This is Xidia: The Commentary, by Mr.Prophet and Hourences. This readme tells about the production of xidia through the eyes of it's creators and reveals all the secrets and steps that went into the making of the Xidia Incident.

WARNING: spoilers inside, u may wish to beat xidia all the way through before reading any farther, and it is recommended that you do since you may see sumthing in here that ruins many of the surprises people enjoy about Xidia. 

-----------------------------
" Xidia: The Commentary"
-----------------------------

contents:
	1. Starting the project
	2. Development
	3. The maps of Xidia
	4. Making "The Escape''
	5. The maps of Xidia:The Escape
	6. Gold Edition
	7. Is this the End?

-----------------
Starting the Project
-----------------

Mr.Prophet-

	" Xidia began as a mere concept in the back of my mind when I mapped all through the first years of UT. I had always wanted to make a single player project....a real one and not some dumb B.S. thing I did for fun on the old Unreal ed. When U1 was out, I first tested my mapping skills on various maps from the original game, moving things adding my own creatures, altering textures and such, as if seeing how things worked through the original maps. After a few weeks I had several of the original maps ( saved on my HD with different file names, as I learned to do) edited with my own use of stuff placed in them. They all were pretty naive attempts at mapping, back then I didn't know jack about releasing maps nor did I understand basic map pathing and things. "
	"Since then I always wanted to actually do a sp project, but I never had the skill, inspiration, nor means. As I eventually caught on o UT mapping and began releasing my own stuff, the need for my own SP hung heavy on my mind. I love story making, I've loved writing since I was a kid and I want to seek a career in film making, mapping was always a hobby and a way for me to test out my ideas through a form of....well I guess art you could say. It didn't occur to me for a long time that I would prolly need a partner or even more a team to aid me if I really wanted to make something. I knew that if I decided to embark on the project that it would have to be decently sized, no one map crap or nothing, not that single maps for sp are a BAD thing, but you can't really make a story and certainly not one that would develope. I also knew that once I started I couldn't stop, if I was serious. I guess thats why I waited so long, I didn't begin till UT's last breath."
	" I had the concept for quite awhile, I wanted a game where you are sent in a mission to some place that was gonna be attacked and when you got there it was all quiet and war torn at first, and then awakens and your suddently taken for this cool ride through fights and stuff. I had inspiration from the orginal Unreal, especially from the first few maps. I knew there would have to be a Mine of some sort, like a mining complex under attack, because thats just the only theme I felt comfortable with. Funny, I had the idea for a Mine related thing for at least two years before Xidia was started. I'm actually shocked I made what I had intended years before, that no other idea had replaced my old concept with a better one. I didn't actually decide to start Xidia till my Phalanx team mate and hetro-life partner Hourences released his first sp map, "Ortican". I admired the fact he just told me one day, " Dude I'm gonna make a sp map and it's gonna be leet", just casual as we were talking. I was like ''ok'', I didn't think he was serious till a week or so later hes like " man this sp shit is hard, look at my pix so far''. The fact Hourie made his short sp map kinda reminded me of why I started mapping in the first place, and made me realize I was being mental for holding out for so long."
	" A month or so after I released my last and final DM for UT, DM-Imago, I immediatly wrote a story for a sp, entitled , " The Outpost Pheonix Saga". Right away I knew the name was ghey and swore to myself I would never tell anyone I thought of such a long freaking stupid ass name ( As you can see, I'm a bastard who just broke my promise). I wanted a name to slap onto the top of the backround story so I looked through my random UT files and saw a unr map file called " Xidia.unr" which was just a small unr I used to store prefabs and porn utx files. I had typed a random name when I saved that unr, which was the first few months after UT's release, and when I slapped my hands over the keyboard, I ironically pressed enough keys to make ''xidia'' appear as the saved file name. I didn't even notice that it could actually be pronounced as a word. That unr, I didn't touch after that day, until November 2001. So, just as a joke to myself, I figured the planet the Outpost would be on would be called Xidia, I figured I'd change the name after I esemble a team. Right away I told hourie that I was making my own  sp for my next Phalanx release, and asked him if he would like to contribute a map or so since the project would probably be " 4-5 maps long". Sure enough he was in the mood for some more sp action and I suddently had a partner."
	" We spent most of our conversations that month about what to include in the game, at the time I already had a half finished test map which later became the first map ''Orbit'' for Xidia. In the end, me and Hourie decided that the game would span between 6 playable maps and a 7th, the extro. I would make the first three maps while Hourie made the 5th map, and I would handle the 6th final showdown map. We needed someone to make a 4rth map, the mines. We naturally assumed Lruce or Gmotha or Cyber, our other team mates would make it. We later asked others to try out for the 3rd mapper, Willis and Snowdog. We were begining to start a project."


Hourences-

      "When I started mapping I never had the intention to ever make singleplay, back those days I found singleplay way to big, and taking way too long, and too hard. When I started mapping I just wanted to make worlds, and better as the default ones I saw in Unreal and other games. So when i got my first "real" PC, I bought Unreal a few months later, and there was this program with called "UnrealEd", so I started it and tried to understeand it, but it was very hard to understeand such a program if you have a) just got a pc, and b) no internet nor anyone to explain it. I totaly based myself on this 5 page long explanation in the readme from Unreal about UnrealEd, explaining what a actor is and what a brush is. I never really got somewhere at that moment, so I just played some games and a few months later UT came out, wich is bought offcourse being a Unreal lover.
After i played some UT, I tried UT's UnrealEd again, and  tried to make something. First thing I did was modifying (>>>>proph correct word, its prolly wrong written <<<<<<) CTF-Coret, I tried to make it a ancient temple (horrible idea), after that errr kinda "worked out", I tried the same with DM-Tempest, making it a castle. Thats how i learned the basics of UED and editing, after those 2 maps I started making my own maps from scratch. After a good year of editing and having released some good maps such as my DM-Amon, i wanted to do Singleplay, because its much more challenging. After a while DM and CTF mapping becomes very simple. I wanted to do 6 maps, in a very Unreal-like world. After a few days I stopped working on it because it looked imposseble to do due to huge amount of work I had to do alone, and because the stuff I had made in those few days was really not like I wanted to have it, so that was another demotivating thing. A bit later I did start a SP, a 1 map SP, named Ortican. The map turned out to become huge and it took me 4 months to make, and at the end it was still so-so, it had lots and lots of problems and thing I did wrong due to my limited mapping experience. But trough the faults I made, I learned alot about SP and mapping in general. 
After I released the map Prophet wanted to do SP too, so he came up with this project "Xidia", I agreed to help and so we started it."


