Milarena
by Squonkamatic

The damnedest thing happened to me the other evening. An Apple using Gameranger regular [a sort of Gamespy with chat for Macintosh systems], I logged on to the server and routinely "cleared" my list of Quake2 servers, then refreshed them to see just who had what up and running.

Nothing. Blank. Creator Scott Kevill has recently moved the server onto a new machine and the "master server" query lists were not enabled. Darn.

Not sure what else to do an needing a fix of basic, dumb, brutal Quake2, I "gathered" a game to host over my Roadrunner cable connection, dialed up Q2dm5/The Pits on the map options, and started the game. A couple of folks joined, and we had our fun running around like psychos and shooting guns. Then the fraglimit hit, and we cycled into Q2dm6/Lava Tombs, a map I have and and always will despise since the first time I saw it, and one of the players fortuitously intoned "This map sucks. Type map railarena1 in console."

I didn't even know I had railarena1.bsp for Quake2 [click here to download it from my own private Q2 maps stash, if you are curious; 101kb], but since I routinely cache the maps I have downloaded into a big game .pak, and there are about 100 of them in there so far, I figured Might as well try. Imagine my dual surprise when realizing not only did I actually have railarena1.bsp for Quake2 installed, but that it was <U4>Tribal's Milarena, one of my all-time favorite SiN "Rocket Arena" levels.

Or rather, Milarnea is Railarena1. I have no idea who made the original level: Fileplanet requires a login to search it's vacuous database of game files, and the reason why I had never made the association with the Quake2 version and Milarena is that, quite frankly, I loath the "Rail Arena" gameplay esthetic with every fiber of my very being. No way in Hell would I ever have downloaded the level willingly -- it probably turned up in the stack of stuff crammed into the "maps" folder in that pak due to my being connected to some server that was running custom maps and it turned up in the rotation. I certainly would never have sought out a map named "Railarena" even after noting it in Tribal's readme [yes, I am such a dork I read the author info texts for the maps I play, but never did follow-up research on this one for some reason]. My utter hatred and contempt for "Rail Arenas" is actually rooted in the fact that until approximately 4:30 PM EDT on October 24, 2001, I had been a primarily keyboard only player. I didn't even use "always run". I was completely lame, actually.

"Grenade Arena" or "Super Shotgun Arena" would be just fine for a keyboard centric player, but a Railgun based map sort of implies a use of the mouse to target with accuracy while in motion and evading enemy fire. It was actually evaluating a test build of the Mac port of the game Red Faction by Grapshim last fall that forced me to start using the mouse or DIE because of the hyper complicated keyboard command functions in that game. Aliens Vs Predator Gold for Mac also helped to push me into the mouselook crowd -- with all of it's weapons and item options you can't be wasting time plotting your player movements like a tugboat and expect to last very long against even a marginally talented mouse controlled player using the Alien species.

Like the first two Quake games, even SiN had allowed me to skirt the need to use the mouse extensively, but once mouse control became a second nature to me I literally made myself play the whole game [and 2015's Wages of SiN] over again to appreciate it as intended. I haven't done the same for the Quake games yet, but it was nice to play SiN more as John Blade than bumbling Skwank with his sausage fingers smashing the little girly-Man issued Apple keyboard to bits, and even nicer to see my score up there amongst the top 5 on the servers I join up on a regular basis ... I may be proof that a keyboard only trained player will be a formidable challenge to even the most skilled LPB Quad whoring scumwad who has only used the mouse. Keyboard players had to learn how to compensate for their lack of finesse, and when applied to a mouse-centric standpoint of playing it makes one more formidable because you are already taking into account the fact that you basically suck, but can now hit moving targets without having to stop, crouch, and aim.

Anyway, I still hate "Rail Arena" maps; I like the weapons in the games, and using them, Being limited to just one weapon no matter how "kewl" it is just doesn't cut it with me. I also have a notorious reputation for avoiding Mods, preferring "vanilla" FFA deathmatch in standard issue levels. I am just plain boring.

But I do enjoy a good one on one grudgefest sometimes. SiN Rocket Arena comes highly recommended, but since there isn't a Mac port of it [D'oh!] I haven't seen hide nor hair of it yet. I have seen all of the SiN Rocket Arena maps I could get my grubby little mitts on, though, and Milarena was one that definitely stood out from the pack, mostly because it is not a "true" Rocket Arena map. It has been grouped in with Rocket Arena levels because of the Railarena1 association and small size, but SiN Rocket Arena maps don't have guns and ammo in them -- the player spawns in to the map with his supplies, usually with an unlimited ammo server setting, and it's just a smackdown battle of attrition as you wear down each other's armor and health.

