Warehous(e) aka Infiltration
by Squonkamatic

A reader wrote in asking if I planned to cover any of the few single player SiN addon maps released, and I thought I'd start with CryptR's multipurpose Warehous/Infiltration. This is a first; SiN Map of the Week has always been about the multiplayer levels ...

Not that "Warehous" [odd title; maybe CryptR's 'E' fell off his keyboard] is without deathmatch merit. Far from it -- thanks to kAmAlA's 'Snipers' servers and a couple of other brave souls who have dared to use addon maps in their public games, Warehous is a familiar face to those of us who have looked beyond SinCity and Spry for our matches. Loosely based on/inspired by the classic SinDM6/Deconstruction Zone, Warehous delivers more of the same but with added emphasis on the 'inside' of this particular deconstructed building. Girders, plates of glass and steel, and packing crates await use by the Construction Hosses here and there [I refer to all of the SinTek 'Worker' monsters as a "Hoss", as in the big guy from Bonanza], gaps in the roof and floors allow players to drop in unexpectedly on gatherings below, and the map has the same kind of mid-afternoon, everyday look to it. I believe in this place, and enjoy returning when I can find someone hosting it.

I will always have a special affinity for SinDM9 if only because of it's inclusion in the amazing SiN Demo. One thing that I quickly noticed when finally acquiring the retail Mac version of SiN: Gold was that DM6 [and SinCity too, I contend] work better with the limited weapon selection in the Demo. Somehow big humming futuristic Buck Rogers on Acid guns that spew globs of plasma don't seem fitting in their droll, urban environments, and Cryptic must have shared this sentiment ... Or he built it with SinEd using the Demo basepak as it's tools directory, then updated it to support the retail version when he got the full game [email me if you can pin down the exact etymology; I am a glutton for information like that]. Whatever led to the decision to exclude the plasma weapons should be applauded: limiting his weapons selection to "real world" guns like the Machine Gun, Shotgun and the Sniper Rifle gives the map a more gritty, realistic feeling. The weird powerups aren't missed at all, and the inevitable Rocket Launcher has been placed in a very ingenious location on top of a "garage" structure accessible only by jumping through an upper story window. Cool.

The single player game is a riot, and it is obvious that the author spent a lot of time not only figuring out the scripting commands but also employed some brain juice in thinking of what to have these commands do. The level is quite interactive for a 3rd party single player shooter map, which usually amount to a bunch of monsters here and there and some sort of exit trigger ... you stalk around shooting things, find a key, and exit. Yawn. The premise here is far more ambitious: Blade [you] has to join a HC commando raid on a building that SinTek has occupied and free some hostages before the bad guys gun them down. You enter the map with a squad car even pulling up to the structure, HC Officers engaging the enemy, and need to snuff one of the Goons [or pick up a fallen comrade's weapon] to arm yourself, a touch I always love to see. The surviving friendly troops then "secure the location" [re: run around in place like lobotomy patients with guns] while you fight the opposing forces in a close quartered, room by room scenario that must have taken a while to conceive, and a labor of love to construct. Everything ends with Blade emerging onto the roof for a final showdown ... I'll leave exactly how the map ends as a surprise.

What is so remarkable about this level is that it actually works quite well for both single player [or cooperative] and deathmatch scenarios. This is not an easy feat -- believe me, I have tried. One of the rules of thumb about 3d FPS level design is that it is much easier and more efficient to make a map that is meant either for single player or multiplayer use than to design for both simultaneously. Think of Quake2 and it's single player levels ... many of them work remarkably well in deathmatch when you get familiar enough with their layouts [City1/Outer Courts and the wonderful Hanger2/Inner Hanger standing out in memory], but many of them simply fail [almost all of the "Jail" levels, for instance ... gahh] because the needs of the single player adventure more or less dictated their structure. Sure, you can add a couple of teleporters to whisk players from one end of the map to the other, but unless there are 6 to 8 players in the game they tend to get cumbersome and tedious, and then everyone ends up fighting over the stupid Power Shield. The most radical thing that Id Software accomplished with Quake 3 Arena was to do away with the needs of a single player game entirely, something that they had never done before -- all of Id's post-Wolf3d shooter game levels supported DM and SP use until Quake 3 [their DM only levels being the obvious exception -- duhh]. The resulting freedom of not being constrained by single player events and critical paths led to some astoundingly original slants to just what a game level could be, even if I am not that fond of what their designers came up with.

But what CryptR managed to do was to take both considerations into equal account when conceptualizing Infiltration. Some of my mapping freak buddies say you just can't make a map that kicks butt in both DM and SP, but I point to Warehous [and, of course, SiN's majestic OilRig maps] as a glorious violation of that ideology. I actually prefer this as a multiplayer map, but am so impressed by the scripting work he did for the SP game that I keep coming back to it just to study what he accomplished, and am inspired. Remember -- great art is distinguished by the fact that it suggests and leads to more art ... I'd like to take a whack at making a Deconstruction theme map someday. CryptR has shown us there is more to be done with the theme, if you have the time.

As for my usual "gripes" department, the only real complaint I have is that the weapon and item placement is worthy, but a little too straight forward. Guns and health jars just kind of sit there in the middle of the floor waiting to be picked up, as if the author was just sort of thinking "Ok time to add another gun here." But as with most of my gripes this of course will not bother you one iota in the heat of combat, and I only mention it because every time I look at the map I think to myself "Gee wouldn't that Shotgun look better leaning up against the crate, and why not knock a couple of these health jars on their sides ...", but these are merely esthetic observations coming from a complete mapping geekazoid dork obsessed with nonsense like how items look sitting in space. Who cares, really. The fact that CryptR took time thinking about stuff like ambient sounds and making busted up sparking electrical fixtures also more than compensate. What is important is the believability of the sense of place and setting, which are 100% dead on target. I wouldn't change a thing.

The bottom line on the map is that it is so well constructed and so packed with interest that it quite simply (sic) ownz -- that's why you see it so much on the few custom map games that pop up from time to time. It has a nice sense of familiarity to it that is inviting, and well in step with the look/feel of SiN's unique game experience. The fact that it kicks for both SP and DM makes it a rare gem; I'm sure that many people who have played Infiltration are not even aware that it has single player support [then again you'd need the script file to make it work right, and .scr files don't auto download, which I have always thought is rather lame], and the majority of them wouldn't care anyway. It's a little sad that more people don't realize what a special experience SiN single player is ... most of my SiN compadres are multiplayers only, which is too bad. I'd recommend this map to anyone who wants a taste of what it's like without requiring three weeks of their time to finish.

Yet it always comes down to the DM these days. Due to the influence and popularity of games like Quake3, Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike, you almost have to make the map functional for as many narrow minded idiots who can jam themselves onto the server at a given time and blow each other to bits, and Warehous serves up the goods. The single player adventure is a wonderful little cherry on top of a delicious concoction, and I can't wait for another serving. You can in fact make a dumb, brainless shooter map that has intelligence.

"Fascinating, Captain."

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

SQ052402

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.

Related Links:
· Ritualistic's Sin Section
· Ritualistic's Sin Forums

Back to Ritualistic | More Articles >>