--------------
Development
-------------

Mr.Prophet-

	" Mapping was underway by December. Eventually, we ended up not taking on a 3rd mapper and Hourences and myself would split the making of the 4rth map down the center, he made 70% of architecture and lighting, while I made all actors and the other 30% building. Also, our map count jumped to 8 as map 5 was divided into two maps, 5 & 6 since Hourie made it too large. Map 7 became the final fight map and 8 the extro. Alot of the time we mapped, nobody seemed to notice we were making a project, we barely advertised, I don't think any pix till the last month or so of making the game. ONP was soaking all sp interest it seemed, and Hourie and myself figured competition with such a big team was like taking on a speeding Freight Train with your dick on your hands. The only other persons who aided us were Gmotha, who skinned our boss monster for us, and USAar33 who fixed my buggy Mining tool weapon and made us a menu. Sole development of the 8 maps went to me and hourie."
	" 5 months of work went into Xidia. I remember us being worried that the game would not be done before the release of ONP, since then nobody would be interested to play our smaller game when ONP was so hyped and popular. Turned out that ONP was not released much later than we expected, Xidia was out a good month or so before ONP. But that was our only real concern, rivaling ONP and the only way we could make our small pack of any interest was to make an April deadline, which we barely passed."
	"But before the release, we had lots to do. We drew inspiration from new games, such as Alien Vs. Predator 2, which basically inspired all the creepy dark places that populated the game. I always wanted add suspence to the Skaarj, and I hadn't seen any since the days of Unreal. I had also played over several other sp maps to see what others had done in the past and see if I could avoid repeating any similar setups in my maps ( which I still don't think I succeded to the extent I wanted)."
	" Alot of the time I had questioned my mapping methods. While Hourie had already released his own map, I had never released one of my own. The first two maps were done in a short time, they really didn't require too much to make, but the 3rd map....oh lord the 3rd map. That was my first real serious attempt at a single player map, and I think it's rather obvious. The 3rd map was huge, basically since I kept adding idea upon idea into it ( At the time, it was the only real map in the pack I was making that wasn't a short breeze or boss map). The thought of splitting the 20 meg result was discussed between us, but I made the map in such a way it could not be properly split nor could I reduce the size without hurting the atmoshpere it had. The map was also probably the hardest map in the pack, simply because I underestimated the skaarj I placed in there. While I wanted the pack to be challenging and not just another quick breeze like every other sp pack I played, the 3rd map really pressed alot of people's patience after the release. While a good majority liked the challenge and size of the map, I did get alot of criticism for the map. I consider Map 3-OutpostPheonix, to be my ''Ortican'', my first real sp made map. "
	" Map 4 was a frustrating map for me to a work on since 70% of my time working on it was fixing errors. The map was intended originally to be our version of " Passage" from Unreal ( that boat ride map before the big stronghold map). It was supposed  to be the continuation of the Outpost and lead into the Alien realm, which was the Skaarj section. This map caused most of my anger while making Xidia, namely because the huge amount of max use on the map kicked the BSP right in the nuts. It was like trying to reach into a fire and hand carve a flaming piece of wood into a bird with your bare hands. I must say I enjoyed the Derelict maps that followed, probably the strongest point of Xidia's eye candy, tho at that point of the game I think most players who actually were keeping a good pace with the game thus far might have been disappointed to see the game slow to an easier pace. Luckily map 7 caught them off guard, the boss map. I always wanted to add a showdown boss. I can't enjoy a game that doesn't end without one good final fight....a game SHOULD have a final fight, or else it doesn't feel finished. What good is a movie without a climax? That map was probably the most difficult single fight of the whole pack."
	" With most of our stuff done, the extro required some UMS pathing, which Hourie learned while I built the map. Once I finished I let Hourie path the sequence and I gave him the credits to include. When we released Xidia, I must admit that I was not expecting the response we recieved. I always assumed ONP would keep all the sp interest and that our game would serve as a distraction for a brief moment while everyone awaited ONP. We were more popular than we realized we would be, tho we released several patches to fix overlooked errors we had, with the help of Usaar. In all, Xidia was recieved well, which made us feel good since we put 5 months into it, pretty much exhausting all of our mapping energy. With the help of others, I had made my single player map I craved for so long. I'm rather glad Xidia was my first sp project. If I had gone into sp mapping right away, I probably would have never made it as a mapper, my ideas then were too much for what I was capable. I needed to wait, I had to wait, I made Xidia when I was good and ready."


Hourences-

     "First we just wanted to do a few maps with only the 2 of us, and Gmotha for the skin of the end boss like he did for Ortican too. But troughout the project it looked like we needed an extra mapper to speed things up, after our own team members denied, we asked various people, Willis' testmap didn't impress us, and Snowdog didn't had the time anymore to help us at the end. So at the end we made everything ourself. After Xidia was released, Usaar33 offered to make us a small patch so Xidia would show up in the real menu of Oldskool, the mod wich enables SP in UT, and not just the custom maps list. He also made some small fixtures to our new gun so it would work "correctly".
At the end we received some good response but more wouldn't have been bad. I think we should have made more publicity, like we try at the moment for Xidia Gold with some impressive screens but our host Planetunreal refuses to post decent news about it on their mainpage for some dark reason...."


-------------------
The maps of Xidia
-------------------

	-MAP 1- " Orbit"-

Mr.Prophet- 
	
	" I wanted the first map to be a quick overview type thing. You get your mission, grab your gear and then you go. I did not want there to be fighting, were you are thrust into battle right away. I wanted the first map to seem quiet, casual. I knew the player knew there would be fighting, but I wanted them to enjoy a the priveledge of an overview begining without being in action from the moment they spawn. The  map is very very very short, only a few rooms to enter and exit. I tried very hard to give the feel of a ship, something I've NEVER mapped till that moment. The map uses elements from Vortex Rikers and the RTNP map ''Prometheus''.  I wanted the ship to feel the same as the old unreal ship maps, otherwise the player may not reconize it as a ship. In the map you take a lift to a prep bay, read your mission, grab your items, and enter the hangar door where you see a brief cutscene showing your ship fly off. In between doing that, you can check lockers, see little robot guys fixing broken vents, people looking down at you from overhead observation booths, and even look out the window for a glance outside your ship. I chose Gala for the exit music since that track sounds good for a space theme, very ''vast'' feeling to it."


