Map Title: Beneath Xidia Authors: Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong & Will "Mr. Prophet" Drekker From: Xidia Gold - The Xidia Incident Filename: XidiaGold-Map4-Mine.unr
Video Playthread:
On Unreal difficulty:
Synopsis: NOTICE: As of April 10th, all miners working in Sector 19 will not proceed without nearby military presence. No Miner is permitted to approach, explore, or tamper with any part of the Derelict Space ship. If a Miner discovers buried debris or any non-human artifacts, you are ordered to report your findings to the nearest command post.
Markus, Journal: The Derelict ship was dead, no life signs, nothing to give us any reason to think there was any lifeform inside. But when a team of guys from the military outpost up north came down here to do a search, they triggered some sort of alarm. It seems only the outer shell of the ship was dead, Once those guys went in, they were attacked. Minutes later, a legion of those creatures emerged and began attacking miners and command sectors all over the caverns. We should not have messed with that ship. ( Dated 4/29, Shiftcycle A-J60)
Discuss!
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:
It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
" We left this map nearly to the last minute. I said from the start that there would a minor map connecting Map 3 to the Derelict spaceship and that it would be very small and we could make it later after everything else is done. We then decided it be best to get it out of our hair and we looked for a 3rd mapper to just make the map and get it over with. After asking Gmotha and CyberTrooper with little luck, we decided to ask other outside mappers. We ended up asking Willis, who made a sample map that just didn't do it for us, then we asked Snowdog who made a much better show, but in the end we decided to do it ourselves. Finally Hourences said, '' I'll make the map using max for the caves.'' In the end, the map ended up as a joint effort between me and Hourie, our only real duel map of the pack, except maybe the extro. Hourences created 70% of the architecture and brushwork, and he did most of the lighting. I handled all the actors and 100% of all events and enemies, also added an additional archiecture segments to complete the map."
" The map was never intended to be a significant
portion, but it ended up becoming the Token map of the pack. Like I said earlier, Outpost Pheonix was the above ground, Industrial compound, the Mines were where all the dirty mine work went. I think the map was so popular because it was actually a mine. In Unreal, the Rajigar mine was always popular...but you never actually see the mines. Map 4-Mines, was the promised completion of Map 3...the player visits the Xidia Mines. The caves themselves look very mine-like and believable, thanx to max. There was sound fx to set the mood, music to support the theme, and enemies to back up the whole atmoshpere. We had a legit mine, with mine carts, tracks, driller tanks, mining tools, wooden supports, closed off caverans that were collapsed or out of service, mineral ore exposed and glowing, and rocks. "
" Inspiration was drawn from Red Faction mostly, since alot of that game took place in.....mines. Color was usually orange to serve as an relief from all the cool blue lighting emited from the Tarydium. Most mines I have seen in Unreal are Usually 90% compound facility, and 10% actual mines. In this map, 90% is actually Mines, and 10% is facility. We figured that would be the best choice since there wasn't alot of terrain in Xidia else far and the last mao spanned inside a big complex, we didn't wanna overdose the player on big compounds."
" The end of the map I thought was cool. Instead of finding a way out of the mines and back to civilization, you end up crawling deeper into the mines until you fall into a tunnel and get lost far away from where the story intended you to go. The exit sets up nicely for the begining of the Derelict map, although the boss fight never really satisfied us. ( The Acid Hybrid has been removed for the Gold edition)."
Hourences-
"The map was like said intended as a small quick map, but like it always happends by us, it gets huge. Because it would be nutz to create so many caves in UED I made the caves in Max, where it only took a day. In UED I tried alot of orange light on advice of Prophet, I originally wanted to use blue ambient light, and orange from the lights, but Prophet found more orange light more originall, and it did work well. Map was original because no one ever made a big cave map in UT or Unreal. And it had the right amount of woow-factor to make it look cool, and due to the fact a big part of the map were only the cave brushes quickly created in max, we managed to finish the map quite fast"
While Outpost Pheonix is the centre-piece of The Incident gameplay wise, this is probably one of the most influential Unreal Single Player levels of all time aesthetically; the cave designs, lighting and sound effect usage all became a standard for levels that followed it, and still are now in most ways. There's a great sense of scale and every area has notable details and interesting aspects, and completely avoids the trap of caves being quite easy to make visually generic.
