SPQ2: Defensive Measures v1.02 -- 9-3-2001
This add-on unit requires Quake 2 -- version 3.20 recommended

"--Please report to the briefing room."
You're lurched out of your musings by the sound of Sergeant Sparks over the ship's intercom. Being on the special-operations reserve team, you weren't part of the first drop. Your involvement so far in the Earth-force assault on Stroggos has been somewhat benign, involving ship-side support and gathering intelligence from relatively safe areas on the surface. But even so, the catastrophe that befell the squads that never even got the chance to engage in their mission is still fresh on your mind. You wouldn't even consider refusing a mission no matter its possible outcome, but trepidation lingers nonetheless.
"Yes, sir," you respond as you hustle into the briefing room.
"OK, good. Listen up," Sgt. Sparks turns from the communications console at his desk and faces you. "We've been running hi-res surface scans in the big-gun area and according to that along with intel from the surface teams in the logistical sector, there's bad news. As you know the security laser grid was just taken out a few hours ago. Problem is, there were a lot of laser towers that appeared to be offline or already dead but we're getting power signatures from them. They didn't go completely dead like the others. And we just got wind of some major power signatures not far from the big-gun reactor, centered around two buildings, apparently a complex of some sort -- right in the middle of these towers. If those towers are a backup grid like we think they are, we got a serious problem. There's no way we can drop teams for reconnaisance in the big- gun area with something like this in the way, not after what happened during the first drop. Big-gun is next on the agenda which means we need to take this thing out as soon as possible."
Before you can think over this, Sgt. Sparks continues.
"We have a mission and you're one of the lucky ones. The complex is possibly the control center or power distribution center for this secondary grid. I know it's a risk but there's no other teams anywhere near this area and we need this dealt with now. What we'll be doing is dropping a small team of you just outside the far end of the complex, in some canyons that should be good for cover. We want this to be as covert as possible, for obvious reasons."
"What if this thing wakes up on us--"
Sgt. Sparks interrupts: "J.C. and the techs have been down in the hangar cooking up some improvements to the drop-pod shielding since the, uhh, first drop. What we've come up with is a sort of active electromagnetic-canceling field -- stealth, if you will. It also acts as a kind of EMP that projects an in-phase field in the direction of an incoming energy-weapon and tries to repel it or drown it out. Basically an on-demand forcefield of sorts."
"And I get to test-drive it."
Sgt. Sparks nods. "And right away too. We want to get this started right away, before this thing DOES decide to wake up. If it does it's gonna be ten times harder to take it out. I called on you because I know you've had training in covert ops, and if anyone can make this happen it's you. But I do need to know," Sgt. Sparks looks directly at you, "are you up to this?"
"Yes, sir, I am. That's why I'm here."
"Thought so," he smiles. "Get suited up and report to hangar deck in one hour."
You turn to leave.
"And good luck, soldier."
You arrive at the hangar deck to the sight of techs stowing data discs and other gear in the drop pods being prepared. You wonder yet again at how an element of technology as alien as the Strogg could be so incredibly similar to Earth technology. The truth was that these Strogg discs were so similar to Earth CD's that making them was a trivial matter. In the short time the Earth forces had been here, malicious programming had been repeatedly used to successfully corrupt computer operations in the logistical sector. Obviously you would be attempting the same thing.
"Everyone get ready to board," Sergeant Torres says, walking up. You board your drop-pod, the cover is closed and you wait for launch. You've already been on the surface twice, but this is your first drop-pod landing.
Sgt. Sparks comes on the radio: "You've been briefed on what's at stake here. To recap, you're to infiltrate the complex, link up however possible so you can send and receive intel, eliminate resistance as necesssary, and take whatever defensive measures are necessary in shutting this thing down and securing the facility. And, meet up with the teams at the reactor site ... in one piece. Godspeed."
"Launch in 10 seconds," Sgt. Torres says.
After a burst of intense acceleration, you begin to descend, slowly at first, then more rapidly as though on a cosmic roller coaster. Weightlessness turns to turbulence as the rapidly-thickening atmosphere takes its effects.
"Heads up, marines! The laser grid just activated -- get ready to dodge!"
"Oh, great. You guys better have got this new shield right," you mutter.
"Incoming, six o'clock. Pull hard left!" You pull left, faintly hearing a laser fizz by off to the right, out of range of the viewscreen. You check the altimeter: almost to ground level but still too high to fall and land in one piece.
"Incoming--!"
Ssszz-ffow! The unmistakeable sound of a laser blast screams as the pod is slammed to one side. So much for the repulsor-shield idea--either that or this was a helluva hit. The readout reports damage to thrusters and attitude control as you struggle to maintain course.
"Crap--one more hit like this and it's over--"
Sszzz-POW!
Showers of sparks -- spinning -- smell of burnt circuit boards -- a roar -- vertigo -- then blackness...
You come to, lying face-down on the ground. Despite the crash-landing and having been ejected from the pod, you seem to be uninjured. It looks like you can still carry out the mission. Your focus falters, still dazed from the crash. At once you're jolted back to your senses by the angry sizzle of a nearby laser bolt scorching the ground, followed by a muffled explosion.
"The laser grid ... at least I got down here alive."
Then silence -- nothing but the wind. You look around, trying to clear your vision, trying to make out your surroundings and get some sort of fix on your position.
The pod is nowhere to be seen.
"The disc..."
Alarm turns to relief when you see the disc and a weapon nearby. At least I can try and pull this off, you think, assuming I ended up near the planned drop zone. You check your field computer, which fortunately you had in your pack to begin with, to see if any updates were able to be transmitted. Nothing. There must be some sort of communications link failure. No matter, you think. The ground-based com link should work through the Strogg communication network which was hacked into just after the first drop. Just a matter of finding out what's going on, you think as you gather your things and prepare to set off down the ravine.
Toward what, you're not sure.
HLR Productions presents:
*** DEFENSIVE MEASURES ***