	-MAP 2-" Landing"

Mr.Prophet-

	"  I had alot of fun making this map. It is probably my most ''complete'' map for the pack. I say this simply because of the feel it has, it's eerie. Alots going on yet everything seems dead. You see ''things'' lash out from you in the shadows and vanish just as quick. I like how abandoned the map looks, there is sun outside, but inside it is still dark and foreboding. There was a opening showing the start of a new change of theme, there was a sense of place and presence and you were on your guard every second you played, simply because you don't know whats going to happen, you have to use your brain to get past certain obstacles since most people take easy routes for granted, you see a plot unfold before your very eyes, you are reminded of the begining of the original game and that keeps you guessing about what happens next, and you end the map with a thrill as the enemy reveals itself in a familiar setup that shows the skaarj in a fresh, creepier, light. That and this map really is the start of Xidia, this is where the player enters the world of Outpost Pheonix and our game unfolds. I took fractions from some of my DM release, DM-Chimeara, and used certain rooms from that map and placed them in Outpost Pheonix. I did this several more times in the game, I never thought my UT maps ever had a real sense of theme that seemed to work for them, and I later added segments from all three of my best UT maps into the 3rd map. Good thing my maps aren't that popular, nobody except for a few seemed to realize it."
	" I used alot of tricks in this map, such as my mesh swap technique. I hated how in sp maps you could shoot a dead body apart or kick a book and it rolls away yet u still get a message from the where the message was placed. To fix this, I make all translator books immobile and all dead bodies by placing a nonmovable mesh, like a knife or boulder or sumthing, and changing it's mesh and anime frame to a person's body or sumthing else. This way they would always stay there and u just couldnt blow away their body and take away the identity of a person being there. I also used modulated textures alot, for decal effects. I've seen it done often but never employed the concept till this map, and for good reasons."
	" The skaarj duel at the map's end was directly inspired from the first skaarj encounter from Unreal. I sorta ''borrowed'' the idea and put in my own world. I originally had all the lights go out and you fight it in complete darkness aside from the aid of your flashlight, but Hourences insisted I add red alarm lights. In all, the sequence was adequet to kick off the game.  "


Hourences-
       "I liked this map and the next one 'cause it is like "Aliens" but then a la Unreal. Scary, no life anymore, and at the same time life everywhere. There were some nice little ideas and details in it wich made it more alive, wich make you feel like things happended there, and that it once was a real living base, interaction.


	-MAP 3-"Outpost Pheonix''-

Mr. Prophet-

	" The biggest map in Xidia, and probably the hardest. I consider the 3rd map my first real single player map, and I don't know if thats a good or bad thing. Before I began this map, I had numerous visions in mind on how I wanted it to look. I didn't want just another ''Mining facility'', which has been burnt out long ago. The way I figured it, Outpost Pheonix was like the "corporation's'' institution, while all the grimy, dirty, coarse mine detail went underground in the 4rth map. Outpost Pheonix was more of an operations facility, several areas devoted to certain functions, such as a pump room, transformer station, power room, research lab, storage depot, ect. I wanted to give the distinct impression of a colony and an industrial complex. I wanted the player to walk around and know that they were only in the surface compound, and that the real mining realm lurked undetneath them. I don't know if I succeded with that theme, but nevertheless, the map contains all the functioning departments that regulate the entire Mining colony on Xidia."
	" As far as general contruction, people who are familiar with my UT work ( and there are not as much as I would prefer) will feel right at home in here, alot of this map comes from recyled sectors of my Deathmatch maps that have been edited and incorporated into the Outpost and work properly to the game. Among the areas I used were several segments from my DM-Chimeara, the large outdoor area from DM-TimeCrash, and I even fit the entire DM-Imago map into the unr as well. I included Imagp as a last minute thing, originally that section ( Area C) was going to be a large crate room kinda deal ( sort if in the style of the Dasa crate room from Unreal, I later reinterpreted this idea into the 4rth map of the mission pack). But I changed my mind, the whole map before Area C is ambush upon ambush as you fight through hordes of Skaarj who are alerted to your presence. After the walk through the sniper field connecting Area B to C, I felt the ambush approach had been overdone. I didn't want to depress the player by making the ENTIRE map a series of ambush tactics. Also, at the time I was still sort of sore at how my Imago deathmatch map was recieved by the community. Even before Imago my DM maps were never really interesting maps as far as 99% of the community was concerned ( or so it seemed to me). My map Chimeara seemed to be my most popular of my releases, ironically that map being the one I worked least on ( If I were David Fincher, Chimeara would have been my " Panic Room", overall a well produced map but only a taste of what the author has up his sleeve). Imago was my first real release of anything I mapped that I truly was happy with, and I felt it was rejected. I don't know if was meant to be, but I knew I did not want the map to be forgotten after all the time I put into it, so I reinvented it and put it in Xidia's 3rd map. Sort of my own personal " Eat Me" to everyone who asks me, " Who and what is an Imago?".
	" I utilized various texture packs, Mine mixed with Richrig, SG-tech, Playershp, and our own new custom stuff. I have to admit I was worried about using Rich rig and SG-tech ( and even more so when nearly all our Human stuff had a touch of rich rig in them somewhere). Richrig I felt was good, but overused way to much, so I sought to mix it with Mine and anything else that looked good with it. SG-tech worried me because it is such a difficult pack to work with, lighting wise. I think I managed as good as anyone I guess, or maybe just enough not to get flamed, which I didn't thankfully. I chose the skybox to be from the Indus skybox set, the sunset setup. Hourie was against it from the first moment he saw my sky. I dunno, I have a sunset fetish."
	" I used my dead body techniques from Landing, which served me alot better in this map when I need alot of bodies and bodies to remain untouched by the testements of a savage firefight, so nomatter what state the room was in afterwards, the shell of the former miners would be there to haunt you. That and I hate how the Unreal bodies gib. I also began to broaden my use of modulated decals to the bloodpool mesh. I took the average knife decoration, made it's mesh ''bspot'' and made drawscale 22 or so, and modulated it with a botpack or Indus blood decal, and badda bing I had a easy to use blood decal which was easy to place, position, resize, and store. They also taste alot like grapefruit, which surprised me most, let me tell you."
	" This map took me longer to make then anything I've ever made on the editor. No, that's a lie, TimeCrash took 3 months, Outpost Pheonix was shy a few weeks, but that was only cus I borrowed from my older stuff.  I added alot of ideas that people keep telling me are original, such as my experimental "sniper encounter" ( which really is experimental, I am so fucking happy it was regarded with such praise, I thought it was such ghey shit when I set the process up). I always liked the idea of Skaarj snipers, and you never saw them with rifles in Unreal. So I set them up exactly as I always pictured them, I am just pleased others like what I did with that picture. I also needed a new skin for the Troopers, I admit that I really HATE HATE HATE the Unreal trooper skins for the skaarj. They weren't menacing looking at all, they looked rather....erm, flamboyant. I always pictured the Skaarj as stone cold and Iron tough warriors, which the warrior pawns are, the troopers never lived up. So I made them a new skin, all black and very dark gray, all metallic looking. Nomatter what anyone tells me, that skin rox my nuts."
	" The ending of the map, I wanted to shift pace from the turbulent rush of being stranded with alerted enemies coming from every which way, back to the dark silence of the Landing map. In the story, the Red Nemesis, which is the first time we showed off our new Skaarj Praetorian, kills off the last of the defending miners in Area C and challenges the miner's Outpost leader, Deckard, to a warrior's duel in the belly of the plant's soil processor. The whole entry to the Red Nemesis's lair was inspired by the end of the RTNP Toxic map, where you go through a flashing red corridor and duel a powerful Skaarj in a small, filthy room. My Red Nemesis duel was similiar, the music dies as you travel through a corridor with red alarm lights everywhere, then as you take the lift down, it breaks and you fall into the dirt processor to see Deckard dead, his killer nowhere in sight, until he appears and your fight starts. I used the Guardian UMX track for the duel music, I wanted the fight to feel godly in a way, to give the praetorian the illusion of being a brand new opponent despite the fact he looks, moves, and behaves like any Skaarj Warrior, only pumped. He used my new red skin for a semi new look, in all I like this duel simply because it has a sense of " Ok, now what else am I gonna see coming my way". 
	" Map is big, very challenging, and contains just about every trick in the sp manuel I know of."

