03/08/2024 - "Valley of Eelhandra" by Jean "El Chicoverde" Rochefort

[Sat42]

Map Title: Valley of Eelhandra
Author: Jean "El Chicoverde" Rochefort
From: New ShamuQuest
Filename: sbegin2.unr




Video Playthroughs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATGXFjDxHDM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUAQ1o4DJ4E

Synopsis: After saving a Nali held prisoner at the Nak'halinra outpost, you learn that their priest was kidnapped and taken to the "Demon" for questioning... this doesn't bode well, as Nali priests know the secret of the great power held within the Sacred Stone. The Kh'halan clan will likely try to steal the Stone at the Temple of Eelhandra, but they do not know that it is useless without the Nali Crown. This great power must not fall into the wrong hands! First, you must go to the Temple of Eelhandra to retrieve the Sacred Stone post-haste, and if you prove yourself worthy of the Goddess, then the path to the Nali Crown will be open to you. Beware! Multiple parties seek the artifacts, and the outcome of this struggle may well decide the fate of the world...

May Talandri'n, the Goddess of Lightning, guide you.

Discuss!

[Semfry]

Visually I think the terrain here is even better than in the previous map, and the temple exterior looks great too, although there are some strange decisions like the tiled dirt road texture in the Titan fight area (especially as there's plenty of more organic dirt texturing in the rest of the map). The combat ramps up quite a bit from the first map, with the Titan near the start and then various Troopers in open areas, and the actual temple has kind of an absurd amount of troopers, although the amount of space and ammo provided means they aren't too tough to deal with (and the Rifle obviously becomes king here after you get it). Despite the more intense sequences the layout is weirdly empty in some places, with stuff like side-paths with nothing in them and that big loop around the cave on the right side of the temple area which is quite long but has very little beyond some more enemies and not even a reward at the end; presumably parts of ideas that weren't fully implemented?

While shorter and more linear I feel this level of ShamuQuest 2 kind of feels closest to the original set in terms of the overwhelming scale overshadowing most of the issues/oddities it has. This level used to have the issue with the exit not loading the next map correctly, but that isn't an problem in modern downloads of the level/series at least.

In the playthrough the Titan/Krall AI positioning ended up in a way where I think the Krall might have actually won the fight in the end, although it would have taken ages lol.

[Aspide]

I'm not sure if this Shamu Quest is suppose to be a retelling of the original or a sequel, but in either case this is a great collection of maps, I see them as relics of an older era when it comes to custom Unreal/UT99 SP maps: The old fashioned terrain, the grammatical errors in translator messages, the use of Fifth.umx (which was used everywhere in SP maps back in the day) and the issues with the decorations (not to mention the use of TorchFlame).

Chicoverde will always be remembered by his awesome terrain, today people either use the tessellated cubes, the terrain brush or another software to create a very complex terrain, however it seems that Chicoverde made the terrain the same way the original developers of Unreal did, using the 2D shape editor to create complex surfaces. Ambition might be Chicoverde's greatest strength, even if his maps are flawed you can feel the size of them everywhere you go, it really makes you feel that you are in a real place with landmarks and many things to interact.

This map is number 2 out of 3 maps in this campaign, this level is probably the smallest one, it's a simple straight shot through some terrain until you find the entrance of the temple, the most memorable part is the confrontation with the Titan alongside the Krall, pretty interesting to trigger a fight where the Titan and the Krall are fighting each other, however it doesn't work that well since some of the Krall ignore the Titan and instead they focus on you. The temple area is really well made with plenty of exploration, however you can skip that whole section by accident if you go to the cavern that's close to the area where you find the temple, a level design mistake in my opinion. The map has a strange trigger that spawns a GiantManta in the area where you fight the first Skaarj, it reminds me of Juan Pancho Eekels maps with their weird manta triggers in Harobed Village or Noork's Elbow. What's interesting about this map is that it uses teleporters to create checkpoints for Coop, very nice , however the teleporters are invisible so the system isn't perfect but I really appreciate it. Also the map uses Thing factories to spawn extra weapons for Coop, unfortunately these factories don't spawn weapons properly if there are mutators involved and since you are most likely going to play this map in UT99 using OldSkool then the weapons are never going to spawn properly in Coop because OldSkool always uses a weapon mutator.

