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=                      Seven Bullets                          =
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-Game Commentary-

1. Return of Jones-----------------------------------Mr.Prophet
2. Red Nemesis Recruitment---------------------------Mr.Prophet
3. Development---------------------------------------Mr.Prophet


-Map Commentary-

[1] "7 Bullets".............................................Mr.Prophet, based on ISV Deck1

[2] "Infiltration of the Kran"..............................Mr.Prophet, based on ISV Deck2&3

[3] "The Rogue".............................................Mr.Prophet, uses ISV Deck4

[4] "Slight Complication"...................................Mr.Prophet, based on Trench

[5a] "Familiar Odds"........................................Darthweasel & Mr.Prophet

[5b] "The Lost Passage of Vandora"..........................Darthweasel

[5c] "The Guardian of Vandora's Pass".......................Mr.Prophet

[6] "Tension at Vandora's Temple"...........................Mr.Prophet, based on Vandora

[7] "The Situation at Noork's Elbow"........................Mr.Prophet & EBM, based on Noork

[8a] "Beneath The Terraniux"................................Waffnuffly, Darthweasel, Mr.Prophet

[8b] "The Dead Scorpions"...................................Darthweasel & Mr.Prophet

[8c] "Unfinished Business"..................................Mr.Prophet

[9] "The Ghost of Oraghar"..................................Mr.Prophet

[10] "Departure"............................................Mr.Prophet


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=                    1. Return Of Jones                       =
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    Yeah shoulda called it that maybe, "The Return of Jones". Probably because I'm just lazy that I used the same character from Xidia. Heh. Xidia was very generic in concept and Jones was the generic soldier/hero guy who was supposed to be the face behind the monitor when your shooting stuff. Never intended to have any real character development...I mean it's only a fucking game right? Nah. It helps, it does. When I play a game, or at least a game nowadays, there's usually a story and usually a story on the character you're supposed to be. Games are still games, but they have a script now too I took that into account when I decided to make a new sp map pack picking up where Xidia left off.
    I was influenced a lot by the first game actually in the year after Xidia and when I kinda vanished from my steady mapping hobby (college and shit). After playing Unreal 2 and seeing the first level (maybe the second) and thinking "gee whiz...this looks awfully familiar" I kinda got the taste for playing through Unreal, including the mission pack...which I always liked After I did a brief one map remix map using the Unreal Sky Town as a base and totally fucking it up with new content...I was sold that I wanted to do another SP. At the time my frustration with UT2003's bug ridden editor on my bug ridden Windows 98 computer (didn't upgrade until well into 7 Bullets, and now I actually wanna make a UT2004 map, now that the game is "finished") only fueled my desire to stick with the older, more friendly interface.
    You know where I got the name Jones? I probably mentioned it in the Xidia Gold commentary but that was a long time ago. One night when I was typing up some quick paragraph story for Xidia to show Hourences and put on the site I released I needed name for the main character. I didn't just want to name him "They guy" or "Green Marine". Just a casual single name, no first name/last name B movie bullshit like "Hans Mantooth" or "Chuck Butch", just a simple name. I played a lot of Red Faction at the time, as well as Alien VS Predator 2...both guys in that name had decent one name names, Parker..Harrison, etc. AVP2's creepy gameplay was on my mind and of course I thought of the movies, Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Predator, whatever...and I got the name Jones from the 2nd survivor nobody talks about from the original "Alien" movie. Yes, the fucking cat.
    So I knew I wanted to use Jones and I knew I wanted a game set on Na Pali...and after playing ONP and making my own Redux'd version of Sky Town only pumped me up for a project. So Yeah, I had the idea, story whatever. Now I needed a team. I knew I couldn't get Hourences to do it...now that he has a job actually getting paid to do this shit (bastard). SO who the fuck was gonna help form the 7 Bullets Team?

 
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=               2. Red Nemesis Recruitment                    =
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    I think the first person I pitched the idea to was Waffnuffly... or EBM Or Waffnuffly. Whatever, both of them always tell me how much they love Xidia and how badly they want to lick my balls so I figured I'd start there. I think me and EBM talked about ideas the most...which was funny 'cause later I realized the guy can't map for shit. Well...his SP gameplay was good, but I knew his technical design wouldn't be quite what I'd need (not that I'm a fucking Chico). Luckily, nobody on this Earth knows that as much as EBM, so when I suggested he provide concept thoughts and gameplay to a map someone else would design he seemed to go for it. Waffnuffly also seemed into it and all of a sudden I had a small team. Red Nemesis was born, named after the much loved/much loathed Skaarj bastard from Xidia.
    The third mapper I recruited was Juanie...or Kimberly...or Rogue. You know something, FUCK! This girl changed her alias every week! She did a map for Deja Vu that I thought looked good. I had intended for a temple themed map using the set she had used for that project so naturally I figured that I'd ask her. Plus EBM seemed to agree she was up to it. I think Waffnuffly agreed too, but who the fuck cares what he thinks anyway. Fucking Ninja wannabe punk ass...
    Jaunie...I think...started to map, but then stopped. Real Life or something, whatever the fuck that is. So I had to scrape her name off the roster and look elsewhere. I considered a few people, mainly up and coming mappers I saw on Nali City (that other site I hang out at). I narrowed it down to a few, including Kami, Darthweasel, some other guy, and this dude with a weird name that consisted of numerical digits and symbols. I asked Darthweasel first after reviewing a map and suddenly Graeme Hutton was on the team. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty pissed I didn't ask Kami. That guy really blossomed. Oh well, Darthweasel turned out to be a great choice, really an easy guy to work with so everything went smoothly from there on the mapping front. Myself doing most of the mappage, Waffnuffly doing a map and Darth doing a map that would later become two maps. Also, some max work would later be done by Darth and also segments taken from his scrapped SP project Axiom shift would make it into the 7 Bullets extro movie, as the interior of the USM-Ice Raven.
    Coding was the next thing on my list and the only person I could think of was good old Aaron Staley, formerly known as UsAaR33. UsAaR33 is the youngest guy on the team I think, but he can code like nobody's business. Next I needed voice actors and music. I wanted a fresh, reliable voice talent for Jones and the other characters. The last thing I wanted was some trash like the ONP voice actor and myself... I still can't play Xidia: The Escape to this day because I wanna grab my monitor and scream "SHUT THE FUCK UP MAN HOLY SHIT WHY DO I SUCK!?"
    Luckily...or Unluckily...well Lucky for me but Unlucky for me, a project I had been a part of for a long time, Resident Unreal, fell apart. I knew James Hamer Morton, "eVOLVE", was a good source of voice acting and cinematic talent. Sure enough, he blew me away when I showed him the lines I had written and his skills at movie editing would come in handy for the trailer He produced all the voices of all the characters himself. Eat our Shit ONP voice acting! If anything good comes of this project, it will be the voice acting. I can only hope some company recruiter guy is playing our mod and sees how good eVOLVE's voice is 'cause this guy deserves his own show. Also, Darkbeat, music tracker from Resident Unreal had a whole pile of music that had no game. So with his and eVOLVE's permission (James headed Resident Unreal before it fell apart) we used all of Darkbeat's music as our soundtrack. Later we would need some additional songs, so I enlisted the best music tracker I know. Zynthetic from UnrealSP.org put together great tracks that will probably be the most memorable songs in 7 Bullets. Later UArchitect would sign on last minute to be our Grass Coding Technician and Frieza tagged along to give us a DM for the UT mutator.
    So there they are. The faces behind 7 Bullets.  