* Unit Information *

Title: | Defensive Measures
Author: | HLR Productions (aka Bakersman)
Homepage: | http://www.netxn.com/~poinsettia/index.html
Current email: | poinsettia@netxn.com
Permanent email: | hlrsierra@yahoo.com (use this if the other one ever dies sometime in the future)

Archive filename: | defens.zip
Files: | defens.txt defens.html defens.bsp defens2.bsp defens3.bsp

Game: | Quake 2
Single-player: | That's what it's all about
Cooperative: | Supported - 4 starts (but untested)
Deathmatch: | Fully supported in defens and defens2, and highly recommended defens.bsp (16+ players) (defens and defens2 are a series) defens2.bsp (16+ players)

* Installation and Play Notes *

Move defens.bsp, defens2.bsp and defens3.bsp to \quake2\baseq2\maps\
The beginning map is defens.bsp
Those of you playing Q2 should know how to do this by now. But if you don't... To start, set your skill level if necessary: At the Q2 console, type skill 0 for Easy, skill 1 for Medium or skill 2 for Hard. Begin playing by typing map defens.
There's nothing important (no secrets, etc) in the elevator shafts. If you do get into one, go to the contrasting-colored square on the floor and you'll be teleported out.
For best results, turn off gl_clear if it's on (type gl_clear 0 at the console) if you're using a 3D card (which you should be). It won't break anything but there's a special effect used that won't look good if the gl_clear color is anything other than black or dark gray (especially 3DFx cards and their hot-pink gl_clear color) if it's on.
If you're one of those wanks who likes to noclip around outside looking for secret areas, hidden logic rooms, func_train-lighting areas and stuff (I do this all the time), you'll see a bunch of closed-off stairways and a couple other closed-off rooms in the first map. These are open in deathmatch mode. (To run in DM mode, type deathmatch 1 before starting the map.) See below for more on this.

* Construction *

Basis: | None -- all original
Inspirations/ideas: | Confidence Lost (lighting), Chemical Plant (transparent floor), city2[id] (multi-part doors), The Powersphere Quest (lighting), On Sacred Ground (textures), Waiting To Die (decorations), reactor2[id] (reactors), Magic Lamber Forever (find this on your own:-) )
Skill levels: | Implemented. (More health in Easy, more monsters in Hard) I designed this mainly with Hard skill in mind. These are about the same difficulty-wise as the id levels, but without as many big health powerups everywhere (except for Easy skill).
Q2 textures used: | Mainly e2u3 reactor, some e2u3 sewer, some e3u3, some e2u2
New textures/images: | No
New sounds: | No
New/replaced code: | No
Editor: | QERadiant 1.47 -- nothing but the *BEST* (and Wordpad for minor entity tweaking)
Build time: | About 5 months spread over nearly 3 years(!)
Compile tools: | [GDD]QBSP3 by Geoffrey DeWan Enhanced QVIS3 by Steven Boswell Arghrad 2.0 (Yeah, baby)
Build/compile machine: | P133, 64MB EDO, fast/wide SCSI HD's, 12MB voodoo2. State-of-the-art :-)

