Date                    :11/08/2020
================================================================
Title                   :Arrogant Erratum/The Kuras Stronghold
Filename                :arrogant.bsp/kuras.bsp(/potemkin.bsp)
Author                  :mariteaux
E-Mail address          :mariteaux@somnolescent.net
Description             :A warped sense of the past
================================================================

Map Information
================================================================
Singleplayer            :Yes
Cooperative             :Yes (four spawns in both levels)
Deathmatch              :No
Difficulty settings     :Yes
New sound/music/graphics:Yes
Recommended engine      :Anything not vanilla (I recommend Mark V of course)

PC used                 :Windows 10, Quad-core i5 @3.20GHz, 8gb RAM
Editor used             :TrenchBroom
Build time              :52 days for the build and eight more to polish
BSP time                :2s/4s
VIS time                :1s/6s
LIGHT time (-extra4)    :3s/5s

Description
================================================================
This is my contribution to NewHouse's long-running Blue episode. He came to
me out of the blue (no pun intended) and asked if I was interested in taking
a slot somewhere. I didn't intend to stop mapping for Quake when I did, it
just kinda happened that way--so of course I said yes. Down the rabbit hole
I went, and I ended up inadvertently making the final levels of the pack!

I went into this with a single concept in mind. I have a tendency to play on
Hard and get my ass handed to me as a result, and so, in a rather on the nose
fashion, you're given the choice right away to rush into the Hard arena (and
die miserably) or humble yourself on Normal and reap a much better payoff
later. These concepts--building up from nothing, revisiting past horrors much
stronger than before, descending into watery Hell and ascending again--
heavily influenced what I built. Or maybe I'm just reading into it.

The most noteworthy thing about this level (which grew so big, I needed to
split it into two levels) is the pretty constant reuse of older Quake
levels, both vanilla and custom. Seriously, count them. Some are my own
scraps, others are homages to some of the game's oldest custom content, and
some are just incredibly on the nose, as said. This is probably my favorite
part of the entire thing--recreating something awful like "ANOXIA" and just
stuffing it full of the least fitting enemies possible is highly enjoyable.

As the project dragged on, it ended up being a clearinghouse of things I'd
WANTED to do in levels but simply never got the chance to. Ideas like the
floating items gauntlet in Kuras (hell, the Kuras themselves--a very old race
of aardwolf lads I helped come up with for a now-defunct fantasy world I was
working on), I've had with me for likely two years now, and texturesets like
ikblue and ikwhite, I've admired for a long time. Given that I don't know if
or when I'll return to make more levels, I fit as much of these as I could
into these two. NewHouse, of course, provided a ton of materials, ideas, and
trap designs I was more than happy to make use of.

Overall, while it's sprawling and kind of experimental in spots (Kuras has no
enemies for the entire first half, save for secrets), it's absolutely the
best thing I've ever built for this game. Unfortunately, my efforts grew so
large, I had to give up even this release working in vanilla engines--which
is something I'm usually pretty adamant about. It'd take some pretty
substantial weight reduction to get it to work in those. I did try it in
Bengt's Enhanced WinQuake, and it works in that, so if someone's really that
adamant about having as vanilla an experience as possible, they can use that.
(Or just use Mark V. It has a software renderer, after all...)

Like I said, this is probably it for me for a long time, but like regaining
the valvedev.info domain, it feels like another bit of my history settled.
Have fun with this "director's cut" edition--I figure he'll be making a ton
of changes to fit it better into the episode proper, so this stands as how
"Arrogant" was when it left my hands.

Thanks to:
- My playtesters: Windawz, mon, borb, dcb, NewHouse
- Immorpher for the fucking excellent ambient tracks I've used and packed in
- SleepwalkR and ericw, whose editor and compile tools are still rock solid
- Paul Cook and Darren Stabler, respectively making the clunky, so-bad-
they're-amazing "ANOXIA" and "The Forsaken Citadel" homaged in "Arrogant"
- The love of my life, Caby, for putting up with seven weeks of Quake talk...
- And, of course, NewHouse for roping me back into all this, helping me put a
lid on a weird time in my life, and working so well with me all the while

mariteaux