Hourences-
     "This map was just like the previous one cool due to the atmosfere. IT really feels like a base where once people lived, but there is no one there anymore. Some of the events really scare you


	"MAP4-The Mine"

Mr.Prophet-

	" We left this map nearly to the last minute. I said from the start that there would a minor map connecting Map 3 to the Derelict spaceship and that it would be very small and we could make it later after everything else is done. We then decided it be best to get it out of our hair and we looked for a 3rd mapper to just make the map and get it over with. After asking Gmotha and CyberTrooper with little luck, we decided to ask other outside mappers. We ended up asking Willis, who made a sample map that just didn't do it for us, then we asked Snowdog who made a much better show, but in the end we decided to do it ourselves. Finally Hourences said, '' I'll make the map using max for the caves.'' In the end, the map ended up as a joint effort between me and Hourie, our only real duel map of the pack, except maybe the extro. Hourences created 70% of the architecture and brushwork, and he did most of the lighting. I handled all the actors and 100% of all events and enemies, also added an additional archiecture segments to complete the map."
	"  The map was never intended to be a significant 
portion, but it ended up becoming the Token map of the pack. Like I said earlier, Outpost Pheonix was the above ground, Industrial compound, the Mines were where all the dirty mine work went. I think the map was so popular because it was actually a mine. In Unreal, the Rajigar mine was always popular...but you never actually see the mines. Map 4-Mines, was the promised completion of Map 3...the player visits the Xidia Mines. The caves themselves look very mine-like and believable, thanx to max. There was sound fx to set the mood, music to support the theme, and enemies to back up the whole atmoshpere. We had a legit mine, with mine carts, tracks, driller tanks, mining tools, wooden supports, closed off caverans that were collapsed or out of service, mineral ore exposed and glowing, and rocks. "
	" Inspiration was drawn from Red Faction mostly, since alot of that game took place in.....mines. Color was usually orange to  serve as an relief from all the cool blue lighting emited from the Tarydium. Most mines I have seen in Unreal are Usually 90% compound facility, and 10% actual mines. In this map, 90% is actually Mines, and 10% is facility. We figured that would be the best choice since there wasn't alot of terrain in Xidia else far and the last mao spanned inside a big complex, we didn't wanna overdose the player on big compounds."
	" The end of the map I thought was cool. Instead of finding a way out of the mines and back to civilization, you end up crawling deeper into the mines until you fall into a tunnel and get lost far away from where the story intended you to go. The exit sets up nicely for the begining of the Derelict map, although the boss fight never really satisfied us. ( The Acid Hybrid has been removed for the Gold edition)."


Hourences-

     "The map was like said intended as a small quick map, but like it always happends by us, it gets huge. Because it would be nutz to create so many caves in UED I made the caves in Max, where it only took a day. In UED I tried alot of orange light on advice of Prophet, I originally wanted to use blue ambient light, and orange from the lights, but Prophet found more orange light more originall, and it did work well. Map was original because no one ever made a big cave map in UT or Unreal. And it had the right amount of woow-factor to make it look cool, and due to the fact a big part of the map were only the cave brushes quickly created in max, we managed to finish the map quite fast"



	MAP5-Derelict Underground


Mr.Prophet- 

	" Hourences's first solo map in the pack. When I was originally drawing concepts of the map, I planned for this map to be much darker than it finally was, but I never thought the map would look so cool. Hourie put alot of ideas into this to give it the perfect atmoshpere."
	" This is the first map where the setting stops being a combination of Human Colony and subterrainian Mine and becomes a completely new realm. This is one of the few, ''crashed Derelict'' Skaarj maps to emerge since the end of Unreal, and while in Unreal they landed in a large basin exposed on this big crater, In Xidia the ship crashed through the ground causing a volcanic upset which made the ship sink farther underground and break apart among the walls of the caverans. This meant we had to present an environment which gave the impression of a long since grounded ship that has been converted from it's original remains into a funtioning base. Luckily Hourences knew how to do this and even tho the ''ship'' theme was never really incorporated, it is an obvious presence."

Hourences-

       "The map was originally totaly different intended, more destroyed, and not that big in scale. But it turned out differently, I experimented a bit with architecture in this map, 'cause that was 1 of the skills that werent 100 % yet. Because of the slowdowns some people were having I decided to split the map in 2 maps.
The idea of the tank and the first room I got from that Marine mission in AVP2 where you need to lead the APC trough a couple of doors. The big pipe at the start came out of AVP2 too. Like the big pipes when you are in the Alien hive at the end of the marine missions, for the rest of the map I used my own inspiration."


	MAP6-Derelict Surface

Mr.Prophet-

	" Originally part of map 5, the 5th map was split into two when Hourences encountered certain problems. The latter half that was the closing to Derelict Underground became map 6, Derelict Surface. In this map, the player makes it through the ship to the other side, which is right near the location of the Northern Peak facility. The theme is consistant with map 5 and they really do feel like one building."
	" Theres a little more fighting in this map as the player progressess toward the end. This is the last time the player will encounter the Skaarj Elite and the monsterous Praetorians before they encounter the boss in the 7th map. "
	"  This map and the 5th ended up being beta tested by DavidM who asked Hourences to place this map in ONP as well, and while I thought the ONP version was just as good, I'm not sure it fit with the ''Na Pali'' theme like it did with Xidia."

