DM_Citadel [v2]
by Squonkamatic

Here we go. This is, I think, the very first SiN addon map I saw waaay back when, and remains a nice little diamond in the rough. Meticulously constructed by the talented craftsman known as Spoon, DM_Citadel is another one of those "game crossover" map conversions that always fascinate me, this one being a remake of an original [I guess that would mean one he made] deathmatch level for the Quake1 engine game Heretic II.

I am not familiar with the Heretic games, but from the looks of this map it must be a doozy. This is about the gloomiest, creepiest SiN level I have ever seen. There is an oppressive sense of atmosphere to the level that is at odds with the nature of SiN's usually funky, urban or high tech game esthetic, but it works. Many mappers who try to recreate DOOM levels for Quake engine games, for instance, usually let the flavor of the game the map is being designed for more or less dictate how the level turns out, and you end up seeing more Quake than DOOM in spite of the author's best intentions. Spoon wouldn't have anything to do with that -- this level resembles nothing from the world of SiN [or even Wages of SiN], and in fact when I first saw it I assumed it was inspired by Quake1 itself.

It falls into the map genre that I like to call [booming voice plugin] the Death Castle: a Goth-fest gloom keep with twisting stairs, vaulted chambers, bubbling vats of lava, weird creepy lighting, skin crawling sound effects, overhead rafters, cathedral-inspired windows, tightly confined hallways, a hidden underwater room with a fat powerup, bad acid trip moldering textures that seem to drip off the walls, blood soaked sacrificial altars and torture chambers, and lots of big, freaking guns in interesting, hard to get at locations. In other words, standard stuff.

What makes DM_Citadel so distinguished is that it was designed for SiN, of all games, and nicely showcases what its engine is capable of while transmogrifying the flavorings of the game the level was originally designed for. Sure, you are firing rockets and blobs of Ion Cannon plasma at each other rather than casting magic crossbow firebolts or whatever you did in Heretic II, but by golly whenever I see this game the last thing I think of are the missile silos, biotech labs and jungle gorges of SiN. I'm reminded more of scurrying around like a terrified rat in a classic Quakeworld deathmatch game like in the 'olden days while some LPB scumbucket repeatedly blasts away at my big muffiny ass with his stupid Lighting Bolt gun.

Spoon really showed his attention to detail in the map and cut no corners during its construction. Not only did he perfectly rescale the Heretic II textures for the SiN palette, but he re-thought the item placement while taking SiN's weapons and items into account and made it work perfectly. None of the placement seems arbitrary; the Ion Cannon sits overhead on a section of intersecting rafters, the Riot Helmet sits perched in the middle of a ball buster of a lava trap, Shotguns and Machine guns sit on specifically designed little nooks, the Sniper Rifle waits like a freakin' religious icon tucked into a blood red glowing corner, and, my favorite little touch, two rocket packs lean up against a wall section in a way that is so cool it makes other designers look like the haven't been thinking. I'd love to see how this map looked as a Heretic II level someday.

Which of course leads me to speculate on how he made the map ... Heretic II is a Quake1 engine game, and Quake1 BSP's are very different from SiN BSP's. The surface definitions alone are based on an entirely different technology. I have been trying for a while to import some of my old Quake and Quake2 .map files into SinEd to remake them for SiN and Wages, but they never seem to load. Did he reconstruct the level from scratch, or import the .map into an editor? Ritual's James "Fetus" Robbins sent me a fascinating email a couple months ago where he told me that his CTF_Mcfetus remake of Q2ctf1/McKinley Base for SiN was made with Worldcraft [an editor I have not tried] and that he composed the level more or less from memory just to prove he could do it and had never seen the original Quake2 .map file, which of course blew my mind. Nobody else may care, but being a mapping geekazoid dork I would be immensely interested in learning just how Spoon did the conversion ... email me if you can shed some light on the matter and help me sleep easier at night.

I was inspired to write up this review after finding the map running on the U4 Clan server the other evening with players actually in the game. Due to all of the custom texturing this is a map I have looked at more than actually played when hosting it [ingame texture downloads are a real pain in the neck and tax the patience of your average player, who we all know are too stupid to install the map beforehand], and the one thing that struck me during the game is how small the map actually is. Perhaps it has to do with the scaling of the player model in Heretic II vs SiN, but the map seemed so small and intricate that it's atmosphere almost overwhelms the gameplay ... especially sitting alone in a darkened room in the middle of the night in an empty house. Bizarre sound cues and lighting that seems like it was inspired by a Frankenstein movie add to the creepiness, and then BLAMMO someone blasts you with a rocket. There were only 3 of us in the game but even then the map seemed small, and the bloodthirsty swine who was chasing me all over the place with his bloody Chaingun took me right back to the days when I played Quake with keyboard only [HAH!] over a dialup modem. The guy was a sadist, and this was his torture chamber.

In fact, if I have any gripe with the map it is that the weapons offering is a little too overpowering, but that may be the point. Quake DM games were never known for their subtlety, and Spoon did not spare the rod in providing players with the cream of the crop of SiN's arsenal of highly lethal weapons. Still, the Chaingun and Ion Cannon just seem a little overwhelming ... I'm one of those players who likes to skulk in the corners and get sucker frags with grenades and stalk people with the Sniper Rifle, but the up close and personal combat allows for no quarter, and one finds themselves running and jumping for cover rather than basking in the atmosphere ... but again, that's kind of the point.

The best game levels not only deliver the frenzied mayhem of raw battle, but are also endowed with a convincing sense of place. Crappy game maps are boxes lined up in a row with a bunch of guns and health packs -- well made game levels recreate a specific setting, even if that place is something completely out of the imagination. This little Citadel exists somewhere in time in the same way that the Oilrig and SinCity's streets of Freeport are "real". You just need a computer that can run the game to visit them.

Download DM_Citadel2 from Ritualistic's stash of SiN files at 3ddownloads.com by clicking here.

SQ060602

email: squonkamatic@excite.com

You can access Squonk's archive of SiN: Gold Map of the Week reviews over at Macgamer.com by clicking here, and don't forget to visit his multi platform friendly SiN site for custom map and skin pack downloads and other goodies at http://www.squonkamatic.net/sin.

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