-Mr.Prophet


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=                     3.Development                           =
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    Compared to the grueling bug ridden process that was Xidia Gold, 7 Bullets has been less dramatic. Sure, there have been lots of moments where I've wanted to tear my monitor in half...but for the most part bugs happened less often.
    Started mapping before UT2004 came out and looks to be finished in Late August 2004. Longest thing was the mapping, 11 maps in total. The 5th map had to be split in two, Darthweasel's ending up as the largest map in the pack (being our "Outpost Pheonix" for the mod). The themes were a little more diverse in this one, unlike the primarily tech-composed Xidia. The game started off techish, dove into temple themes, terrain maps, more temple/tech, and ends with modern tech. A big chunk of the game is spent in the "in-between" segments of the ISV-Kran and the makeshift Pirate Colony built underneath the Terraniux. Basically we fit 7 maps in what spanned 4 maps in Unreal. The gap between the Trench and Vandora's temple was widened with the massive Guardian Shrine map Darthweasel. We centered our entire mod around a segment in Unreal that took up no more than a 2 mile radius.
    Coding went a lot better this time around, UsAaR33 had plenty of time to do his thing and produced a great code for the pack. The voice acting gave our story a persona and Darkbeat and Zynthetic gave us music.
    The project took about the same time Xidia and Xidia Gold took to make, which isn't bad. Red Nemesis was a great team and I think a lot of the members will walk away from 7 Bullets with some rich SP mapping experience, myself included. 7 Bullets is my second real SP project and I had way too much fun making the pack. Hopefully I can get these guys to follow up a future project with me on the new engine.

- Mr.Prophet

> Editor's Insert: Proph, you spelled your own map wrong. And you always whined about noobs calling it "Outpost PhOEnix" when you did it yourself right here before I fixed it! :P
    

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=                     Map Commentary                          =
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[1] "7 Bullets"
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* Mr.Prophet:    

    The map's original name was "Deployment" but since the game's intro was at the beginning of the map, the only reason the map is called "7Bullets" is because I had to show the title.
    The intro is supposed to be reminiscent of Xidia, where you began in a ship and had to get to your dropship. In 7Bullets the landing is done for you but I wanted to show the mod start by introducing the character as well as introducing the setting, which was Na Pali. It's short but I think it establishes the foundation of the story, "Xidia meets Na Pali".
    The first map is mostly just a Redux of Deck 1 of Myscha's ISV Kran. There are new venting systems and the whole layout is reversed with a new set of indirect routes, but the map is meant to be short. Unlike Xidia where the suspense builds up until the end of the first map, you encounter your first enemy pretty early on. How else to kick off a Xidia sequel then to scare the living fuck out of someone? The first scare happens right away and it happens several more times before the map is over. I sacrificed the whole "build-up suspense" for a more "current suspense". I think it fits the pace better this time.
    In the first map you not only meet nearly all the enemy types your gonna face in the first three levels, but you pickup a lot of weapons very early in the game. I tend to think that the better armed someone is in a game, the more heat they're likely to expect...thus, it'll keep them on edge. At the end of this map you'll have the Dispersion pistol, the Machine mag, the CARifle, the Shockrifle, the Bloodpack Ripper, and also...depending on difficulty, the Chaingun. Compare that to most first level sp packs, really unconventional. But that was the idea.
    The map, and this continues throughout each Kran map, is very styled in the art of "The Darkening" from Unreal. Construction was pretty easy though I did have a few BSP snags with the old Kran segments from Myscha. Turned out a lot of the reduxed maps in the game would have similar problems, those Unreal maps all seem to have been on the verge of collapsing on themselves. Every map piece we took from Unreal unloaded with BSP problems the moment we connected them to new segments and rebuild geometry. In this one the big pain in the ass was the terrain from Spire village from u1. For a part of a cutscene where you have about 12 seconds viewing time, there was the biggest part of the map and it of course had BSP bugs galore. In fact, after I finished that map I made it a habit of limiting all cutscene rooms to bare details for areas not in camera view. This was basically a test run for cinematic action scenes, which would populate the rest of the pack. I don't particularly think the map is very good as a gameplay map...but I thought even less about the first map in Xidia, and people seemed to like that one. Whatever.
    I will admit that the map doesn't have any wow factor and aside from the whole "oh cool I'm back at teh Kran woot!" There isn't much here that is terribly interesting visually.