The gameplay is somewhat less intense than Outpost Pheonix (which applies to most of the rest of the set), but there's still some challenging enemy placements, and the larger areas vs the confined rooms of the last map gives the combat a different style. There's also plenty of contrast between the Skaarj and more "natural" threats, and the hidden Spinners are well used for some tension in the tunnel parts. It's much more linear in structure than the previous level, but stuff like the giant river cave provides some foreshadowing to the layout, and the minor puzzle aspects mix up the pace a little.
The boss fight is a nice climax to the level, the main thing being it's actually much safer if you ignore the big Spinner and rush down the smaller ones, as their ranged shots can wear you down a lot over time if you leave them. The actual boss is kind of overly tanky though, and feels pretty spongy even on Normal, and only gets worse as you go up in difficulty; I think cutting down ammo a little and making the boss go down easier to compensate would feel better. It's still a big improvement on the Acid Hybrid from the old version, who could barely do anything from what I recall, and also fit much less thematically.
As a side-note it's a shame that Xidia seems to have the starting equipment system from ONP, but doesn't really use it so you start with a minimum in later levels (although you are nearly maxed on CAR ammo). Though it's actually sort of interesting here, as, aside from needing to summon a flashlight, enemies drop most of the weapons and there's enough lying around for you to have plenty of ammo to spare even starting with very little.
I appreciate the commentary reports since I tend to forgot a lot. For instance, I forgot how many mappers we hoped to test out before Sjoerd decided to just do it himself. This was his big Max Terrain test, and Semfry states something that I suppose I can't argue with. This really became a thing in UT SPs and most surviving collaborations in the gametype up to the present day. I think every major pack of influence since has had their own "Beneath Xidia." It's just the standards that Sjoerd left behind that stuck with people I suppose. Everyone did their terrain differently after this.
I don't remember doing 30% of the building if my old commentary is to be believed, and to be frank I hardly remember doing the gameplay and events for that matter either. It was just important that we didn't make another Unreal Mine is all. I remember being a bit bothered that we had to use Unreal critter types in the passages, like tentacles and mantas. The story was a bit suggestive about why they were there but maybe one thing I wish I put more effort in was explaining the origins of the Skaarj on this planet and why there were Na Pali elements.
Yeah, the falling rocks were me. I was being cute. Sorry. I tended to misjudge player reaction more back then (had a similar event in the SL demo with a skaarj pushing crates that had to get adjusted for the final version).
I do very much appreciate the rewatches though I'm reminded that in the XG version a lot of the tentacles (or all?) were replaced by spinners.
Beneath Xidia, the fourth playable map of Xidia The Incident, is one of the most memorable maps of this campaign (including The Escape), this level left a huge impact in Unreal custom SP mapping history, the use of scripted events, ambient sounds, lights and of course the caves themselves. Many campaigns that were influenced by Xidia took something from this map (for better or for worse), it's fascinating to know that this map was done very late during development and in a hurry, this level feels like it was one of the earlier levels because every element that made Xidia unique is here, however the complexity of the cavern brushes are a clue that this level was done when Hourences was more experienced with BSP terrain tools.
The level geometry is amazing, truly one of the most impressive BSP pieces of work back in the day that still holds up to this day, I love the amount of detail in the environments including that spaceship near the start of the map and the many objects like barrels, signs, boxes, etc that give Outpost Pheonix so much life (something that Mr. Prophet is very good at). The thing that steals the show are of course the caves, they are masterfully done thanks to Hourences incredible skills with BSP terrain. However one critical flaw is the texture alignment of the BSP terrain, I don't blame the developers of Xidia since aligning terrain textures isn't easy with the original UED 2.0 , but it still hurts to see when you pay attention to the environment. Besides that the texture alignment and texture choice is amazing, bonus points for the way the mappers combined terrain with normal brushes ( for example the caves combined with pillars or vents ). This map definitely has some impressive visual set pieces, probably my favorites are the big cave area with the lake below and of course the final boss area, Xidia is a master when it comes to how to use decorations, something that many mappers took from Xidia. Also the custom skins for the corpses are a nice touch, especially the ones in the final boss area.
Sound design is fantastic as well, the way ambient sounds and dynamic ambient sounds are used were a game changer back when Xidia was first released, this is something that Xidia does much better than ONP which was another big project that came around the same time, the sound design alongside the great storytelling. This is one of the few custom maps that uses the sound pitch of the ambient sounds to their full potential, it's incredible how different a vanilla sound effect plays when you use a different pitch, this technique is what gives Xidia its unique environmental sound. Music unfortunately isn't as strong as the sound effects, the level uses plenty of songs (all of them from Unreal) but they don't have the same impact as they should, maybe because those songs are so connected to the original Unreal levels that it creates a strange feeling when I listen to them in Xidia, a campaign that is very different from the usual custom sp project. Something I think that Xidia would have benefited tremendously is using custom songs or better yet, having an actual composer like in ONP, but the songs get the job done and are well selected and used. It's weird that one of the music changes is done with a console command, that's very strange.