Map Statistics: | defens.bsp | defens2.bsp | defens3.bsp
Brushes (world/total): | 4472 / 4836 | 4419 / 4927 | 2090 / 2366
Enemies (easy): | 57 | 68 | 25
Enemies (medium): | 57 | 68 | 25
Enemies (hard): | 78 | 92 | 31
Compile time: |
QBSP3: | 8 min, 14 sec | 24 min, 50 sec | 1 min, 28 sec
QVIS3 (full): | 36 min, 34 sec | 2 hours, 13 min | 2 min, 31 sec
Arghrad: | 3 hours, 33 min | 5 hours, 18 min | 2 hours, 21 min

(Arghrad using -extra, -bounce 100, -chop 64, -chopsky 256, -chopcurve 64, -maxlighta 240)

Bugs and quirks: | The first two maps are a bit jittery on slower computers, probably because of all the active monsters. This goes away as you clear them out. Interestingly the second map isn't as bad even though it has more monsters than the first one. High r_speeds in some places. If you're playing in software mode, go down to CompUSA and get one of their house-brand middle-of-the-line accelerators for $49. OK... seriously, there's quite a bit of grayouts in the big laser room in map 2 if you stand in the corner (r_speeds around 1400 but the room makes it worth it--trust me). Also some areas are bit on the dark side, even with a Voodoo2 whch normally are bright compared to most OpenGL setups (TNT accelerators and so forth). Occasionally the bad guys at the end start fighting each other after they see you collect the rockets. I know it's amusing to watch but it isn't what I had in mind.

* Notes *

Cooperative: The nonlinear and multi-tasked nature should lend itself well to coop play. Unfortunately I have no way to test and play coop so i don't know if or how well it will play. If you do get a chance to play this in coop, email me and tell me how it went -- I'd like to know!
Single-player only in defens3. It would probably make a good rail or rocket arena map but I didn't want to bother with it at the time. If enough people whine about it (and I'm not anticipating this) I might add DM support in a future or separate DM-only version.
Deathmatch: Although these maps were designed primarily as a single-player mission, I found that their nonlinearity and connectivity allowed for pretty decent deathmatch support. A considerable amount of work went into the deathmatch aspects of these maps. I borrowed a trick from the original id maps that I never noticed until I started using Eraser bots: having passages and platforms and stuff present in DM mode but not in SP mode, and vice-versa. (Take a look at base2, bunk1, ware1, jail1, fact1, cool1, waste3, strike, city1, city2, and city3 for the most noticeable examples of this.) In defens.bsp, the lower elevator is covered up and there are stairways connecting those three floors instead. Also there's a bunch of custom teleporters (used in both maps) in front of the other elevator (to go to other floors) and at the beginning and end to provide connectivity. In defens2.bsp, lots of teleporters, ladders in place of the elevator, and check out the overhead platform on the second floor. I eliminated all the things needing smarts to use (elevators, etc) because I designed these for Eraser-bot play, and bots generally don't know how to operate things and I don't want to give an unfair advantage to the player. To make extra things in DM mode and not SP and so forth, just use func_wall's for your platforms and to cover up passages and inhibit them in the appropriate modes (set the appropriate spawnflags). For example, to hide the elevator, the frame around the button is a func_wall that's inhibited in DM, the button is inhibited in DM, and a func_wall covering up the door is inhibited in Easy, Medium and Hard. Try this sometime in your SP+DM map -- morphing-maps are a lot of fun.
Advanced lighting: I use point lights to give custom colors to lights that I can't get with texture lights (at least without making custom textures). The _falloff key-value is key here. If you want a realistic light source, using _falloff 2 (or 1) is absolutely necessary anytime you're using a point light as a sourced light (in a custom fixture for example) and for mine_lights (which are point lights with models associated with them). Using _fade by itself won't look nearly as nice. In the caves and a few other places (the "black-lights" for example) I used a point light 4 units in front of each texture. Also I used a bunch of point lights everywhere outside near the top of the sky with _falloff 1 and colored orange to make the orange diffuse sky light. (It was a pain but this was before Arghrad 2.0 and the _sun_surface feature which allows for proper sky lighting combined with sunlight.) The point_light custom-color method can be replaced (to better effect) using bmodel lighting instead. But Arghrad 2.0 wasn't out when I did most of the lighting.
Geodesic dome: If you want a prefab of this, email me. I have two spheres -- one for external (used here) and one for internal. I meant to (and was asked to) post this on a prefab site after I made a pic-of-day on Rust, but got sidetracked and didn't. Sorry about that.
I started this in September 1998, wanting to finish and release a smaller SP map or unit before continuing work on a presently-defunct big multi-map unit that I had started, but this hasn't exactly been "almost 3 years in the making" -- it's been sitting unfinished for way too long now and the actual total amount of time I've spent actively working on it is more like 4 months or so. I had almost all the architechure done by April 1999. Afterwards I was messing around with making some DM maps and other stuff but a lot of my interests were on things other than mapping. In the past couple months I've been sorting through my collection of SPQ2 maps so I could rate and archive them and figured it was high time I got this out and finished it.
If you review this unit on a level-review site, thanks! If you want to know what my name is for the "author" space, it's HLR Productions. If you want a "real" name instead, too bad. :-) Also, I request that in lieu of a clickable email address on any webpages, you post a link to my Defensive Measures page which is currently at http://www.netxn.com/~poinsettia/defens.html. The reason for this is for spam control (avoiding spambots and such) -- I'm on too many spam lists as it is, thanks mostly to <beeeeeep> ebay when they had clickable email addresses (fortunately those are a thing of the past) and I stupidly didn't use a proper username. Your cooperation in this matter is much appreciated. Also, if you want to add this to your local file download site (3ddownloads.com, etc) as a local copy or mirror it anywhere, please do.