Milarena, on the other hand, is an actual SiN level, and I cannot remember for the life of me where I found it ... Sinpost maybe, but the point is that it is "misfiled/miscategorized" as a RA map because of the Rail Arena association, which was a mistake. Too bad; a lot of people have overlooked what otherwise is a superlative little game level. Pretty much what <u4>Tribal did was to take the original railarena1.bsp and use a decompiler tool to strip out the .map data [or the level was released with the .map file included -- I usually do that myself], then loaded that up into SinEd and went to town re-texturing the level for SiN, substituting SiN weapons, health and armor for the Quake2 items [and in the same relative positions], added some player starts and a nice whistling ambient wind sound, compiled the sucker and headed for Hooters to celebrate. Or Chuck E. Cheeze; whatever. He deserved it.

Now while my offhand assessment may sound pretty easy to pull off, Tribal had the presence of mind to not just "convert" the map, but to do so in a manner that gives it an atmosphere that is surprisingly close to the esthetic of SiN's overall flavor as a game. During the Quake2 match we played in railarena1.bsp I was struck by how boring the map was in that form, and what a vast improvement upon the original Milarena is. The Quake2 map is dead silent. It has a muddy, Quake2 metal/base texture palette to it that is so nondescript I'm not surprised I didn't remember it, if ever even having played in it. It's very well made with some nice lighting touches, but unless you are a Railgun freak and like hopping around like a fool trying to rail other hopping fools, the level doesn't have a lot going for it.

Tribal's redefinition of the level for SiN practically crackles with life in comparison. Attention was paid not only to the sound flavorings, but the lighting is impeccable, using colored lights in a way that adds to the atmosphere without calling attention to themselves; The lighting looks "realistic", and a great example of how to use the "light" textures in SiN's graphics libraries to make little illumination sources. These aren't lamp models [SiN has those too] but patches of surfaces that resemble light panels. Simply place a light entity over/under/next to it, and you have an easily defined light source that looks like something more than just a gob of brightness. Cool.

But Tribal's master stroke in his "cover version" of Railarena1 was to give the map an "OilRig" esthetic that is 100% convincing, right down to the clanking metallic metal floor panels and yellowed steel structures with big numbers stenciled on them. I can imaging this "Military Training Arena" set on some offshore platform somewhere, where Railarena1 looks like just another phantasmagorical Stroggosian mishmash. Like Hendrix' cover of All Along The Watchtower and the ridiculously memorable Happy Mondays covering The Boys Are Back In Town from 1999, the best "cover versions" add a new twist to the original formula [even Metallica's Turn The Page gives me the creeps, and I hate Metallica], where the most forgettable and disposable just retread it with a new pair of lips at the mike [Brittany Spears' recent cover of I Love Rock and Roll being an especially egregious, annoying and unnecessary example ... Christ].

On that plane of reasoning, Tribal managed to take a pre-existing form and make it more interesting by redefining it for the moment in which he was working, and we should all be grateful that he had chosen to make SiN mapping his forte. This is just such a great little map, suited well for 2 or even 6 players, about the most you are going to get in a custom map games these days. Weapons provided are limited to Rocket Launcher [three of them], a Shotgun [hard to see cos it sits on the darkly textured floor], a Pulse Rifle, and that's it. A few examples of ammo for each weapon are provided in convenient nooks, and Tribal recreated the 200 point Mega Armor from the Quake2 build, stuck on the end of the catwalk overlooking the main battlebasin, with one of each of SiN's armor units placed in a cluster. Some odd health items are placed sparingly here and there, and nothing else is needed or was added. He knew just when to stop.

Milarena is in fact an excellent example of something that even I loose track of when constructing a level: Less often amounts to much, much more than crap everywhere. Most of my first game levels had crap everywhere, and to this day I am guilty of overloading certain levels with so much crap that they become unplayable. Milarena is almost a bare bones knockabout one-roomer, but it has a presence and sense of reality to it that amounts to a game level that is kind of hard to dislike. I wish he had done something more interesting with the Shotgun, but like, whatEVER.

The map works. It is so small [291kb] that even downloads over a modem will be quick. The framerates are as fast as they come, the combat close in and unrelenting, and the only reason why you have never seen it before is that some schlemiel one day decided to stick it in the Rocket Arena maps section of a SiN website he was building, because they weren't sure what else to do with it. No offense, but what a crime ...

Thank goodness I am here to point you in the right direction. Enjoy.

Download Milarena from my own personal library of selected SiN levels by clicking here, 106kb.

SQ091902

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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