Snap to Grid: Spirit Speedway
September 16, 2008
Snap to Grid, our regular look at up-and-coming user-created content for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, is back with another installment! This week, ETQW Mapping‘s lead singer Terry ‘Salteh’ Seidler focuses on Spirit Speedway, a map for the hotly anticipated Wheels of War mod for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, and its objective-driven twin Free Spirit City. To top it all off, Salteh also manages to update us on the progress of three of the most popular user-made maps currently in development for the game.
Without further ado, here’s the latest edition of Snap to Grid:
Spirit Speedway
Spirit Speedway by []v[] is a racetrack designed for use with the Wheels of War mod. The map takes you through different environments, an urban city environment of Spirit City (France) and a big off-road area. Both of these areas have gotten the necessary attention, there are lots of trees, hills, slopes, misc accident scenes and even a big bridge in the off-road area. Spirit City was built as a new hope for Earth, meant to train earth’s best men and women to defend against the Strogg invasion. This urban area is made up of more even ground, but the roads are less wide, making it slightly harder to overtake and to get around the corner safely.
After releasing the Wheels of War version of the map, []v[] realised this map would also make an excellent Objective map. He is currently in the process of converting the map from a racetrack to an objective-based arena, titled Free Spirit City. This process involves changing the layout slightly, adding more detail to certain areas, adding objectives and extending the urban area. GDF start this map just outside the city, near an old communications bunker. Their first objective is to repair the communications device so that they can call in an MCP. They are to take the MCP to the city limits; in SSM range of the Strogg occupied Intelligence Building. The Strogg Shield Generator has to be hacked before an SSM can be successfully launched. Once the SSM has blasted some holes in the building’s walls, the GDF have to use Heavy Explosive charges to destroy the final objective, inside the Central Intelligence Building. The Strogg have only one thing to do; stop the GDF at all cost – not a simple task! A playable test version of the map will, if everything goes according to plan, be released in the next couple of weeks.
- Spirit Speedway! (Wheels of War)
- Free Spirit City (Objective Mode)
Showcase Your Work
The rest of the mappers are not slacking off either, there is some great work in the Showcase Your Work forum on the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars Community Site.
Ever since Zig-Zag’s map Comm Link made it to beta stage he has been continuing work on his full-size map, The Tower. Gameplay takes place in a big urban city environment, also one of the Strogg main invasion sites. The map won’t be ready for testing any time soon due to real-life distractions, so for we’ll just have to drool at the screenshots in the forum thread. Tinman released a new version (0.6!) of the Dusk modification; fixing some bugs introduced in version 0.5 and tweaking the overall game mechanics.
Chris is hard at work finishing up his Maridia map, but hasn’t forgotten about Meltdown. Beta 4 of the map was released recently, featuring fps improvements, proper delays between objectives so that Strogg have a chance of falling back and other general fixes and tweaks.
Brimstone by BerenAndLuthien looks promising too, seemingly improving in awesomeness every time I visit the thread. It probably won’t make the summer 2008 release date initially set by BerenAndLuthien, but hopefully we get take a look at the map next time!
Terry “Salteh” Seidler serves as Splash Damage’s Mascot and regularly feeds the tapirs over at ETQW Mapping.