Ortican, the first single player level made by legend Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong, he's one of the most important members of the Unreal community, he started making MP maps for UT99 (I remember one of his earliest levels was a DM maps with monsters in it, mercenaries were everywhere). After that he started to make a name for himself making quality levels where Hourences pushed the level details to the next level, also he started making textures which will start Hourences career as a texture artist. However everything changed when he worked on Xidia, where he alongside the rest of Team Phalanx created one of the most influential mappacks of the community, a mappack that added a more realistic, robust and gritty atmosphere to Unreal custom campaigns, Hourences was also involved in Operation Na Pali, one of the most famous custom campaigns for UT99, all of this put Hourences on the map and it was just a matter of time before Epic noticed his talents. When UT2004 started development Epic hired many famous members of the community to make new levels and Hourences became one of them, he made legendary maps like ONS-Torlan and DM-Rankin, after this he became a professional video game developer and even making websites to help people how to use different versions of the Unreal Engine, but before all of this..... there was Ortican.
This level was made in 2001 but even back then Hourences proves that he had talent from the start, the level geometry is impressive with good use of terrain and details to make environments more complicated than your average custom map, the only issue is that corridors can get repetitive because the pattern of the geometry repeats, however the thing that steals the show is the texture choice, Hourences is probably the mapper that used the textures from the Starship packages the most effectively, it's quite interesting that the majority of the textures used are from the original Unreal, nobody uses them like Hourences, however alignment has some problems, the biggest issue being the texture alignment of the terrain, however I don't blame Hourences because the tricks to fix that issue where not that popular back then (not even Epic knew when they made Unreal and UT99). Lighting is not as good, it's decent but nothing stands out however the map does use fog which is used very well.
The story is not that complex or deep, the mission is simple, infiltrate the Ortican station, destroy some computers and then kill the Queen. The map has some translator messages but the majority of them either tell you your objectives or they tell you basic information (also the map never explains why Mercenaries and Skaarj are working together). This is a huge letdown when you considerate that this level is part of the Jones saga, a collection of maps/mappacks that tell the story of one marine called Jones (Xidia Gold, SkyTown Redux and 7 Bullets). The story of this map pales in comparison to what the rest of the saga will do, to be fair this map was made before the Jones saga was born (that happened when Xidia was made) and this map was added as part of the story later, the events of this map actually take place after the events of Xidia Gold, which is very strange in retrospect since this map doesn't use that much custom content. In all honestly this map is definitely the black sheep of the Jones Saga.
However I will give this map credit for inspiring many custom SP maps that have pupae inside ducts, this map was a pioneer in that regard
Sound design is pretty good, Ambient Sounds and Dynamic Ambient Sounds are there to add to the atmosphere and movers use sounds effectively. Probably the best things about the sounds is that Hourences added plenty of details to the environment with them especially sounds inside the facility. Music is good at first, the map uses QueenSong, specifically section 1 which is a section that was never used in the original Unreal (apparently it was supposed to be used in the final level where you were supposed to fight Troopers before fighting the Queen). Hourences really likes this section because he uses plenty of times in his custom maps like for example the map Genome Warriors from Xidia Gold. The problem is that 90% of the time you will be hearing this section, so it gets old very quickly. The map also uses Erosion but only at the end, but it's a welcome change for the map to change music, even with all my complains I can say that the songs fit the level very well.
And now the gameplay, this is where the map falls apart, because this is one of the most unbalanced, unforgivable and frustrating levels in Unreal custom mapping history, Hourences is a mapper that tried to make single player maps but in my opinion he never learned that the most important thing in a SP map is the gameplay and that means difficulty balancing, this level breaks so many golden rules when making a SP map :
- Add health packs sparingly to give players the opportunity to make mistakes, especially in Unreal difficulty where you take more damage than normal. The entire map has only
12 health packs, 6 of them appear before you enter the final boss area, 1 of those 6 is hidden and another is filtered out in higher difficulties, so if you are playing in the highest
difficulty you only have 4 health packs available
, the map also has Nali Fruits but all of them except for two are outside the facility, oh and the map has one bandage
- Be careful with item and ammo difficulty filtering, when you are playing in higher difficulties enemies have more health and therefore every bullet counts, this map filters out
ammo to the point where you need to use the DP all the time and even then ammo is a big problem.
- If you are going to spawn enemies close to you the mapper should add an indication that new enemies have spawned, this map has none of that, the worst moments are the
Troopers that spawn out of nowhere when you enter the first corridor inside the facility and the fishes that appear when you enter an area that has NOTHING in it.
- Skaarj Troppers shouldn't use weapons like the ASMD or the FlakCannon, especially in point blank range and this map does both things.