This map has plenty of translator messages that explore the lore of the Xidia story, all of them are very well written and they add a lot of life to the outpost and the characters, Mr. Prophet has always been a good story teller and this map shows. I love how this map builds up the derelict ship with the messages in this map.
Gameplay is pretty good, but it isn't this map's strongest suit, this level is probably the shortest map in Xidia The Incident with the exception of the intro and the final map. This level is very straightforward but it doesn't have the complexity or the atmosphere of the previous levels, Xidia is very linear by nature and this level is no exception, the objective is simply reaching the end of the level and the only things getting in the way are closed doors that have to be opened by something nearby and of course the enemies. The juice of the gameplay is fighting the enemies, Xidia is a very difficult campaign because the game punishes players that make mistakes, this level does give you some health items and armors, but they aren't enough considering how deadly the enemies are, this map uses enhanced version of the Unreal enemies like Brutes that shoot UT rockets (which are more powerful than the Unreal rockets) and the Troopers which use the same weapons that you do (including two troopers with the Flak Cannon, and one of them appears in all difficulties including Easy, nice). The gameplay is very tough but this level is one of the easier maps in Xidia, if you manage to defeat the Troopers then you have practically defeated the map. The final boss is amazing, the combination of the environment, the big spider webs, the many small spiders and of course the big spider make for a very fun fight. I suppose it's a little annoying that all the small spiders are shooting at you while you fight the big one, but you most likely won't die, unless of course you start the fight with low health, which can happen since Xidia really doesn't like giving health packs before tough fights. The level also has some connections with Ortican (a level that Hourences made before working on Xidia), the biggest connection are some objectives that are identical in both maps like using an explosive device to destroy a wall, Hourences even reused the same message when the game warns you to step back when you activate the explosive.
Also I recently realized that you can kill two Troopers inside the caves by shooting a pillar, causing another earthquake and rocks to fall, most likely killing the enemies.
Issues I found :
- This map has difficulty filtering, but it's poorly balanced since Easy is still very hard. The worst part is that higher difficulties remove ammo pickups, difficulties that require more ammo since enemies have more health.
- There isn't any Coop filtering.
- The map has a checkpoint system for Coop, however the map made the horrible decision of filtering Player Starts directly, big mistake.
- In the starting area there are two ventilation fans that don't move, the lighting of the fans imply that they should be moving.
- At the beginning of the map there's an earthquake that drops some rocks, however this rocks can kill you instantly if you touch them. Probably the most deadly enemy in the map.
- Pathnodes exist but they are incomplete.
- The map has Pathnodes too close to PatrolPoints, which can cause issues to the AI navigation.
- When you reach the hangar at the start of the map, there's a scripted sequence with a spaceship going upwards, but since there's an enemy nearby, you will most likely be distracted and you will miss the scripted sequence.
- There's a section where you have to destroy a wall, this mover has a Damage Threshold, which means you need to perform a powerful attack to destroy it, if you don't have ammo for the powerful weapons, you are stuck. A mover that has health would have been preferable.
- The Warlord that appears in the level teleports away when he sees you, this is done by a trigger and a special event. However if you use the grenades of the Eightball without the Warlord noticing, you can break the scripted sequence and you can fight the Warlord.
- When you have to use an explosive device to destroy the wall, the explosions have a strange delay that can trick you into going close to proceed, only for the next explosion to instantly kill you.
- This map has some invisible walls caused by BSP errors.
- Before the final boss you have to cross a ventilation fan, but the fan has no collision, which is very strange.
- After crossing the vent you have to shoot at a wall, but the explosions can hurt you, in a campaign like this that is like adding more salt to the wound.
- In the final boss area, there's a rock that looks unlit because the center of the mesh is out of bounds, this could have been fixed by changing the prepivot.
- There are some actors out of bounds like a projectile and a brush (a zone portal).
Aspide wrote: 29 Mar 2025, 08:34
Issues I found :
- This map has difficulty filtering, but it's poorly balanced since Easy is still very hard. The worst part is that higher difficulties remove ammo pickups, difficulties that require more ammo since enemies have more health.