Hourences-

       "Lightning was due to the dark brownie skaarj textures quite hard in these 2 maps, since its hard to get the right balance, but i think it came out more less good at the end. At the end of the map I wanted this big event from wich people really say "woow", so I made a exploding corricor and a elevator, and togheter with the big half pipe room at the end I think I suceeded in making people say "woow". I got the idea of the big pipe-like elevator shaft from AVP2 where you have this kind of thing too in 1 of the Alien levels. I also made a corridor thats on fire, since fire is almost never used in games I made one. Only place where I saw fire before was this Half Life singleplay mod, "They Hunger", wich was quite nice done there. You first entered the building while it was normal, then it was on fire and you had to fight in the fire. And later you returned again and you had to go trough it while it was all burned down."



	MAP7-Darklord

	"  I knew right away that the final showdown would be a warlord related fight. Xidia was all hyped on the pride and cunning of a ''Soldier'', which in turn meant warrior, which in turn told me not to induldge on a ''Queen Hive'' concept, but instead to go with the Skaarj Hierarchy, the Warlord."
	" I knew most players would sigh at the appearance of your run in the mill Warlord, so I developed an idea for a new warlord which would still add to the ''pride of the warrior'' theme we had going. As a result, the Darlord was born, a concept I had originally created 2 years ago for a ghey sample SP map I made for my own use and never added to or completed. But the idea was still salvagable, a Warlord who had the blood of the ancient Royal Guardians running in it's veins, a being that had seen the Derelict crash, and survived it. The Darklord had to look demonic, like a demon straight from hell. I asked Gmotha to make a tyrannical skin for the Darklord, I just had to set the map theme."
	" I didn't want Xidia to end in an alien environment, But rather to relapse into the Human realm which the presence of the Skaarj Darklord commanding the territory. I decided the map would take place in the Northern Peak military facility, right after the player shoots their way through the Derelict spaceship and sees familiar territory again. The Northern peak facility was a little different in appearance than Outpost Pheonix, the Northern Peak facility had no sub-theme , it was just a overrun military compound. I choose heavy SG-tech and Richrig with very little use of Mine except for a little trim. The map was also much ''cleaner'' than the Outpost, the area felt more sterile ( despite all the dead bodies).
You started in a big cave and took a terra lift through a long tower
 ( the lift ride sets the map's intro, with a epic war tune that sets the mood). After entering a few rooms and finding Judd dead ( the leader of the Miner's resistance) his death pose suggesting suicide, you enter the Cargo Hold. As far as I could tell, the player always expected to see a Warlord in an old themed map, never in a tech map. I couldn't recreate the hellish first contact every Unreal player had with the first Warlord battle in the original game, and thats never been done better I don't think. So to prepare the player for this seemingly ''new'' fight with an old enemy whose skin was different, I thought it would be wise to include a prelude battle similar to the Skaarj Lords battle in Extreme gen, before you fought the warlord again ( Unreal). So I actually added two Guardian praetorians who were supposed to be the highest level guardians to the Darklord, hence they wore the traditional warlord armor. After you fight two warlords in a 2 on 1 fight ( they of course being weaker than the normal warlord, but the player does not notice this in the mayhem and panic of seeing 2 warlords, or so was my intent) the Darklord emerges from his dark waiting area and then you fight."
	" I wanted to incorporate the teleportation capability of the warlord with the Darklord battle, so after a touch duel in the cargo hold, the Darklord tele-escapes and you are forced to continue to the hangar where you meet him for the final time. The battle there I felt was much easier due to alot more room being present to flee in. The addition of Pupae was to serve as a advantage for the Darklord, and once he falls for the last time, your ship arrives just to take you to safety. I truly hope the Darklord fight was enjoyed for it's uniqueness rather than it's challenge, It really is hard to use a warlord in a decent fight scene."


Hourences-

       "I liked the fact of having to fight multiple warlords, from wich 2 at the same time, and having to fight the 3th 2 times in different area's, gives more depth and more action then just this 1 guy"


	EXTRO

Mr.Prophet-

	" I always love good endings, the one thing that can always piss me off about a sp game is if I play it all the way through, and it has a good story and great levels.....and then just ends abruptly. I wanted an explosive ending for Xidia for two reasons; 1, there had to be an explosive ending because I added the whole ''bomg going off run like hell'' ending which kinda locked me in a death pact to make an explosive ending and, 2, the game just needed a climatic ending just to do the story justice. I made a storyboard of how the ending should go, and since I didn't know UMS, I built the map and had Hourences path the camera. It was our only joint map in the pack besides the 4rth, and much like the 4rth had been, it was if anything satisfactory."
	" You pretty much see the interior of the base go alert as explosions go off here and there, corridors get fire bombed as the camera pans up from the hangar, through the sky, and then to an orbital scene. At the time, the extro we made was good enough and we will most likely redo it better for the GOLD addition. But hey, explosive endings are what make games fun, and in Xidia it just fit perfectly into the theme we had building to that point. Really, it was the only way we could have ended Xidia."

Hourences-

       "Extro was a bitch to make due to the limited possibilties of UT. Filling a room for 50 seconds with explosions and falling things isn't an easy thing to do, so the map ended up containing 5000 explosion actors, hundreds of exploding wall actors and large amount of special events.
After fixing some various small bugs with UMS the map came out well, although on some moments it's a bit silent due to the fact that there are still not enough explosionchains.."


---------------
Making ''The Escape''
---------------

Mr.Prophet-

	" So many ideas got left behind when we made Xidia, alot of leet stuff we never got to incorporate into our little pack. Once it was released, and we realized that people actually liked it alot, I began to put together an idea for a Mission pack."
	" My original concept for "Xidia: The Escape" began as a much much smaller project dubbed " Xidia: Derelict addition". I had planned to make the pack all by myself, since I only thought it would be a mere 4 maps, all from the original game, only edited and played backwards from the Derelict ship to the Outpost. Also, I wanted the game to be played as one of the Skaarj Elite, and instead of gunning skaarj down all the time you'd be hunting humans, but right away I knew the idea was pure shit. It would have been too difficult, it would require way to much coding work that I was not prepared to go ahead with. But the idea was still cool, You'd start with all skaarj weapons, a bunch of supplies, and a deflective wrist shield as a melee weapon. But sadly, that idea will go into the Xidia vault, perhaps one day I'll think of a way to reinvent the idea."
	" Anyway, I finally thought of a story to follow just after the last, through the eyes of a miner. After the first 2 weeks I realized I couldn't do all of it myself so I asked Hourences if he would want to do yet another sp project with so little time to do it. I was certain he'd pass, but sure enough he wanted to give Xidia another whirl. I originally planned to create a Skaarj ice map, and idea I'd had for awhile, but my skaarj architecture sux and since hourie was already experienced with it plus eagar to do an Ice Skaarj theme, he picked up that map which became the 5th in the once again 7 map pack, although this time really 9 maps if you count BOTH cutscene maps."
	" Our team expanded this time, we had Gmotha doing the new HUD while ONP coder, UsAar33, handled our new leet scripts. I won't lie, getting this pack done on time has been a real bitch and a half, the most frustrating thing i've ever worked on, but in the end it got better and actually amounted to something. In one summer, we not only made a bigger pack than the original 5 month long project, but made a special edition GOLD version to be played with all our new scripts and together with the mission pack in a grand 14(17 total unrs) maps. Thats quite good baby, very good indeed. Depending on how this release is recieved by the community, the plans I and Hourie have for Xidia 2 ( for the u2 engine) will be decided."

