==RTCW MULTIPLAYER MAP====================================
Title                   : Valhalla
File Name               : mp_valhalla.PK3
File Size               : 9,115 kb
Author(s)               : Reggie 'Panzer Dragoon' Carolipio
Date of Release         : 7-08-02
Recommended number
of players              : 24-32

Type of map             : MP only

Email Address           : dungeonbuster@hotmail.com
Misc. Author Info       : This is my second map. My first
                          didn't turn out quite so well
                          so I started from scratch
                          with this one. The first one
                          was a concept similar to this
                          one where the Allies would
                          fight through a small town to
                          get to the bunker beneath SS
                          headquarters at Nuremburg.

Description             : (disclaimer: there is no truth to
                           the following save that the Nazis
                           did have the beginnings of an 
                           atomic program which was aborted
                           after the destruction of key assets
                           during the war, such as their heavy
                           water experiments)

                          Operation Gotterdammerung
                          Target: VALHALLA

                          It's February, 1945. The Allied advance
                          through Europe on the West and the Soviet
                          rush through the East have caught Nazi
                          Germany in a vice. The failure of the
                          Ardennes Offensive has nearly sealed the
                          fate of the Reich. Refusing to admit defeat,
                          Hitler continues to direct the war from 
                          Berlin. Allied commanders want to make sure
                          that he does not escape.

                          Intelligence gathered indicates that a
                          command bunker, codenamed 'Valhalla', was
                          constructed under great secrecy in the late
                          30's to the early 40's. Location has now 
                          been verified, placing the complex deep 
                          beneath the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden. 
                          At the same time, OSA and OSS intelligence 
                          operations have discovered the existence of 
                          the 'Gotterdammerung' project, similar to the 
                          United States' own Manhattan Project. However, 
                          it appears that these particular scientists 
                          may have actually managed to build a working 
                          weapon. Although we do not believe that they 
                          have the necessary materials to finish the 
                          warhead, we are not taking the chance that 
                          the prototype rocket could be used in 
                          desperation by the Fuhrer against Moscow 
                          or London. 
                          
                          It must be destroyed.

                          We believe that the Gotterdammerung project
                          was moved to a secret staging area for the
                          final testing of the missile components. We
                          believe that this area is beneath Valhalla.

                          This provides a rare opportunity for us. The
                          destruction of the bunker, the last bastion
                          for the Fuhrer and his cohorts, and the end to
                          the Nazi atomic program.

                          If the rocket is being readied, there must
                          be stores of rocket fuel at the site. Blowing
                          the stores of volatile rocket fuel should 
                          destroy the bunker. The enemy may have taken
                          precautions to protect the fuel. Dynamite
                          planted somewhere in a key location in the
                          system should set off a chain reaction that will
                          blow the rocket, and the fuel.

                          Allied bombing over the site has worn down 
                          the Axis defenses set up over the bunker, 
                          allowing us to send in a team of specialists. 
                          Taking control of the bunker's main elevator that
                          runs into the heart of the mountain, the team 
                          has entered the tunnels beneath the Bavarian Alps 
                          and are on their way to the bunker.

                          This is almost certainly a suicide mission, but
                          one that must succeed. 

                          One thing is clear...STOP THE FUHRER!

Additional Credits to   : Too many wW2 films, anime ^_^, my brother
                          for putting up with my insane map testing
                          sessions on his machine (Schnell! Schnell!)

Development machine     : Dual Athlon MP 1200 with 512MB RAM, GeForce 3
                                        
Machine(s) tested on    : Pentium III 933, 128MB, TNT2
                                                  Xtasy GeForce 4 MX 440
                          Dual Athlon MP 1200 with 512MB RAM, GeForce 3
================================================================

* Install Information *

Unzip the file to your machine. Make sure you unzip it into a 
location where you can get to it. You should see two files:

mp_valhalla.pk3
rtcw_readme.txt (this file)

Copy mp_valhalla.pk3 into the /Main folder located where you had
installed 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein'. You'll know this
from seeing other .PK3 files in there as well (windows 2000 owners
may have to make sure 'hide extensions of known file types' is not
checked under Folder Options to see them). More to the point,
you'll see a bunch of files under /Main that begin with 'mp'. That
is the right place.