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[2] "Infiltrating the Kran"
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* Mr.Prophet

    First real map of the game and I had standards to keep up. Outpost Phoenix from Xidia, the second (3rd .unr) map was the biggest and hardest of that campaign. The people in the SP community who played Xidia and responded to me about it always mentioned how tough that map was. Not unfairly, though the save bug in Xidia Gold would make the map infamous for being rough as Rhino fucking. That was my first real SP map...ever. I was sure as shit going to make the same level number map in 7 Bullets similar in that unconventional clusterfuck of a map type way. I say unconventional because how many SP packs do you play that have the hardest level second in the map list and not suck?
    Infiltrating the Kran is NOT the hardest map in 7 Bullets, in my opinion, but it is one of the more time consuming in the first run through (depending on the player's ability to pick up on things and their sense of direction). It is also the map that has the highest percentage of Skaarj related combat situations. It is ALSO the first map in 7 Bullets where the player gets a glimpse of the recurring Nemesis in the campaign...known later as "The Scarred One".
     Like Outpost Phoenix from Xidia, this one has a lot of backtracking all through the old segments of ISV Kran Decks 2 and 3 as well as the new Skaarj Outpost sections I made using borrowed textures from Team Vortex. Like the first map, this one is set in darkness with the player relying on their flashlight. There are a few areas with lighting, however, and by the end of the map the player has activated some power generators for certain decks. There is one area I am particularly proud of, a segment set in a darkened set of connected hallways that lead to a power room, which has a panel that turns on the lights in the pre-mentioned hallways. These were the first new bits of mappage I made for 7 Bullets and thus appear in the very first released pimpage screenshot which is currently displayed on the Unrealsp.org upcoming map packs page. These hallways actually have a background story. They started out as left over parts of the Redux'd Outpost 3J in my revamped Skytown Redux map. I originally had them used in a segment of that pack where the player joined forces with a group of Nali Freedom fighters to take on a barrage of Skaarj warriors. That sequence never actually happened due to....well I'm lazy. It was actually these first hallways that kickstarted all the conceptual ideas for the basic story of 7 Bullets.
    I used a lot of old and new techniques in this map. Old stuff was my whole bloody water effect I tried out in Xidia and some very Xidia-esque spook moments. One thing I'm pretty good at, and I say that without arrogance 'cause I'm very self-critical at just about everything else I do, is making people yell "WTF!" as a vent next to them blows open violently and a creature jumps out. I fucking love that. That unexpected split second scare. This happens a lot in map 2 and usually a Pupae that does it. I try to keep the player on their toes so it's important to make sure that the next spook moment is coming from a new direction the player is ignoring because they are checking similar spots that look suspicious. Pupae and vents have been done before... a lot, but I think I achieved some freshness here. There are times when people are gonna expect the same routine and then BAM, the decorative texture next to you actually is mover. Lighting is important with movers like this since the Unreal engine is usually pretty shitty with keeping the balance between normal brush and mover in a lit area. Even the smallest shadow or uneven line can give away a perfectly good ambush spot. I absolutely hate seeing that in maps, especially SP. You gotta be really careful when adding those trick movers.
    I think I preserved the original tone of the Kran original while keeping a realistic  texture of age and addition of new areas. The idea I was trying to convey is very Unreal-ish, where the Skaarj come upon deserted or captured locations and manipulate it with their own technology and purpose. The Kran in Unreal was relatively un-tainted. In that game the Kran had only been grounded for 3 months...and the story logs implied that the Human survivors held their ground for awhile before the Skaarj took over. In that case, the ship's main functions were active with recent signs of combat. But nothing that wasn't already human, aside from some pupae infestation and occupied Skaarj forces. Very fucking nice and clean. In 7 Bullets, this is 12 years later we're talking so there HAD to be significant changes. The Kran has gone from a grounded starship with salvaged interior structure...to a hybrid outpost that fused the existing human technology with alien additions and new areas that replaced old parts of the ship and rooted the starship into the ground. Plus, the outpost was hit by an EMP, a fairly original touch I thought. Usually in most Unreal SP campaigns and just about every map in Unreal and RTNP, you were entering a functional hotzone. Map2 of the Kran puts the player in the infiltrator's position on a disabled environment. I thought it was a nice touch, and whether or not people enjoy the map's gameplay I hope they at least like what I was trying to do.      


* Darth Weasel:

    Jesus this map confused the shit out of me. When playing the first beta i had to switch back to IRC a dozen times to ask where the fuck i was meant to go. I predict 80% of 7Bullets players that don't complete the game will quit on this map. I actually still don't know how to complete it without ASMD secondary fire jumping. I'm counting my fucking blessings i can get it done at all.


* Waffnuffly:

    BWHAHAHAHA! I was with Darth on this until I saw that weird, blocky-looking ladder. Why Proph made blocky ladders that a brute could barely clutch is beyond me, but whatever. I was able to get up to the lift platform, so woot. \o/


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[3] "The Rogue"
---------------

* Mr.Prophet:

    The Rogue is basically a map that leads up to one event. This event is the peculiar first meeting with the Scarred One, the Skaarj Nemesis that pursues the player throughout the rest of the campaign.
    The theme here was simple and this was actually one of the few maps that turned out exactly as I had envisioned it in my head. Seriously, this almost never happens to me so it's very important for you to acknowledge how splendid and cool this occurrence is. I demand you be amazed.
    The Rogue is the only ISV Kran map that is more new than old. The only old part comes at the end of the map as the player stumbles into the first few rooms of ISV-Kran deck4 from Unreal, and you are only there for a moment. The bigger part of the map is a pretty linear underbelly of the Skaarj core section of the outpost. There is very little combat here, even compared to the first map. Aside from the confrontation with the Scarred One, your only opposition is a few wayward pupae. Actually, the whole point of this map was to build up to the fight. People who have played Xidia will know that the pre boss areas are generally short and obvious. I wanted the player to understand the obvious that the fight was coming up...but to keep anticipating the spook that would be delayed. Usually with a boss fight I get right into it, your in a area and the guy comes. I wanted to try something different and get the player all juiced up on the dead silence that continues for awhile before the actual duel. The real interesting parts of this level, to me, are the parts I added that didn't contain any combat. I always try to keep the atmosphere suspenseful and this map really show that I think. The look of the place is very influenced from the Skaarj stuff from Xidia but I didn't want it to be too Xidia-esque. The force field gates are very much like the ones in the Mothership Lab, I was trying to keep pace with familiar technology.
    The Kran maps in 7B have a lot of water flow segments, and it's hard not to notice. Generally the place is a weapons storage facility for the "Bloodpack" but The original idea was much more interesting. I feel I should explain this since all three maps (and especially this one) suggest the whole place is some sort of pump facility. In the original sketch of map 2...and this never got added...I was going to have a segment where the player would go into a set of caverns cut into a deserted deck of the Kran. I wanted to show that the Kran had punctured the landscape severely in the crash 12 years prior to the story and that one natural element disrupted was a river. I wanted to have all these fluid pipes and pools to show that the Skaarj were using the outpost as a drainage location for the river so that it wouldn't flood the area. Of course this idea never was fully added and in the end was never made much of in the story. It's funny 'cause map 3 has a few random flood chambers that seem to just be huge coolant areas for the Kran. I wonder if anyone will ask about this? Prolly not.  I never mention in any logs why there has to be all these flow chambers and shit. They are just there.
    The Scarred One fight is pretty quick, very light when compared to the Praetorian bosses of Xidia and Skytown redux. But the idea is that he is testing you and you of course fight him again later. I really am rather impressed that we only used the one Skaarj Warrior in the whole pack. That's a pretty nice feat considering the location the campaign is set in. People who didn't like the Skaarj Praetorians from Xidia and skytown redux will be pleased you only fight one of them here. I really wonder how many people will pick up on the fact that there is just one warrior.  


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[4] "Slight Complication"
-------------------------

* Mr.Prophet:

    This is the shortest map in 7 Bullets. It is basically a short jog to a cutscene with no combat whatsoever. Basically this one is all about location and events. The map takes place in the Trench from Unreal and has been modified to show the effects of time. The bog door movers are basically frozen in time from the EMP and the player has to hop out of the dead starship and run to his buddies at the end of the Trench. Upon doing so you trigger a brief cutscene showing the player getting sniped by...what else...a Terran. Terran is space talk for human and this is really gonna be the turning point in the plot. Humans have never really been used too much in Na Pali campaigns. There was one survivor in ONP you had to rescue and one crazy guy in Deja Vu but nothing with any real depth to why and how they got there. In 7 Bullets, 12 years after the fact, it is based on the idea that all the survivors from the Vortex Rikers and other vessels pooled together in one unified force, like the Mercs or Skaarj.
    That is the idea, how the long term effects of marooning yourselves on an alien world will lead to an eventual gathering of the last survivors and form a new group to roam the Na Pali landscape.
    "Slight Complication" is pretty brief though. Aside from some time changes and lighting the map is more or less similar to the Unreal original. This map is to 7 Bullets what Illumination was to Unreal.   


--------------------    
[5a] "Familiar Odds"    
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* Darthweasel:

    Bleaurgh. Its first iteration was even worse. When I finished it I did a second pass and replaced a lot. OMG FLIES IN THE FOG RUN. First SP map. Prophet did that first curved corridor, and tweaked up a few bits.


* Mr.Prophet:

    I didn't do much to this map myself, about 95% of the map's total content is from Darthweasel. All I did was make the crap hallway leading from the Trench to the main Temple and of course all the messages.
    I will say this though, the map really should have been just Map 5 and not part one of a Map 5 Trio. The map that ended up being three was originally a short 1 map concept that was supposed to be mapped by Jaunie. Jaunie was a mapper who constructed a map for Deja Vu using the Forsaken T set. I liked her mapping style at the time and asked her to enlist. She joined and things seemed set. Then Not. First she had a problem picking a handle, she wanted to be called Jaunie, then Kimberly, then Rogue. Then a few weeks after I asked her to join the team she told me she thought she was making a map for Deja Vu. To put it bluntly I was confused...but I figured what the hell, just 'cause I don't do it doesn't mean marijuana is bad really.
    Then when JaunieKimberlyRogue apparently vanished off the face of the planet to spend more time on real life(tm) I had to enlist another mapper. I eventually got hold of Graeme Hutton, aka Darthweasel...who was a NC regular at the time. His DM mappage impressed me, though the map I had in mind for him was ancient...a theme he hadn't yet tried. What I didn't expect was the map Darthweasel would end up producing.
    The fucker was huge, eventually having to be split in two like Hourences's map in Xidia. And then the end of the second map would have to shaved off to make a 3rd map, which I  put together almost last minute.
    Anyway, 5a is a solid map geared more on puzzles and traps then hardcore combat. The enemies are generally more of an annoyance in the map, something I wanted. After all the Xidia styled combat in the first 3 maps I wanted Darth to make a map that would return to a more awe inspiring themed map that would feel more like Unreal. 5a was just that, I think he did a great job. There isn't a whole lot to do when you think about it and remember, it was supposed to be bigger.
    "Familiar Odds" is a detour map that starts the second half of 7 Bullets where the Player has to take a indirect route to Vandora's Temple....where his buddy soldiers are about to engage the target and continue the story. This map and the next two take the player away from the main plotline and thrust them into the unknown.

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[5b] "The Lost Passage of Vandora"
----------------------------------

* Darthweasel:

    Ok so it's a bit better than 5a. This canyon idea was from some photo. I never thought it would turn out ok. Well, it's a matter of perspective to whether it did or not, but whatever. Some messy bits. After playing doom3 I went back and added a bunch more spinners. I am in awe that the map didn't just get swallowed by some huge BSP hole from all those polys out in the canyon. Like the first map, once I'd finished both i went back and done a second pass changing some of the worst parts. This was originally part of the first map but I hit UEd's 65536 node limit pretty early on into 5b's part, so it had to be split. Lighting this canyon was impossible since a 255 radius light is nowhere near large enough to light it properly. I was happy with how the sense of scale turned out. It makes you feel tiny, which was the plan from the outset. Like the UEd-findable 'Easter-egg' says, I had a good liquid fuel to help me along the way.


