Download (257MB
) - you may be prompted to sign it but shouldn't actually need to:https://www.dropbox.com/s/ij0kgj0iuqs81 ... d.zip?dl=0
Background and Extended Description
This release is a chance to experience Pan'thali Haven, the opening map of the aborted Unreal: Battle for Na Pali (BfNP) single player campaign, as a multiplayer map for Unreal Tournament.
Pan'thali Haven was originally conceived as a non-combat map that would set the story of BfNP in motion. The player would have explored his home town, talking to the Nali townsfolk, trading at the market and eventually setting out on an errand to the nearby Pan'thali Vale (recently released by fashahhh as the standalone single player map The Vale: Evelyn). A later map would have seen the player returning to his home town to find it destroyed. Because of its non-linear, free-roaming layout, Pan'thali Haven is more easily adapted for use as a multiplayer map than as a standalone single player experience.
This release also provides an opportunity to release three of the wonderful texture sets created especially for BfNP by Dušan "McFarrel" Majtás. I'm glad that some of McFarrel's efforts - one of the most productive aspects of BfNP's troubled development - can finally see the light of day.
The original map was designed to be beautiful and homely, and a prettier Nali town you are unlikely to find. This beauty comes at a cost, and the town is extremely high-poly when viewed from the waterfall, not to mention a nightmare to work with in UnrealEd! It pushes the game engine close to its node limit.
For this multiplayer conversion, I decided not to make any major changes to the layout, and I decided not to de-clutter the map by removing furniture and other obstacles. They all remain, and the hazards and obstacles in some areas provide a different sort of game experience.
I recommend playing this map as a five point Domination game, but for those of you who refuse to play Domination, a Deathmatch version is included as well.
Additional work carried out specifically for this release:
- Added a fairly basic church interior for multiplayer use (the only part of the original map that had not been completed);
- Comprehensive placement of weapons, items and player starts;
- Extensive location tagging for team communications;
- Full bot pathing (they can do most things you would want them to do, except jump down from the aqueduct into the lake; I did try pathing them to do this, and it worked, but I couldn't stop them trying to translocate back up again, which is impossible, so I took it out)
Not so Frequently Asked Question
Q: I don't see all five control points on my HUD. What can I do?
A: Decrease the HUD size in your HUD settings.
Technical Issues
You can jump through all of the low metal railings. This is a gameplay decision rather than an error.
Bots' ability to get down from the aqueduct and orator's house without killing themselves is limited.
Slowdowns are likely when viewing the whole town from the waterfall.
You may encounter very occasional visual or collision glitches, although I have eliminated most of these.
The doors were originally designed to swing open. Most have now been changed to sliding doors for smoother gameplay, but this occasionally produces visual errors when doors are close to the corners of buildings.
The map has compatibility issues with some mods due to its large scale and high level of detail. For example, the large explosions / explosion chains caused by nuclear weapons in the Unreal4Ever Tournament mod will tend to cause the game to crash.
The very large file size of this download is due to McFarrel's new textures, which are mapped to 25% of their actual size, providing a higher texture resolution (e.g. a texture mapped without scaling to a 256x256 surface is actually a 512x512 image).
. The level of detail is awesome. I remember having a run around the beta version and being very daunted at the task of doing the Vale map after it due to the level of detail we were all going for in BfNP. I'm a bit sad that this hasn't become an SP level but I fully understand it would be a difficult task as it was meant to be an exploration level.
Very impressive map, thanks a lot for sharing it, as well as these neat texture packs.