Hourences-

       "After Xidia Prophet wanted to do more SP 'cause he couldn't find fun anymore in making simple DM's. So he asked if I wanted to help on a add-on for Xidia. I agreed to do small work, because after Xidia and ONP I wanted some rest, and I also had to learn Photoshop and 3dsmax in preparation for the new engine. At first I wanted to do a few rooms, wich later became 1 total map. In the mean time I also made some new textures wich we are using in The Escape. We originally thought we were gonna have it done in just 2 months but it turned about to be ~4 months. Instead of just a few small maps, we made a add-on the size of the originally. Another good thing was that UT2 is being delayed, trough wich we can manage to bring it out before UT2 and maybe even before the release of the demo. Wich is offcourse much better for publicity, since after UT2 is released none cares about UT anymore offcourse.


------------------------
The Maps of Xidia: The Escape
------------------------

	MAP0-Awakening

Mr.Prophet-

	" Xidia never had an intro, which we are kinda making up for now with this very brief opening wave map. As Spencer, the story is alot more interactive, and the intro sets the mood for the rest of the pack. You basically see Spencer unconcious as he says a brief dialogue line to tell you of HIS situation and establish the sort of character he is ( while Jones was a hardcore soldier, Spencer is more of a softer character with alot more emotion. Hes young and frustrated). This map is so brief, there really is not a whole lot to say about it other than it's entire purpose was to familiarize you with Spencer."


	MAP1-Self-Destruct

Mr.Prophet- 

	" You start the map off in a old panel room after you've been electricuted and fell down a shaft. The map opens in the Northern Peak facility and soon after the start you see Jones's ship leaving. Basically you have to retrace your stepsand make a left turn at a door originally locked off and use the train station as an alternate escape route."
	" This map is the ''Orbit'' of Escape, only you are in dangerous territory with low health and no weapons, where in the case of Jones, you started off with full stats and ammo. Not much has been done to the original map, a few more explosions and damage effects have been added, one corridor is now flooding, and you don't even revisit the first half of the map because you make a different turn to the station."
	" The Station uses Hourences new Rust tex pack to the new section more depth. I had  a particular problem making a certain pipe trickle water down, I wanted it to be rain-drop like, but the UT rain texture does not pan correctly when I try to add it, so I had to borrow a rain tex from another mod and in the end, the effect doesn't really have the impact I intended, very hard to make rain in UT. This realization actually prepared me for my original plans for the 7th map, which was supposed to be in a rainstorm."
	" You grab the automag first before the dispersion pistol, which I thought would be a nice touch, giving the player an early weapon but with little ammo to spend on the few pupae that lurke around in the map. The map ends rather odd, as you are told by a strange message personality similiar to Jones's Mission Updates, to hide inside a box while waiting on a supply lift that will take you to the train, which is overrun by Skaarj. I think this map will be most effective since it is so ackward when compared to the begining of Xidia, where you started off in eerie silence not knowing what to expect. This time, you know of all the dangers but your not sure where it's gonna lead you."



       
	MAP2-Underground Railroad

Mr.Prophet-

	" I always wanted to do a a vehicle ride sp map, and the idea of a speeding train covered with Skaarj and Skaarj attack speeders which fly up alongside to kill you was just cool I thought. Sadly, I could not quite create an entire map in this fashion, and with such little time available to us and with no other options
 ( basically we either made a hard choice or we dropped the map completley) I decided to use AS-HiSpeed as a base map for our 2nd map. Of course there is credits due to the original, and to make the map different, I edited it quite alot, adding more cars, changing textures, changing areas, I pretty much tried everything to make the map different. I don't know how people will take this, but when I saw old epic maps reused in ONP, I figured there would be no prob here."
	" In all, the map isn't very long, but requires you to provide for yourself very quickly. Your first Skaarj encounter isn't as thrilling as the first seen in Xidia, but it isn't any less dangerous.  Right away you get a powerful weapon, the sniper rifle, and after that you pick up another automag to give you akimbo and than mining tool and eventually you snatch up a Eightball. There is a very small number of Skaarj onboard the train, but it's interesting since you only have just enough supplies to deal with them all, meaning nomatter what super powerful guns you get so early in the game, you'll probably be dry by the third map, where the pace slows down."
	" You have to get to the control room and speed up the train to avoid the tunnel firestorm that chases you. You see all familiar enemies, warriors and the trooper elite, as well as a single Praetorian to serve as the last obstacle before you get to the control room. Putting a Praetorian so early in Escape was a testament to all the doubters who said we wouldn't uphold the classic Xidia difficulty, and while the levels aren't IMPOSSIBLE, they will once again be challenging."
	" I used rich rig mostly for the train, to remind the player of the Mine map and how the difference between above and below ground was in Xidia."



	MAP3-Return to Outpost Pheonix

Mr.Prophet-

	" The original Outpost Pheonix map was huge and quite challenging. It was also the most overly complicated map of the original pack, and when I decided to make this version, I wanted to make it a little more easier to follow, while keeping the challenge up."
	" After the second map, your train crashes through the station and you end up in the Outpost Pheonix dock, an area previously locked off. I tried several draft ''dock'' builds, but came up with a horribly errored hole in the ground. I finally made the hard choice of borrowing once again from an UT Assault map. I didn't like the decision, but in the end I think people won't even care, or notice. I took AS-Frigate, by Caudle, and deleted all the lighting, and the entire boat. I don't know if you've ever played the map, but that right there is 80% of the map gone. What remained was a terrain bay of one subtract brush and a sheet, and the basic shapes of the buildings. In the end, the dock looks nothing like AS-Frigate, and unless you read this commentary or are Shane Caudle, I don't think you'll realize. At the maps start I say the map borrows from AS-Frigate, but without pointing out the dock it will be hard to notice, it looks radically different."
	" The map uses pretty much the same condition the Outpost was left in at the end of map 3, a few things have been moved around and new scripted events make the old spots seem fresh. The new stuff fits in well and I used the Rust pack alot for the brand new buildings. "
	" The Return plays alot like the ''Landing'' from the original, you follow the same path as you did in that map and then have to go back toward the begining after activating the transformer power controls."
	" In all, it's not as difficult as the original, but it maintains the size and flows much better. If anything, and approvment."