* Mr.Prophet:

    Easily one of the best maps in the pack, Map5-B shows off some outstanding stuff from Darthweasel. What I like most about this map is how desolate it is. I wanted the map to be like that and Darthweasel really fleshed that idea out in here. The map doesn't have much sentient presence aside from the bodies of the USM marines that got lost along the way. What we have here is a decaying temple loaded with infestation and disarray.
    What I think is cool about Graeme is that he never really played Unreal and yet he understands how to capture the atmosphere of Na Pali with this map. The thing about Unreal was that it filled you with awe, and that same kind of wonder that made Unreal's maps interesting (at the time) makes this map interesting.
    "The Lost Passage of Vandora" is truly a cool map that captures the old feeling of awe Unreal had, where players found themselves slipping through the story and wandering into unknown environments without any sense of objective.


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[5c] "The Guardian of Vandora's Pass"
-------------------------------------

* Mr.Prophet:

    There is a rare Easter egg in this map that can only be found in the Unreal Editor. Bring up the Build Options and look for the brush amount;)
    This map was an unexpected last minute kinda thing. Originally this map was a brief boss fight against the Guardian before the exit to Map 5-B, after Darthweasel had to cut his map in half. Then toward the end of development Darth told me 5-B had too many nodes or was too big with my end segment added or whatever. So after trying to figure out how to fit the end in and coming up with no ideas I basically said, "Fuck it, I'll make it a separate map."
    Of course cutting the end for a simple boss fight was stupid in my opinion so I decided to expand upon the segment to form a more cohesive, longer map that would fit in with all the others.
    Map 5-C takes all the content I made that would have merged with Darth's 5-B plus another 60-70% of new content that I made in addition to that somewhere in August '04. I never intended the map to be as full as it is for the release...people have to know that this map really really wasn't supposed to be a big deal. It was supposed to be a boss room and an exit.
    The map I ended up making those days in August expanded a lot in a short period of time, probably one of the faster builds of a potentially major map I ever did. Basically it includes the confrontation with the Guardian of Vandora's Pass (hence the name) but what happens after that was added spur-of-the-moment. In 5-C, after you defeat the Guardian you progress to a series of chambers where the player has to solve some puzzles to gain access to a Nali Prophet who will grant entry to the Pass. In the process you have to encounter a second Boss fight, which pits the player up against ten...yes ten Guardians.
    The Guardian is essentially a Titan that cannot be killed with conventional weapons, sorta like the Minion from Xidia Gold that needed to be killed by other means. I never really used the Titan creature at all in previous SP's, the Minion in Xidia Gold was a gimmick 'cause I ran out of monster ideas. I always liked the Titan though, there were moments in Unreal when they totally spooked the shit outta me. One time in Spire Village I was walking around this house and must have totally not seen this fucking Titan just standing there. I turned the corner...and just imagine casually turning around the side of your house and seeing a giant dinosaur standing there. Velora's Pass from Unreal was, and remains in my opinion, the coolest use of the Titan ever. I tried to take that level of awe and use it in map 5-C.
    The thing about the 2nd boss fight is that it is totally unexpected. People are gonna walk into that room expecting another puzzle and just stop in their tracks when they see ten titans sitting in thrones. I can only hope at least one person actually will say, "...you gotta be fucking kidding me.."
    Despite the two back to back boss fights, the map is pretty easy I think. The Tarydium charged Shockrifle really makes the 2nd fight a matter of dodging and the first boss can be beaten without firing a shot. Basically this map is a filler map with a pulse, the side story concerning the ethereal Nali Prophet is rather interesting. The Prophet is named Haute, which people will remember from ONP as being mentioned on a memorial as a Nali savior In fact, Haute was a character in the Unreal novels released several years ago. Books that David M had read before he incorporated the character into ONP, something few people caught on. I'm probably on the only people who has read the book aside from him so don't worry about it. I was trying to keep some game ties intact.
    The design of the temple bits had to fit with the prior 2 maps, 5-B in particular. I think the likeness between the maps is very well done, all the statues and design styles from 5-A and 5-B are explained and continued here. I'd be very pleased if people thought all 3 maps were done by the same author. It's never easy to make a map that follows another person's work where your map is supposed to continue off theirs. 5-C is a weird map from a SP perspective...really doesn't follow the normal formulas. Darthweasel told me shortly after playing it for the first time that he thought it had the best atmosphere of any other map in the pack. I don't really agree with him exactly though I am very happy with how such a quick filler map turned out. It would be weird if other people felt the same as Darth when so much more time was spent on other maps.   
    "The Guardian of Vandora's Pass" is the midway point in 7 Bullets. It fulfills the previous two maps lack of combat and provides the first real surprising moment of the game, I can't imagine too many players expecting a ten titan showdown.   


* Darth Weasel:

    Yeah. Best looking map and more original/unusual/interesting gameplay. It works well. OH MY WHO MADE THOSE SEXY CAVES!? Yeah. As with 5b this map has some "huge scale I feel tiny" stuff in the caves, which does well to emphasize the Titan battles.  