- There isn't any Coop filtering.
- The map has a checkpoint system for Coop, however the map made the horrible decision of filtering Player Starts directly, big mistake.
- In the starting area there are two ventilation fans that don't move, the lighting of the fans imply that they should be moving.
- At the beginning of the map there's an earthquake that drops some rocks, however this rocks can kill you instantly if you touch them. Probably the most deadly enemy in the map.
- Pathnodes exist but they are incomplete.
- The map has Pathnodes too close to PatrolPoints, which can cause issues to the AI navigation.
- When you reach the hangar at the start of the map, there's a scripted sequence with a spaceship going upwards, but since there's an enemy nearby, you will most likely be distracted and you will miss the scripted sequence.
- There's a section where you have to destroy a wall, this mover has a Damage Threshold, which means you need to perform a powerful attack to destroy it, if you don't have ammo for the powerful weapons, you are stuck. A mover that has health would have been preferable.
- The Warlord that appears in the level teleports away when he sees you, this is done by a trigger and a special event. However if you use the grenades of the Eightball without the Warlord noticing, you can break the scripted sequence and you can fight the Warlord.
- When you have to use an explosive device to destroy the wall, the explosions have a strange delay that can trick you into going close to proceed, only for the next explosion to instantly kill you.
- This map has some invisible walls caused by BSP errors.
- Before the final boss you have to cross a ventilation fan, but the fan has no collision, which is very strange.
- After crossing the vent you have to shoot at a wall, but the explosions can hurt you, in a campaign like this that is like adding more salt to the wound.
- In the final boss area, there's a rock that looks unlit because the center of the mesh is out of bounds, this could have been fixed by changing the prepivot.
- There are some actors out of bounds like a projectile and a brush (a zone portal).
These are all fair points
Though, things like unmoving fans and fans without collisions I can't rightly say if they were oversights, intentional, or the result of other factors (were you playing on 469, by chance?). There are definitely some aspects that you mentioned that could have been cleaned up a lot better, but I'm always happy to read a genuine Aspide Damage Report on these MOTW's. It is very much something I look forward to, and it makes me hopeful having you on the Savage Land team because I know you'll catch this kind of stuff
A lasting misgiving I have about Xidia is, directly, the difficulty filtering stuff. You mentioned them here but this issue is true in just about every Xidia map. Filtering for COOP and uneven filtering for Easy Vs Unreal difficulty is a real negative in Xidia. People snappy with gameplay had less of a problem (or did not notice as much) but the more casual SP fans certainly did and I do believe me and Sjoerd lacked the skills at the time to address these complaints properly post release. For this map specifically, I remember being worried about the drop down spot to the arachnoid battle. Something with the BSP there was sticky in test versions and even upon release I was worried that people might had hung up on the geo.
It's another great level, and not just because of the visuals and especially the natural terrain as everyone already underlined: the gameplay is fittingly tense and challenging, and the strong, oppressively ominous soundscape only further reinforces the feeling of being on an epic adventure. The story continues to develop well, especially in terms of building up expectations for the Derelict ship. I love the boss fight also, and it sure feels like the ultimate use of the Spinner - no more room to push the concept further!
In fact, sometimes - when not counting the new possibilities enabled by community patches (and I mostly mean 227 of course or UT SDK) - it really does feel like everything had already been pushed to the max with Xidia and ONP. In truth, only EXU2 - which does add a lot of code to improve things, from kickable gibs to AI fixes - managed to show me stuff in 436 that goes beyond the technical proficiency already on display in the best mods of 2002.
Anyway, Beneath Xidia rocks and while I understand where some of the more hyperspecialized people are coming from with the nitpicks on various details, at the end of the day the average player who bothered to download SP mods only remembers this kind of stuff fondly. Sure, some who got used to playing Unreal on the Unreal difficulty setting were in for a shock playing Xidia on the same setting (hell I remember Xidia being the first mod to significantly improve my FPS skills - on Medium! the next one to do that was EXU2, tellingly), but I find that over time people do learn to know that some campaigns are just harder than others, and that's fine (try playing community stuff made for other games like DOOM - sure makes the base game seem like baby's first stroll).
The underground river scene is one of the most iconic set pieces in our community's history, and not just because the composition is excellent: we get to see this again, not too much later... a story for another time!
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:
It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
I'm reminded that in the XG version a lot of the tentacles (or all?) were replaced by spinners.