* Acknowledgements *

id Software for one of the Best Games ever.
Robert Duffy for The Best Editor Hands Down.
Tim Wright (Argh!) for Arghrad, which made the advanced lighting in this map possible.
Steven Boswell for the great enhanced QVIS3. (Whatever happened to his site? It used to be at http://yyz.com/~whatis/Quake2/bspvis.html)
Tony Ferrara and David Hyde for Mapspy.
Lazarus and its dev team for keeping Q2 not only alive but kicking. This unit doesn't use it but any future ones I make will. If you make SP maps for Quake2 you owe it to yourself to use the essential SPQ2 mod.
Rust: News, tutorials, general goodness--need I say more?
Special thanks go to:
David Hyde and Argh! for playtesting
The Mighty Jihn, partner-in-crime and designer of superb Q2 deathmatch levels, for inspiration and playtesting and making me get this done, and being a pal in general.

* Permissions, trademark acknowledgement and usage terms *

Defensive Measures: Copyright © 2001 HLR Productions.
Quake 2® and related marks and indicia are (registered I assume) trademarks and/or property of id® Software: Copyright © 1997 id Software. For more information regarding Quake 2, please visit http://www.idsoftware.com/
Those (non-commercial) level authors who want to use portions or ideas from this unit as a basis for other levels may do so as long as you give credit (and not take half of this level and call it yours--obviously that's uncool) AND Extend This Same Courtesy to other authors that I have extended to you. (I am serious about that last part.) Map source in its entirety won't be released, but I'll make small portions available if you want a mapping example or to make a sequel map. Although I'm not an uppity punk about this issue like far too many authors are (who can eat rockets for all I care), and I don't at all mind reasonable "sampling" by hobbyist level authors, it's commercial users who are most likely to abuse it and cause problems and that's where my concern is directed. I've had other property misused by commercial entities before. By way of example: When I say "let me know" if you use my pictures, LET ME KNOW.
This means you, http://www.bagit.com/highsierra/highsierrasportcompany.html
If they had done as they were told I would have made a proper picture for them and helped them implement it. Instead they net-scraped and more or less slaughtered my picture. This is why I quit allowing commercial use without explicitly asking me. (I'm not really concerned about this incident--this was way before I made my terms clearer. But my point is made I hope.)

    THIS LEVEL MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES.
    IF YOU PAID IN ANY WAY TO GET THIS LEVEL, YOU ARE BEING RIPPED OFF
    AND SO AM I - PLEASE REPORT THIS TO poinsettia@netxn.com or hlrsierra@yahoo.com

    This file (defens.zip containing defens.bsp, defens2.bsp,
    defens3.bsp, defens.txt and defens.html),
    or any derivative works thereof, may not be sold or redistributed for profit
    in any way without express written permission of the author. This includes,
    but is not limited to, mass archival as on a cd-rom and inclusion in commercially
    published compilations (books and/or magazines).

    You are free to copy this file for personal use, or to make it available for
    redistribution in its electronic format, provided that:

    (1) it remains wholly unedited and unmodified,

    (2) no fee or compensation is charged for copies of or access to this
        file, and

    (3) this copyright notice and the following disclaimer remain attached.

    Disclaimer:
    This file is provided by the author "as is", and any express or implied
    warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of
    merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed.  In
    absolutely no event shall the authors be liable for any direct, indirect,
    incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but
    not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of
    use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on
    any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort
    (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of
    the information herein contained, even if advised of the possibility of
    such damage.

Basically, if you want to use this unit commercially, 1: read the Quake2 licence agreement regarding compiled Quake2 BSPs, and 2: ASK me. Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated.
Quit reading this and go play some Q2!
[Version 1.02 (8-7-2004): Links in readme updated. Any *.ncinternet.net links will still always work.]