---------------------------------
[6] "Tension at Vandora's Temple"
---------------------------------

* Mr.Prophet:

    There is always that one map that is like a cancerous wart growing on the ball sac of any map pack. Map6 went through so many frustrating bugs that 80% of the time that was spent on it was fixing BSP errors. No joke.
    Map6 is probably the best Redux'd map in the pack just on the basis that so much has been altered. It's also the first map that has the Terran Pirate enemies appear, making them the last major opposition in 7 Bullets. The map is the first true unique experience of 7 Bullets, until now human pawns in Unreal SP have been only appeared as singular enemies that appear once and are rather unbalanced. Even the Marines in RTNP were very bot like and they only showed up for one combat sequence. The entire last half of 7 Bullets has Terran enemies as the main opposition, which starts in this map.
    I had a lot to live up to with this map. Not only was I introducing the new major oppositional factor of the game but I was reinventing one of Unreal's all time classic maps and I had to do it in a slick way. I figured the best way to present the map was to start it off in a location that had nothing to do with it. The player has to move through a brief area that connects the style of the last 3 maps to the style of the old Vandora temple. The player actually finds the link through a deteriorated hole in the wall (an often handy tool in 7 Bullets) and steps out of this cave that cuts into the wall of the Theater from the old Vandora's Temple titan fight area. This is one of my favorite parts of the map just because I like how the environment just casually feeds into one of the all time legendary maps from Unreal and you almost don't realize it.
    The new theme was rather intriguing. I always liked how locations in Unreal were always corrupted or overtaken by the Skaarj or whatever occupying alien presence was there to twist the place around. To portray the Terran Pirates in the same survivalist role only seemed natural. Not only did this provide me with a flexible set of tools to work with to add portable generators and human content into the old level, but it also developed the role of the Terran pirates on Na Pali. Basically I wanted to convey the notion that humans are just another alien race to be stranded on Na Pali and forced to use whatever means at their disposal to ensure their survival. Thus turning a temple once occupied by Skaarj to a temple now occupied by Terrans.   
    I had to change the lighting significantly, especially the god-awful coronas the original Unreal version had. I kept most of the textures from the original there but added to them and the decaying visual appearance of the temple. I wanted to show how the place had been overrun but also show that it was still a ruin. Several areas are in a lot worse shape then they were 12 years prior in the story and there is an entire subplot to the map that explains how a cave in buried many passages. This subplot leads to one of the map's two boss fights against the Spinner Queen.
    That fight is directly inspired by a similar boss fight from Xidia Gold, where the player wanders into a spinner lair. This area puts to rest the massive infestation questions from Darth's Lost Passage of Vandora, finishing the whole Spinner segment of the pack. Aside from the Spinner Queen and some of her babies, the rest of the map pits the player against Human enemies and automated turrets.
    "Tension at Vandora's Temple" is arguably the best Redux'd map in the pack and I think this is one of my best contributions to 7 Bullets. My favorite combat scenarios in 7 Bullets are in here, the fight with the Spinner Queen is one of the best constructed fight scenes I've personally put together. The romp against the White Lotus warriors is the first real rough battle in the entire game (IMO). This map is essentially a wake-up call to any player who felt as if the last few maps were getting soft.  


* Darth Weasel:

    DIE.

    This map flipped a shit on Prophets computer, so i had to take it once it had everything added and work out all these little problems. With each and every one of these little bugs, I had to change something that might have an effect, rebuild for 20minutes, test. Of course, in UEd's bastardry, fixing one problem on one side of the map created another on the other side. I shit you not. Move a little hill thing in the spider cave (what the hell kind of brush is that to use for terrain anyways Proph?) and we'd have huge holes at the start. Change the solidity of a torch at the start, the Petra fight room suddenly rips in half, etc etc Et.Fucking.Cetera.


-----------------------------------
[7] "The Situation as Noork's Elbow
-----------------------------------

* Mr. Prophet:

    I remember playing Noork's Elbow back in Unreal and getting to the temple and thinking "that's it?" as the next level loaded. In Unreal this map was a quick sprint to the finish line with a few mercenaries patrolling some huts. In 7 Bullets, this map is Bullet frenzied trench warfare.
    Truth be told, my original idea for a route to the last main map was to have Jones captured at Vandora's Temple and transported to the prison. But I figured ONP did that...twice, so why not take another old Unreal map and leetify it for 7 Bullets? You basically play the map in the opposite direction with an extended sequence at the end, going below the Terraniux (which is now a derelict shell).
    The map turned out exactly as I originally envisioned it, I wanted there to be tall smoke stacks and a gritty gray terrain soil. The map has some depth now and I'm proud to say that I actually believe the map betters the original by a long shot. Since development needed much of my time elsewhere, aside from a few cutscenes and the end boss fight, the entire gameplay plan was engineered by EBM, who modeled the map in the fashion of Xidia's Outpost Phoenix sniper encounter. Only in Noork it is on a much grander scale.
    I used a lot of David M tech textures here because I wanted to contrast the dirty, moldy look of the main facility in the next map. The clean brick textures David edited for various DM maps came into handy and the new spots really have the human presence that comes with the casual tech map. The Pirate logs also continue to be nasty in this map, I really wanted the player to understand that these guys, for the most part, were convicts. I think making the player dislike the people they are shooting really makes the gameplay that much more involved. I mean look how the slaughter of the Nali in Unreal made the player hate the Skaarj. I know I did.
    This map had long delays in the building phase thanks to many BSP errors and a halt in development due to EBM's RL issues. This was the last map completed for 7 Bullets.

* Eightball Maniac:


----------------------------
[8a] "Beneath the Terraniux"
----------------------------

* Waffnuffly: See my shitty, rushed stuff at the bottom.