- You have to design environments so you have the opportunity to fight the enemy, this of course depends on the enemies abilities and how the player moves around, the majority
of the fights in this map take place in very claustrophobic environments where you don't have the chance to retreat or run in circles to fight the enemy, you have to enter the
corridors, shoot and hope you kill the enemies before they kill you.
- Player exploration should reward them, with extra messages or extra pickups or weapons, this map has none of that with the exception of a Super Health, but you will never be
able to figure out how to get it unless you open the map in the editor, thanks Hourences.
- Be VERY VERY careful with things that can kill you in one hit like Movers or Boulders, this map does both things. There are many moments where you have to avoid things falling
from the ceiling and all of them can kill you if you touch them.
- If your mover activates only once and it's very important for level progression, they should never be Return When Encroached or the game can became soft-blocked. Almost
every mover of this map are Return.
- When you design a Boss arena you have to keep in mind the enemy's abilities and strengths, in the case of the Skaarj Queen the arena has to be big with a circular shape with
many places to hide behind and most importantly be very careful where you add the places where the Queen teleports, the boss arena of this map is just a straight line with no
cover but worst of all one of the areas where the Queen teleports is directly in front of you when you enter the arena, so you can die instantly when you enter the arena.
The worst part of all of this is that future Hourences maps have the same issues, he never learned from his mistakes, my theory is that since Hourences started making MP maps for UT99, he designed all of his maps with that mentality, not knowing that single player is very, very different from deathmatch. As a result this level (and the rest of his SP maps) are beautiful to look at, but ugly to play.
Even though I really don't like the gameplay of this map, there are some secrets like secret messages and even some shortcuts you can take to skip sections of the level. The map also has an ending cutscene which is pretty cool, I love the use of Organic in that map, also the final title card is foreshadowing to what the rest of the Jones Saga will do.
Issues I found (technical problems
)
- The map has no Coop filtering, however there are some shortcuts specifically for players that respawn at the start, but it isn't enough.
- The Nali that opens the door to get inside the facility can get stuck in the entrance of the house because all Nali cannot jump, this happens rarely.
- If you play in Unreal difficulty a music event gets triggered when the level begins because in this difficulty enemies that don't have orders start to roam around, activating a Music Event.
- Creature Factories have collision turn on, this is a big problem since they can be activated by touching them.
- There are many Block All that shouldn't exist, especially the ones inside the houses.
- Some movers that are important for level progression are Return When Encroached.
- This map has many actors that don't do anything.
- In the lake near the beginning of the map has a rock out of bounds.
- The area outside the facility that has the big Krall has a Stinger ammo out of bounds.
- There's a second way to enter the facility that doesn't require the Nali, you have to find an area that has a box and a tunnel beneath, you are supposed to shoot at the box to create an entrance to the water area below, but for some reason the trigger that you have to shoot is in a very specific spot, which ruins the secret.
- The house that has the Nali has two translator messages that are identical.
- Some translator messages come from books, but those books can be moved.
- There are many places that have bottomless pits however there isn't a trigger to guarantee that you die if you reach the bottom.
- A TeamCannon from UT99 is used in this map, the problem is that this actor cannot be killed or destroyed which doesn't make sense, thankfully the next installments of this saga fixed this problem.
- When you take the elevator to go down you can jump to some areas you aren't supposed to and there isn't a safety net for players that get stuck in that area.
- After activating the Power Core, if you run to the elevator you can skip a big section of the map because the door that is supposed to lock doesn't until the Power Core's scripted sequence is completed. The same thing can cause the "access denied" message of the door to the top of the tower to not deactivate.
- This level uses a custom skin for some of the Troopers but none of the ones that spawn use this new skin, a custom script could have fixed this.
- The map has a BSP error in the final area in one of the boxes.
- The skybox has a planet that has the dark area transparent.
- In the final cutscene if you play close attention you can see the cube (mover) that the level uses to move the spaceship
Somewhere in Nevada...
Skaarj Elder
Nali Priest
Trustee Member
just remember people: you don't have to be as eloquent as some of the crew here to comment in a MOTW thread! 
): on the Medium setting (still the normies go-to difficulty setting) it's challenging enough all right which 1) is a good thing (seeing as it's NOT the Easy setting AND this level in particular is clearly supposed to be epic) and 2) the ability to save progress at any time is there for a reason (the map is also big by these games' standards, and had me playing for over 2 hours on my first playthrough). I obviously died several times here and it felt like the challenge fit the context. And it's awesome to have a proper Queen fight (this is our first one since restarting MOTW by the way 
). As already highlighted, the overall design is really strong with even more than one way to infiltrate the Ortican complex. We even get a nice little cutscene to wrap things up!
Skaarj Assassin