across, but the Midwest disappeared in a flaming instant. Since I didn't have a home to go back to, I enlisted in the Marines. I have always been a good shot, practicing on those rats around the hydro pods that you can never really get rid of no matter how many mousetraps they invent. I figured I would put my practice to good use and give some pay back to some Stroggs. Bootcamp was hell, but the real hell was the reality of the situation. I learned (contrary to the NewsVids I had been fed), that we were in bad shape. The Stroggs had been in space for quite a while and had been studying us for quite a while as well. Oh, we thought that if aliens really did exist, they would be these nice cuddly teddy bears and all would be peachy. Surely if a race had achieved space flight they would have settled that nasty aggressive side? Well, as my tactics instructor often said, "horse-shit". All we had to do was to look around the earth and see that dog-eat-dog mentality of life on earth. Why would we think that aliens would be any different? The Stroggs saw us, as we reached for the stars, as a threat to their own expansion. What do you do with a threat? You eliminate it. We lost several colonies before we realized what was going on around us. The Stroggs were also masters at biology. Their society was built upon a hierarchy like a hive of bees or a colony of ants. The workers were semi-intelligent melding of biology and mechanics designed to serve the higher ranks of society. Unfortunately, this included the soldiers. They were walking weapons, stupid, but lethal none the less. And they never fought alone. The main Strogg tactic was unimaginative, but effective: use over-powering force. Many a fire team was lost because they forgot that crucial rule. However, you don't piss off a human. We didn't just roll over and play dead. We met force with force and using guts, intuition and a smattering of just plain good luck, we had taken the war to the Strogg home planet. That is where it got really tough. Intel said that the Stroggs had an impregnable force around the home planet that would mean certain death to any that tried to attack the planet proper. Unlike the holovids, where the spaceships didn't have to worry about orbital mechanics, our transports had to obey the laws of physics and that meant parking orbits and proper approaches. The Stroggs would pick us off like I did the rats around the hydro pods. That meant we had to use some monkey smarts. So some guys sitting well behind the enemy lines decided we would run a covert op ahead of the main attack force. Objective: infiltrate the large cruisers orbiting the planet and take them out. Escape to the planet and wait for pick up. Great. Only a dumbass would have volunteered for such a suicide mission. My CO called me into his office the day before I was to ship out on the Avenger. "Strike," he said pointing at me, "I like you. You got balls and you're good. I have a job for you. Here's your orders. Report at 0600 tomorrow. Dismissed!" Outside the office I read the orders and my bowels became loose. I stepped back into his office and stood before his desk. He glanced at me and said, "Yeah?" I raised the orders. "If I make it back I'm going to kill you. Sir!" He leaned back into his chair and grinned. "Good. That will give you something to look forward to. 0600. Dismissed!" Outside, I read the orders again. Mission Objective: Agents will be captured by Strogg forces in space and while aboard ships, will effect escape from detention quarters and destroy ships. If escape is reasonable, agent will use escape pod to land upon Strogg planet and will await pickup while evading capture. Sabotage of planetary facilities is encouraged. Great. Just, fucking great. It was going to be a long night. -To Be Continued- Rick Clark