Once you've done it correctly and start up a server, you should
see 'Valhalla' listed as one of the maps that you can use if you
wish to host a game. That's all there really is to it.

* Play Information *

Level name(s)           : Valhalla

RTCW version required   : It should work with any build, 
                          although I suggest the latest 
                          patched version (1.33). It was 
                          tested before, and after, the
                          GOTY patch and it works fine as
                          far as I've been able to tell.

New Cutscenes           : Yes; ROQ for overview

-=Gameplay tips=-

The map emphasizes teamplay. Working as a team will lead
either side to victory. Lone wolves will have a harder
time at it than a team that sticks together. This is also
a long map to play. The default time for it is 12m to
allow for spawning and running from one end of the map
to the next. It's a huge map. More daring souls might want
to play the map in a much shorter time span. 

There are a few things in the map that players should know
about the spawns in order to get the most out of it. 

Axis' initial spawn is at the top of the bunker, in the
main entry. This is so they can ready their defenses. This
is NOT a designated spawn area. Axis players will have to
secure the Fuhrerbunker (hit the flag) in order to activate
their mid-level spawn for reinforcements. Otherwise, they
will spawn in the V-5 Rocket area at the extreme bottom
end of the map. 

Late Axis members coming over to the game will spawn at
the bottom of the map, if the mid-level spawn was not
activated by securing the Fuhrerbunker (taking the flag).

There is usually more than one way to get to a particular
section of the bunker. Some ways are sneaky, others more
obvious.

The support scaffolding around the rocket can be climbed.

The silo motor objective is there more as a bonus than anything.
If anyone is crazy enough to try for it (if you have to get
every point possible on the map), it's there for you.

================================================================

What follows below are most of the technical aspects of the map,
problems encountered, tips for beginners like me, and a list of
resources that I had used to create the map. You don't have to
read the following to play the map.

================================================================

* Construction *

Base                    : New level from scratch

Editor(s) used          : GtkRadiant 1.2.1 - 1.2.9 and assorted
                          nightly builds, Ydnar's Q3map, 
                          www.planetpointy.com for WolfCompile, 
                          bobToolz, portalviewer

Time to compile using
GTKRadiant's q3map
-vis -light             : 1h34m

ROQ facts               : Screenshots for pjBmp2Avi taken at 800x600
                          
                          This produced fast, nearly 'real time' results
                          and dramatically reduced the size of the ROQ
                          in compiling. Your mileage may vary depending
                          on your machine, settings, etc..
                         
                          Final TGA sequence exported at 256x128

                          Inolen's ROQ creator appears to be able to
                          support sequences of about 400+ images.

Scripting               : Examples taken from mp_beach and lessons
                          learned

Total construction time : Off and on, three months
                          
Known Bugs              : Lighting is very off in several areas. 
                          As a result, players may look a bit 
                          overexposed in areas where they should 
                          not be or exceptionally dark. The same 
                          with the red lights scattered about. 
                          In some areas, they work correctly. 
                          In other areas, they obviously don't 
                          (the ducts). This affects only the 
                          dynamic models, although the Recreation
                          Room suffers from a severe case of hard 
                          shadows on dynamic models. I am still 
                          trying to figure that one out. Even using
                          more junior lights did not help.  
                   
                          There were some funky flag bursting 
                          problems. I have one instance where this 
                          works correctly, but for some odd reason,
                          my map won't accept anymore (i.e. they 
                          compile wrong and DON'T explode, the 
                          invisible part of the flag flickers in 
                          and out, etc.). If you see a flag and it 
                          doesn't explode when you shoot it,
                          it's because I made it 'unshootable'.  
 