	MAP4-The Dead Mines

Mr.Prophet-

	"This will probably be the most fun map in the pack. You do quite alot, the majority of the packs action and suspense are in this map, which is actually the second largest, if not equal to the 3rd map. You return to the mines through a tram tunnel, where of course there is a speed chase sequence , and then you go through a large crate room that is created in the likeness of the Dasa cellar's crate room fight. My crate room fight is of course much harder and is the first and only real big Skaarj assault scene in the pack. You are in this one room with 5 or 6 Skaarj Elite, a behemoth, and a Praetorian. Thats quite alot for one sequence, and even tho there is a good deal of ammo and health in the room along with a turret if you can find it, the Skaarj don't give you much of a chance to nab them. And right out of this chaotic fight sequence, we go crashing out of the techno fight style into the dark, quiet, and spooky mine theme which takes the location of the last half of the old Mine map, including some sections previously locked. This is where the plot twist with the Cray character takes place and completely resets the story direction. Then it goes straight from spooky panic to fearful confusion as you are taken to an environment never seen in Xidia before..."
	" The Temple took alot of concept planning. I knew that to really surprise the fans of the original game we had to think of a truly shocking and unexpected theme. And since everyone thought of Xidia as a ''Tech, mine theme only'' thing, the addition of the Temple had to be included. According to translator messages of you decide to read them, The planet was inhabited before the Skaarj crash, and when the ship hit their race was wiped out by the disturbance that followed and their civilization swallowed by the volvanic upheaval. The temple you enter is broken and embedded in the caveran. I set it up so the rockey mine presence and temple is mixed together through pieces of ruin laying around a cave and then an entrance. The sole purpose of the temple was so I couldn't implement a new boss idea I had for awhile, The Controller and the Dragon. I used Chicoverde's temple textures, since nothing else would do, and I contructed my section. This is the first boss fight in Xidia where a puzzle is required to kill the boss, instead of just pumping them full of lead. The Controller is a weak character, but protected by his powerful energy shield, and also the Gray Dragon which cannot be killed unless the Controller is killed. A very cool fight I think, and I hope it will generate alot of player interest. It's a very surprising battle for the most part, nobody will be expecting it."
	" Right out of the Temple there is the exit, which is the entrance to the Ice Skaarj laboratory. In all, 4 theme in one. This is my personal favorite map of the pack:)"


	MAP5-Genome warriors

Mr.Prophet-

	" The concept was mine, originally, to do an ice map for the skaarj. My original concept of the map was different then what Hourences ended up producing, although not by much. I originally planned to make the map a abandoned base which was empty for the first half and very frozen, then leading to a active section and then a teleporter escape. I wanted most of the map to be dark and empty, with the player doing alot of tiptoeing and searching, the end part the active area and smaller. I even had a drawing of the entrance, which was to have two large vents spewing forth ice cold myst into a frozen cave, the door between them. That entrance drawing ended up being the exit to my map, the 4rth map, and lead into Hourences part."
	" When Hourences told me he wanted to do the Ice map, I was glad he wanted to get back into the Skaarj theme, although I was a little worried since I had a particular vision of what the map was going to look like. In the end, was the map what I envisioned? No, it was not, but I didn't care since the map Hourences ended up making was much better than I expected, easily owning his previous Derelict map. He made the map in the basic way I described, only the majority was active ambience with only one real room dark and sealed, and not even very dark at all. But in anycase, the map probably turned out better, since the map offers alot to stand in awe at. It shows the Skaarj from a different angle, a refreshing look at their Alien race and also a purely original map concept, it's never been done till we attempted it. This will probably be the last stunning Skaarj environment on the UT engine."


Hourences-

      "After my the derelict map in wich i learned true architecture, I wanted to do the same here, but without the mistakes that I made in derelict. When I started the map I never wanted to make it such high poly, but after 2 days of work on the first corridor I suddenly had this 1337 800 poly corridor, and decieded that the rest of the map should be as good as that 1 corridor. At the end it turned about a bit the same as the original Derelict, but even with higher polycounts and better architecture, and less action and enemies due to the playabilty 'cause of the high polycounts. At the end I think the map worked out well. The graphics are really good for such a old engine and I had people asking me if I made it with a UT2 leak :)



	MAP6-Black Widow

Mr.Prophet-

	" There hasn't been a decent Queen fight since Jeremey War's original queen map in Unreal. Never again has the Queen appear in such an Epic showdown in Unreal, never. Not even in Hourences Ortican, although cool, the theme just didn't compare. I knew right away that if I was going to make a Queen fight, I was going to have to do it right."
	" I studied Jeremey War's Queen map over and over before I began work on Black Widow. I knew I had to make the ''Hive'' theme, something I felt was never properly shown in Unreal. There was never a true Skaarj Hive, with the exception of Chico's ONP hive, the idea had never been decently attempted. And as much as I liked Chico's Hive, it never really got into the core of Skaarj birth. Sure, ONP made an attempt at Skaarj pupae eggs, but throwing in a weird blob thing which was easily identifieyable as 1) the blob monster from Unreal, 2) not anything related to Skaarj biology, and 3) a lazy gimmick to explain pupae birthing."
	" Hourences made the egg mesh, and I eventually made MY take on the Queen fight. Like War's map, the Queen has the whole map dedicated to her. The Queen's room itself is much more of a birthing chamber. In War's map, the queen jumps up from a hole in the ground and u begin fighting, it is assumed that the hole she jumped from led to her birthing chamber but it is never shown or explained. I wanted her lair to be the room we all wondered was down in that hole. I cannot say If I succedded, but I hope my Queen fight is as close to the original game's Epic showdown as can be."
	" Her fight room setup is very similair to War's map, a central platform with a surrounding ring, and you rely on Jumpboots to survive. Unlike War's room, there is a complete absense of lower ring safety. Under the ring and platform is a egg pit loaded with pupae, so many that it is a death trap, a deathtrap the Queen of course is not affected by."
	" I think this will be the closest attempt at ''The Source'' Unreal fans have seen since the original game, or at least, I hope it will be.
	"Alot of people won't know this but the majority of the brushes from this map came from an older project I was once working on for a MOD called "KenoPhobia". The mod is now known as Spatial Fear, but when I was on the team ( Before Xidia was even in the works) I was supposed to create this alien spaceship map that was made of this organic Hive material ( My idea, I don't know what they did with it when I left). In the end, the map looked rather non-convincing in my opinion, too much Hive but no element of a ''spaceship'' theme. I got discouraged by this, and when some of the other team members seemed to be dissappointed by this ( I recall getting some flame mail from one asking me to leave cus I was wasting time, so I left) I just kinda lost interest with the MOD. I had told people who knew about the failed map that I had completely scrapped everything, but I NEVER do that with my brushes:). It wasn't till I needed Hive segments for Map 6 when  I found all my old brushes for the doomed Spatial fear map. So if you ever wanted to see what I would have probably made for that mod, just look at alot of the elements from this map."