The map has a Tree out of bounds, reminds me of the Impossible Tree in Super Mario Sunshine . There are other actors out of bounds, this map must have a complicated development history.

Issues I found:
-Some translator message come from books, however you can push the books but the messages stay in the same spot, typical n00b mistake .
-Creature factories are located in places that you can walk on and have collision turn on, which means you can activate them by touching them before the correct trigger activates them, another typical n00b mistake. The same goes for the Thing factories for the extra weapons in Coop.
-The issues in Coop with the weapons that spawn from Thing factories.
-When you are playing online the Nali that are impaled at the start fall to the floor.
-The map is full of BSP errors, invisible walls (like the area at the end of the map where you fight the tentacles), HOM surfaces (one of them even makes you fall out of bounds but fortunately you don't die) and surfaces without collision (like the table inside the first house). If you open the map in the editor you will see the incredible mess, the shape of the brushes are so weird and nonsensical that it's incredible that the entire map didn't collapse when it was build.
-The texture alignment of the terrain brushes is pretty bad, but to be fair UED 2.0 didn't had the option to align terrain brushes back then (unless you rotate the brush and use "align to floor"), however Chicoverde used textures from GenTerra.utx for the floor and it looks awful, even if you align the textures to the floor it still looks bad.
-The map is fully bot pathed, however some pathnodes are floating which means they are useless, this happens when you add a pathnode in a surface that isn't 100% horizontal, pathnodes usually end up floating. At least this map doesn't crash because of pathnodes like the original Shamu Quest.
-There's a surface on the floor in the cave before the final temple with a bizarre lighting glitch.
-Chicoverde gives Skaarj Trooper weapons that they should never have, like the FlakCannon or the ASMD, the next map also has a Trooper with the Minigun. This forces you to use cheap tactics to kill them which isn't fun.
-Many triggers can be skipped because the collision wasn't set up properly.
-The original version of the map cannot be completed because the final teleporter doesn't take you to the next map. This is because the URL of the teleporter is incomplete.
-The map uses Guardian.umx which is infamous for its technical issues if you use the Galaxy Driver (Unreal and UT99 default audio driver).

[evilgrins]

I may be one of the few ut99 players who's never really played U1... but that is pretty.

Noted:
https://unreal-games.livejournal.com/235183.html

[ebd]

Very strange brushwork with seams everywhere and a lot of BSP issues. Missing a translator at the start, and the teleporter at the end is broken. I have a lot of comments that will appear in the video but I am not sure if I'll have the edit ready in time. It ended up with more footage than I expected and I have a few other things I need to get done as well. The one thing that stood out most to me was the non-tiling ground texture used all over the map. What a strange choice to use that texture, out of all of them...

[fashahhh]

Played this not so long ago after playing sbegin1. Apologies if I'm mirroring what others have already said.

The terrain for the time is certainly ambitious, I still don't know how he did it. I mentioned in my play of the first map of the pack that they seem to be intersected but he's got them fitting together like a jigsaw.

It would have looked better if he'd used the grass/rock transition textures to some of the higher ledge areas and of course just stuck with the standard glass texture.

I do like the idea of the Krall vs Skaarj battles, however most of the time they just ignored each other and attacked me. I had to hide away for them to fight each other whereas I would have thought the point was that you can watch them infighting.

There seems quite a large detour with a fair few enemies which appears to amount to absolutely nothing unless I missed something? I also found the cave to be in an odd position. I originally dropped down completely missing the outside temple. It would have been better to at least have a slope back out so you could explore if you missed it or a secret opening further on to loop back round.