* Mr.Prophet:

    Like a lot of our maps, this one was intended to be different then what resulted. Waffnuffly had signed on to do the map in a sort of techy, gray military facility. That vision failed and for the better since we eventually op'd to have the theme more dirty and makeshift, fitting for a scrappy base made in under 12 years by a group of ship wrecked convicts.
    When Waffnuffly became overwhelmed with RL during the end of the development me and darthweasel stepped in to add the finishing touches to his unfinished segment. The result was a nicely constructed network of caves by Waffnuffly, an interior tech depot by Darthweasel, and the entire end rooftop was done by myself along with the low-poly prison at the map's opening. But even that was a problem when a rendering bug forced us to split the map.
    Beneath the Terraniux appeared in the beta as a short system of caves running below Noork's Elbow and the derelict mercenary bio station called the Terraniux, from Unreal. You never go back to the Terraniux in 7 Bullets like the other redux'd maps, I figured yet another redux would be repetitive Instead the map shows the underbelly of the Terraniux. The explanation of the smoke stacks in the 7th map was supposed to be followed by massive underground toxin pits but those areas had to be cut because of the bug and since they didn't offer enough gameplay flow. I didn't want the map to be split but shit, we didn't have a choice. I feel bad about it in some ways since I really wanted the place to be a whole. But this way we get more maps to have the Terran segment of the game lengthened. My own work on this map is minor, aside from the intro prison all I really did was some cave texturing and the messages. Waffnuffly's caves are hardcore but he had the floors the same texture as the cave walls so I applied the dirt and grass protrusions in some bits, as did Darth. The beta version left me a bit sad since Waffnuffly didn't get more of his work added to the final product, he had been with the project as a founding member and I wished he could have gotten more stuff added. But his segments are really great and I think he would be pleased if people couldn't tell his work apart from mine or Darth's.
    But after the beta was released and distributed among our testers, Waffnuffly suddenly got all excited and extremely enthusiastic about the project. It was obvious he hadn't really expected the project to be quite what it had turned into and he seemed determined to provide a longer, extended version of the very brief 8a map that had been one of the shortest and easiest maps of the beta. In the period of a week he added several new sections to the original beta version and a few subplots. The combat was also fleshed out better than the beta, which only had a handful of Terran Pirates roaming the map, the lowest count in any of the levels at the time. The final version of 8a is the biggest change from the beta to the released game. I don't think people will truly appreciate the map until they see the beta and just how much was added in just 7 busy school days.  
    

* Darth Weasel:

    Did I mention UEd is a bastard? I think so. I like the atmosphere in the caves, of the greenish lighting. Quite spooky. Only the final corridor and elevator shaft are by me, and only then since it leads into my 8b map.



-------------------------
[8b] "The Dead Scorpions"
-------------------------

* Darthweasel:

    I'd call this my first proper SP map, in that it was the first (and only) sp map I've started with a clue about what to do. 5a & 5b were my first SP maps and full of things I hate when I go back and play them. The linearity and the "room-corridor-corridor-room-another room-etc" flow. I went as far in the opposite direction as I could in this map. Your route winds in and out of itself enough to confuse me for a second or two when I play it. I would have liked a little more consistency in the textures used, but, whatever. The idea behind making as much play-time as possible within as small a space as possible was originally trying to avoid UEd's 65536 node limit that I'd already hit twice with my two previous maps which had to be split When circumstance (and by circumstance I mean UEd being a faggot) forced us to cut Waff's cave section into its own map, I got to double the size of this. I can almost hear the groans of players as they realize they went through all that level to finish it 20feet from where they entered it. The room where you pick up the template is prophets, and he done the actors for the cutscene and all the messages. Rest is mine. I got to re-use a room from my own previous SP project that was abandoned after a map and a half, lost because UEd is... oh never mind. See if you notice my Alien3 homage.


* Mr.Prophet:

    This map was a lot like 5c in the sense that it was made last minute and very quickly while being a map not originally part of the overall lineup. Waffnuffly's map was supposed to be much larger than the segment he ended up giving us and the entire planned section of the game was never integrated. Waff's bit ended up becoming 8a, "Beneath the Terraniux" and Darthweasel lead the development of 8b, which would be our "Dead Scorpions" replacement, using other parts of his scrapped Axiom Shift project and new material.
    Odd how all these last minute maps ended up being some of the better ones, 8b is a pretty neat map. Most of the applause goes to Darthweasel for building 85% of the map, the rest was a single section added by myself along with all the message and code console setups as well extended scripted events and enemy placement.
    Some parts of the map...well actually a good deal of it...is very influenced by an Alien 3 type setting, very industrial and very gritty. Darth even added an Alien3 reference to an Easter egg. Both of us liked the film, I think I may have liked it more for more movie reasons and Darth for setting/location reasons, but the inspiration is there.
    Darth produced this map very quickly, and aside from a few minor BSP problems the thing was plugged in comfortably. You have to take on 20 Terrans and a compliment of automated turrets to boot. There are three Scarred One sightings, but other than that combat is a very human vs. human type situation.
    The original map, if Waffnuffly had done it, would have included the segment from 8a as well as a few other interior locations. Several readme's in 7 Bullets speak of a place called "The Pit" which you don't actually see in the game (it is intended for the player to presume it to be behind the locked door in 8a beta that was altered in the final cut, so the whole sequence is never actually seen in game and is probably the biggest Phantom chunk of game info in the entire game of 7 Bullets). The original "control room", which later became the piston moving computer lab I made for 8b, was a much smaller monitor room with the template placed on a table over a glass floor that overlooked the Pit. The idea behind the Pit was that the Terran Pirates had originally used the Pit as both a means of training and entertainment, and a way to punish those who broke Drago's "law". Later, with the addition of captured aliens and Nali placed into the arena, the Pitt would be a much bloodier place.
    The original idea was that when the player snatched the template, Petra or Drago would come into the room through the cutscene and shoot out the glass floor, dropping the player into the Pit. There was going to be a cool Boss Fight sequence here where the Player would have to fight whatever beasts were kept behind the doors, a very Dark Arena situation but with multiple combatants. Petra was also supposed to be fought a second time in this map and killed. Her death scene was later filled in as the jet pilot in the Drago rooftop scenario in 8c. The loss of Waffnuffly's original blueprint as dictated by myself, resulted in Darthweasel's more techish infiltration approach.
    I like Darth's layout especially here because it is a tighter backtrack system that reflects previous interconnected levels like Map 2, the Map5a,b,c maps, and in a certain way map 6. Because the map was last minute and new the original music track didn't quite fit. So Darth found an alternate, more suitable outside umx to provide a gloomy, dark tone to the already menacing heart of the Dead Scorpions.
    This map is probably the most Un-Unreal map we have. Unlike the factory maps from Unreal and RTNP, this place takes on a very human feel to it. In a way 8b is a twisted colony trying to merge Earth Culture with Na Pali in a Hybrid organization. That's why the Pirates call it Home Base, it kinda takes on a familiar symbolic image for a shipwrecked group of misfits on an Alien world.
    "The Dead Scorpions" is the heart of the Pirate maps. It is a very gritty, sci-fi industrial complex that supplies blood to the other vessels keeping the Pirates alive in the last half of 7 Bullets. All the foreshadowing brings the player to this place. It is the only map in the game that has no likeness to anything from Na Pali. That's why the name "Home Base" was so fitting.     