                          The V-5 rocket area used to have catwalk
                          brushes with the fence texture, allowing 
                          the player to look through the texture, 
                          and the 'missile clip'texture, allowing 
                          players to shoot through it. However, 
                          compiling the map introduced some odd
                          problems, such as some of these floors 
                          turning solid (you could still see through 
                          them), making them no longer 'shoot through'. 
                          Fixing the problem floors solved the 
                          problem with those floors, but broke other 
                          ones, and vice versa, for some reason after
                          compiling them. This happened with the q3map 
                          that came with GTKRadiant(1.2.9) and with 
                          Ydnar's own q3map. I soon gave up trying to 
                          get this particular feature to work and
                          replaced the catwalk textures with solid 
                          steel and wooden planks. Sorry, but at one 
                          point it felt a lot like playing Russian 
                          roulette with the compiler (can I shoot 
                          through the texture or can't I).

                          Glass doesn't work right (i.e. it's not 
                          transparent), but it's destructable.
                          As a result, the glass suffers from a 
                          severe case of glare and is opaque. You 
                          can shoot out the glass, though.

                          Shadows have very rough edges in several 
                          cases (pixelicious). The lightgrid was 
                          raised to 512 in order for the map to compile.

                          Given the size and complexity of the map,
                          it's also unstable from a .map point of
                          view? The addition/use of new textures (new,
                          as in using more textures from the existing
                          RTCW list that have not been used anywhere
                          else in the level to any great extent) and
                          additional brush changes have caused severe
                          problems in some backups (i.e. the map
                          compile failing at the last stage of
                          StitchVertexLighting, the dreaded
                          'MAX_SHADERS_EXCEEDED' issue, horrible
                          performance issues, spawns no longer
                          working as they should, etc). This, more than 
                          anything else, is probably why I am more 
                          than a little wary of making even small 
                          modifications to the map at this stage. Some
                          of the issues faced, though, seem focused
                          more on RTCW mapping than anything else from
                          what I have read in the forums.

                          Most of these issues surfaced at the end of 
                          this particular development cycle and it was
                          either scrap the level or spend weeks more in
                          tracking down exactly what caused the
                          errors above (Argh! But it worked yesterday
                          and removing that brush STILL didn't fix it).
                          Whatever the invisible edge was, I managed 
                          to get back on the safe side of the tracks 
                          and decided to release the level as it is. 
                          Hopefully it will be fun for someone out there 
                          as it stands. 
                           
                          Since this is my first 'official' map, there's 
                          probably a ton of other problems that I haven't 
                          noticed but lots of others will pick up on.
                          Please let me know and I will see what I can
                          do to help. Thanks!   

================================================================

Lessons learned:

There were a few things that I learned the hard way. I'll list
a few of them here if you're a beginning mapper and need some
tips on where to get started.

Beginning mappers (me) should try something out small first and then
move onto the bigger stuff later. Much frustration and confusion
can be avoided. :)

Read. I cannot stress this enough. Read as much as you can on the
do's and don'ts of level building. If you can, work at the same
time that you are reading the tutorial for it to sink in. Play
with the editor. Make silly stuff before getting serious. You'd
be surprised by how many times you find yourself doing things
you said that you wouldn't be caught dead doing early on...even
later on! There's a lot of GREAT resources out there and the 
community is growing all the time. There's a lot of incredible
talent that is willing to share their knowledge out there. 
Learn to find it, use it, absorb it. Make a printout and carry
it with you to the bathroom. ;) Just don't sit on your butt 
expecting to be the best mapper in the world without consulting 
those who have already gone before you. I left a list of resources 
that I tapped below at the end of this readme.

Don't rely on only one tutorial. Some tutorials explain things
better than others, but combined may give you the answer you're
looking for (i.e. my search for hint brush explanations and
implementation demonstrations). I found out that there is 
really no one 'right' way to do things. Learn as much as you
can from what everyone has posted and experiment!

Search the community forums. They're chock full of great info
from other mappers, programmers, designers, etc.. They're
one of the best sources that you could ever rely on out there
and will keep you up on the latest changes and problems that
other mappers/designers/programmers are having. Issues you
are dealing with might be someone else's problem, too.