The other part of the temple can be easily missed. There doesn't seem to be much indication to the temple exit, particularly as there are a couple of paths you could take.

Lighting is nice for the time, I like the bright orange glows of the torches. I also liked the brushwork for the carts too.

I was a bit disappointed not to see the air balloon from the previous map. Would have been cool if it was shot down or something in this map just to tie the two together better.

I am nit-picking though as it still to me stands the test of time as a very well made map.

[Aspide]

I was a bit disappointed not to see the air balloon from the previous map. Would have been cool if it was shot down or something in this map just to tie the two together better.

Speaking of that air balloon, I played the previous map and I tried to run faster to get inside the air balloon before the Krall activates it and when I did it I realized something that broke my heart.

The air balloon doesn't have collision

[Delacroix]

Missing a translator at the start, and the teleporter at the end is broken.

Perhaps if you downloaded the pack and played as intended from sbegin.unr you would have the translator - also, I'm pretty sure that in the full pack version, the middle map has the TP fixed.

The map is meant to be played from sbegin.unr. It's a part of a pack, not a standalone map. There were occasional situations where packs had a series of incomplete releases, or one-map-per-archive releases, only receiving proper full packages at a later date. ShamuQuest II and Unreal Zero are such cases, so it's important to know these facts to play the way it's meant to be played. E.g. with transferring inventory and weapons from the previous levels.

As a middle map in the set... the level just works for what it is intended. A passage through a realistically done valley with interesting combat encounters (thanks to the map being pathed, a staple of Chicoverde's) ending with entrance to a temple. The next level, the temple itself, is the highest point of the pack, even though it cannot compare to the temple of Soquatre from the other Shamu pack. But that doesn't mean this level is to be underestimated - it definitely showcases Chicoverde's talent.

[Sat42]

Nice to read all the comments from everyone (@evilgrins: welcome to MOTW! @Aspide: LOL always testing the boundaries of a level I see!)

I have a lot of comments that will appear in the video but I am not sure if I'll have the edit ready in time.

No worries, worst case send me the link and I'll add it to the OP here. And yes, this map is part of a short campaign which starts with Nak'halinra Peak (you joined discussions for the new round of MOTW a bit later!)

Another great map! I just love this mappack, unlike the original ShamuQuest which can be a bit all over the place (still very much worth playing at least once thanks to Temple of Soquatre as already mentioned by Delacroix), here you get 3 extremely consistent levels that feel like Unreal only a bit better. Chico definitely captured that sense of the sublime which gets associated with the mother game, and here in Valley of Eelhandra he makes the first inroads into more complex storytelling which we'd later see again in Operation Na Pali.

@fashahhh: I too really like the story implementation with the Krall vs Skaarj battles, along with the Stone Titan vs Krall fight, they're definitely among the most memorable features of this level (and completely novel to me the first time I played this!) True that the Krall vs Skaarj skirmish can sometimes fail to function properly, though in my experience it usually works at least partially (you may aggro a couple of Krall while the rest still fight with the Skaarj, making for a joyous mess)

The terrain is, as usual with Chico, impressive, and yeah the outside view of the Temple of Eelhandra is great, even if some details on the technical side of things leave room for improvement which we'll see in later works. It can get quite intense too, a challenge which I appreciate seeing as this map is when we get our hands on all the most powerful weapons.

@Semfry: yeah seems in your playthrough you got that rare setup where a few Krall got lucky with the topography and may have actually prevailed given enough time

I also wanted to highlight the deity Talandri'n, "the Goddess of Lightning": there is an old thread somewhere on these forums that attempted to list all the deities from both official and community Unreal/UT lore, and I'm pretty sure this one was forgotten (though I'd have to find the thread in order to check again). As a "storyfag" myself, I appreciate what Chico did with the narrative here, it's just a shame it was never finished...