	MAP7- Beacon

Mr.Prophet-

	" This map is all about chasing Cray back to the beacon, confronting him as your betrayer, and find your way home. The subplot of the last map is that the genetic Skaarj seen in the Ice map are now out, and after you, along with the Cyborgs."
	" Set once again at Outpost Pheonix, this time at night after a terrible rain storm, this 3rd installment of the Outpos includes more of the original map along with the dock, making this the most complete section of Outpost Pheonix to date."
	"Not much to say other than it's the last map. At this point, all the shockers have been revealed and your simply returning through familiar territory making one last attempt to go home. The Cray showdown is very much reminisant of UT, and any pro at bot killing should be adept enough to take Cray out, although he isn't an easy boss. He is not the Darklord, and I don't want players to expect an epic Darklord duel. This isn't grand finale showdown fight, it is the completion of the story and the completion of Spencer's circle. Killing Cray makes Spencer a new person, two men fighting to the death."
	" In the end, the only way for Spencer's story to matter or even make the slightest difference to anyone is if he takes human life. Another Skaarj fight or even if the Darklord resurrected itself for one last fight, it just would be too much. There was no point making the last fight huge, that was already achieved when you fought the Queen in map 6. The Cray fight stands out among the pack, and it makes you realize that the entire time, the whole fucking time the game was about betrayal and revenge between two human beings. All the Skaarj, the mining outpost, even the name Xidia, it was all a subplot really. It had to be there because the name was ''Xidia''. The ending had to be there because the rest of the name was ''The Escape''. I much prefer Beacon to Darklord, Spencer's ending just worked and felt more comfortable than Jones's ending."

      


	MAP8-Extro

Mr.Prophet-

	" The Escape's ending sequence is not as explosive as the original because the original was based on the whole warrior/soldier complex, and of course the original ending had to be action packed. The Escape had to be about a person fleeing an impossible opposing force. The planet represents hopelessness, not only because of the Skaarj but because of what Spencer is ultimately forced to do, to let himself become in order to survive. He not only fights for his life against freakishly horrible creatures, the Skaarj, who kill his friends and ruin his big chance at a career.....but he is also forced to confront a human adversary, and in the end is forced to commit what is considered murder in our society, but on Xidia the situation centers around the premise of survival."
	" As his ship leaves, the question left to the curious player is, what exactly is Spencer Escaping from?"

Hourences-
      "I think the extro fitted the rest of The Escape well. Altho' it has less action then the original Xdia extro it is still interesting to watch and nicely finishes off the story. The credits were nice too, altho I liked the scrolling text credits like in the first extro. Makes it look more like a movie, improves cinematic effect"


-----------------
The Gold Edition
-----------------

Mr.Prophet-

	" Xidia Gold was what we wanted Xidia to be; complete. It never was complete till now. We have the scripts and the fixes we need last April to finally finish it in all it's glory."
	" Changes are slim but effective. We added all the new scripts from Escape and touched up the visuals and gameplay issues we had with the first release. Some things that stand out gameplay wise is fixture of enemies and more user friendly interface. The minigun was replaced with a more familiar weapon for Jones as a Soldier, the Combat assault rifle from RTNP. Of course we ''fixed'' the weapon this time around, where it was rathe unbalanced in RTNP."	
	" Another significant change is the deletion of the Acid Hybrid, an enemy that never fit with the story. I threw that boss together because we needed a 2nd boss, and at the time it seemed like a great idea. But the fight was based on cheap luck, all depended on how the pawn reacted or where we moved to in the pitt.  We replaced the Hybrid with bug, a much better change and it fit more to the theme overall, it was a Mine theme and it ended as one."
	" Don't expect anything radically different, consider Gold a special edition creator's cut. More of a ''last word'' on the original, because it will never be repatched again."
	" I kinda feel like the story for Xidia never matched up with The Escape. Xidia was more staightforward, Escape used Xidia as a base and was basically a substory with multpile plot functions and character development. Xidia Gold does not focus on Jones like Escape focused on Spencer because Xidia Gold isn't about characters or story. It's about the same thing Unreal was about, serving an excuse to blow shit up in a wicked environment, a story just serving as a way to keep things in perspective."
	" Play Escape if you want player development and realism to a story. Play Gold if you want a remastered edition of a action game. Play them both if you want to experience Xidia in full. It's all optional baby."


Hourences-

      "Like in any project you always rush at the end, 'cause you really want to make the release date. And then there are allways things that could have been better, with Xidia Gold we got the chance to fix those things. Eventually I wanted to add lots of new textures and other things to the old maps to really make them fresh, but due to time, and because we simply dont have that many new textures, so that won't work. But we do have the chance to fix the bugs with the mine gun, and various other small bugs, and some bigger chances, like the boss, I tweaked the first map a bit with better light, and so on.
What I like'd about The Escape is the story, the voices and cutscenes really give you more the feeling you are in this world where alot of things are happening at the same time. Also 'cause you return multiple times to certain buildings, you get much more the feeling that you really are this big complex, outpost base. Makes it much more interactive in a way, and much more alive. A living world. The Escape gave the original Xidia more personallity.


------------
Is this the end?
-----------

Mr.Prophet-

	" Is this the end of my Unreal mapping for the UT engine? Yes, theres not much more I can do after this, nor would I want to. The new engine is upon us and I plan to take the leap into the new times. I'll never forget the old engine for what it gave me and what it allowed me to do."
	" Is this the end of Xidia? Nah, don't be surprised if you hear mention of a new Xidia project for the U2 engine. We left the door open for another continuation story, and seeing as how I'm now a sp mapping veteran, it's more than likely."


Hourences-

       "Same for me, I won't make any new maps for UT. Engine just got too old, everything has been done allready. And it's so limited. I'm now working with 3dsmax and when I now got to go back to UED the program seems really simple, and I really miss things, very limited. If we got time in the future and we can find a decent team, 'cause its alot harder to make a project as this with only 2-3 people for the new engine, then I'm sure there can be a new Xidia."