If you get massive performance issues when testing your map, be
sure you've exited your editor so it's not up in the background. :)

Level building is a very different animal than traditional CAD or 
3D content creation. Since you're making an interactive environment,
there's a lot of nuances that you'll run into. GtkRadiant usually 
won't tell you if you've gone too far in many cases, until you decide 
to go ahead and try to compile your map. Be sure to make backups
and to 'test' compile your map using BSP with no flags just to
see if it compiles correctly or spits out errors for you to track
down. This is best for when you're getting into the scripting part
of it. A leaky map is easy to fix, but some of the more esoteric
problems (MAX_SHADERS_EXCEEDED, your script suddenly NOT working
with your map even though NOTHING was changed other than compiling
a new map, etc.) are a little more tricky. Test, test, test! Especially 
when you start with lighting.

================================================================

Other Changes:

The GOTY edition/patch of the game changed a few of the textures,
de-Nazifying them. I can understand why it was probably done 
(PC reasons). For the sake of keeping the level in it's original 
state, I have included the original textures, renamed so as to 
be used in the game. The textures that I used that had been 
changed were:

brick_c04 (now orig_brick)
wood_c22 (now orig_wood)

No shaders were changed to accomodate these textures, but
they appear to work just fine.

The original textures shipped with the original copies of RTCW 
and were changed with the GOTY patch from what I was able to
gather.

An insane amount of thanks to the following:

Id Software
www.idsoftware.com
-for just being Id

Qeradiant
www.qeradiant.com
-for the excellent forums and providing the community with
a wonderful tool. 

Tram Design
www.planetwolfenstein.com/tramdesign/
-for their excellent tutorials on many of the basics; their
spawn tutorials solved a big problem I was having with
the spawns on my map. They also have a good tutorial on
how to make AVIs out of your demos, some of which was used
in the making of the ROQ for Valhalla

Shaderlab
shaderlab.com
-for Ydnar and his excellent q3map tool. I hope to see the
next one out soon!

Planetpointy
www.planetpointy.com
-for WolfCompile

Return to Castle Wolfenstein 4 Dummies
http://www.kan.org/michael/RTCW/
-for Ifurita's excellent RTCW FAQ. If you need the basics
explained about RTCW in general, this is a great resource.
It is where I found out about Inolen's ROQ creator, and the
rough procedure on what goes into making one.

Inolen
www.inolen.com
www.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?madness/q3progs/roq.zip
-for his ROQ creator front-end

Paul Roberts
bmp2avi@cherryjam.prestel.co.uk
-for his pjbmp2avi program that helped put together some
of the demo footage for use in the Valhalla ROQ; unfortunately,
the site that he indicates for the tool is no longer working but
the package is available from Tramdesign in their rtcw2avi
tutorial.

Surface
www.planetwolfenstein.com/surface/tutorials/objectives.html
-for eyeronik's great tutorials

Gonnakillya's Smackdown Schmeglio
www.planetquake.com/smackdown/hinttutorial.html
-for finally putting into simple terms what hint brushes
actually do for a map and more importantly, how to
implement them. A must read for beginner mappers like me. Thanks!

Bubba's Arena Mapping
planetquake.com/bubba/mapping.html
-another must read for beginners and experts. 
Great foundation materials for getting started mapping. 
I started off with a lot of what was in here and am still
finding more stuff to do.

V2Rocket.Com
www.v2rocket.com
-for the wealth of knowledge about V2s and the WW2 launch
footage used in the ROQ

If I have forgotten someone or something, please let me know.

* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels.  
THIS LEVEL IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY NERVE SOFTWARE
OR GREY MATTER INTERACTIVE STUDIOS.  ELEMENTS TM & (C) GREY MATTER 
INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, NERVE SOFTWARE, AND ID SOFTWARE.

You MAY distribute this level, provided you include this file, with
no modifications.  You may distribute this file in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file 
intact, with NO charge (other than incidental charges for time spent on-line). 