VACILLATIONS OF A VICTORIAN VAGRANT - THE COMMENTARY
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** Warning - Spoilers ahead! **

I'm aware of very few maps that have attempted a Victorian industrial theme. Coming as I do from an old British city with an extensive industrial history, however, this seemed like a natural theme to experiment with for a uniquely sinister Unreal map. Those of you who are familiar with other aspects of my mapping work will know that I attempted the Victorian theme once before, as part of DOM-TempoClasm, but that whole map was put together in a rush and poorly optimised - I have, for a long time now, harboured an urge to set matters to rights and do the Victorian theme justice.

Vacillations of a Victorian Vagrant, or "VVV" for short, has many influences. The history of my own city has made a strong contribution, as has the portrayal of Victorian cities in many a costume drama. One of the strongest influences on parts of DOM-TempoClasm, the computer game ShadowMan, also remains a strong contributor - the grimy stone and metals and hissing gas jets of the Asylum provided a creepy and atmospheric environment that was definitely Victorian in feel (not to mention the game's actual, brief excursion to post-Victorian London, in which Michael Leroi has to seek out and destroy an undead Jack the Ripper in the sewers and disused Underground stations of Down Street). These influences are fused with Unreal's own singular atmosphere, which is most palpable when the player tackles the Infernal Machine in the disused factory.

VVV was planned clearly from the outset. I knew that the player would play the role of a homeless person who has taken shelter in a disused tenement in a Victorian warehouse district, and that the final showdown would involve shutting down a massive machine in a cathedral-esque factory that would be located, in an exercise in foreshadowing, right at the beginning of the map. As I began to sketch out the layout, this plan quickly evolved to include a dock, a vacant tavern and sewers - plus, of course, *that* moment with the foghorn, which was planned at an early stage. I also began to think of interesting combat scenarios as I planned the map, most of which made the cut but one of which had to be abandoned for technical reasons.

One of the things I aimed for in the construction phase was a more convincing "human" scale, with 192uu rather than 256uu being the benchmark height for doorways and internal areas. Thankfully I managed to achieve this without snagging the AI too badly. If one looks very closely at the map one realises that a lot of the map is below water level, which is a geographically improbable, but by and large I think it all works.

The six-week deadline was key to the planning of the map, and as such I aimed not to plan for more than I could manage to build with limited time over a period of six weeks. In the end, the only substantial part of the map that had to be cut was a more elaborate exit area, in which the player was to emerge into a more civilised square with houses and a church - a marked contrast to the rest of the map to illustrate the player regaining his freedom. It would have been a nice feature to have, but I quickly realised that it was extraneous and therefore unnecessary for the purposes of the contest. The rest of the rules weren't a problem - I knew that I could deliver what I had planned using a mixture of stock Unreal/UT content and a few new ingredients of my own.

I think I'm past learning a lot of new mapping techniques now as I ceased to be a full-time hobbying mapper a long time ago, but my existing techniques served me well for the purposes of the project, which I hope you'll agree is something fresh for an Unreal single player experience. Given the limited time period, I'm very pleased to have come up with something as complete and individual as this. It's definitely another string to my bow from a mapping standpoint; aside from Deja Vu's "Triskaden Station", much of my best mapping work to date remains locked up in the vaults of Unreal: Battle for Na Pali - which will hopefully, some time, see the light of day.