    
--------------------------
[8c] "Unfinished Business"
--------------------------

* Mr.Prophet:

    The segment dubbed "The Dance with Drago" was one of the first scenarios I had for the project. I wanted a boss fight set in a DM like arena with the Terran Pirate leader Drago and I wanted an elaborate death cutscene to follow it in the likeness to the one I did for SkyTown Redux.
    This sequence is more plot thick than gameplay heavy, I was going for story enrichment here. Drago is a lot like The Bishop from Skytown Redux. Both characters perform the same role, they taunt the player along the way with cutscenes and have a distinct identity no other enemy in the game has. Drago has a voice, courtesy of eVOLVE, and really has his own personality. Not even the Scarred One has that much to go with. Even the death of Drago mirrors The Bishop's death scene in Skytown Redux, being knocked off the edge of a high platform (in the case of Drago it was a roof while the Bishop fell down a dock chasm). I always like it when the bad guy falls from extreme heights:)
    I originally wanted to have an additional combat scene after you first fight Drago where his mask is removed and then you have to fight him again. I never did that though since by the time I got to making the bit I was already pressed for time and scrapped the idea. So you never get to see Drago's face, kinda like you never see the face of the masked bad guy in The Road Warrior (which was Drago's inspiration, the likeness is very obvious).
    I mentioned earlier how I felt it was important to get the player to really dislike the Pirates and especially the Drago character. The last 4 maps leading up to this one have had the player see cutscenes building up Drago's villainous personality and all the log entries that paint a pretty ugly picture of the pirates in general. We've all played games where you have to blow away a bunch of people just 'cause they are opposing you in the game for some reason. Something I really liked about Unreal was how the Skaarj become this really nasty race as the game progresses. Feeding of the Unreal vibe once again I did the same with the Human pirates and Drago is the Skaarj equivalent to the Warlord...that full circle image of the bad guy. The warlord had demonic wings and the first encounter pretty much made him look like Satan. Harder to demonize a human in a game since the human enemy is so generic. The fact that Drago has the mask thing going on is really just an age old tactic to portray the unknown evil man. And the voice, oh man did eVOLVE's speech give an edge to this guy. I don't think it would have worked without it.
    I more or less setup the cutscenes to make Drago Jones's polar opposite(or attempted to in my own half assed direction of UT pawns and limited voice selections). The soldier verses the terrorist. The hero versus the villain. eVOLVE's voice gives Drago a cool presence. Nice to have a bad guy who has a personality.


* Waffnuffly:

    I never knew a fighter would explode so much when it bumped into something. But cool nonetheless! Drago getting launched was fucking hilarious, too. "WRAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuurgh......!"


-------------------------
[9] "The Ghost of Oraghar
-------------------------

* Mr.Prophet:
 
    Map 9 is pretty straightforward; you grab some items and fight until one of you dies. The final arena isn't one of the most flashy showdown locations ever made but it serves its purpose. Making the place was simple, a few subtractions, a few added prefabs and presto! Easy bake map. There wasn't a whole lot of time put into this one, the longest thing was preparing the cutscenes the way I wanted them. This one isn't about pretty map stuff, just the fight. I like the way the map blends into the end sequence that loads after, that shift really works nicely.
    Personally, I'm least proud of this Boss fight segment than the others. The first two Scarred One encounters were more interesting, and the other boss creatures/characters were much more menacing. At this point the Scarred One has really spent all the scariness and is now just a loose end. I originally intended for this map to take place in the rain but that proved impossible. Just was a disaster with playability.
    I think of the previous fight with Drago as the end to the Xidia style of 7 Bullets and the fight in this map as the end of the Unreal bit. At the heart of 7 Bullets, that is what Drago and the Scarred One represented, they were the symbols of each heritage forced into a sort of fusion.
    There are a few references in 7 Bullets to the Scarred One being rather demonic, like a undead killing machine. This explains why he had to die with decapitation, everyone knows you can only stop an immortal by removing the head.
    The original last cam shot was different. In the concept of 7 Bullet's original story document The Scarred One doesn't die. After you "defeat" him, a cutscene would show Jones collapse due to a combination of exhaustion and injury, in a pile of all his spent ammo. The Scarred One then turned and left Jones to bleed to death in his spent casings. Then of course the Rescue ending picked up where that left off. The idea behind this ending was that the Scarred One at first was too cool for me to kill off. I was going to have the whole cyborg Skaarj play out a lot more but that didn't happen. Also, if you wanna look in terms of story, Jones losing to the Scarred One was going to tie into a scene that originally appeared in the intro concept where Jones is dying and recites the first 7 Bullets narration before the intro credits role and then starts the game. This was changed in the final version to the intro scene showing bits of the Ending sequence after Jones is healed and makes the final reflection with his 7 Bullets atonement. I chose to go with the final version for three reasons. One, the original idea was way too dramatic for a video game that I had not the talent to pull off with the available tools. Two, It damages the whole video game idea to deny the player a satisfying last duel victory. Three, The final version is a better hybrid of both ideas, the player gets their last kill and the reflection scene plays out in a way that is easier to swallow without rolling your eyes. That and I decided that I wanted to show the USM Ice Raven and a rescue team in the extro to fill up the lacking buddysoldier trend that would have been much weaker without it...and the fact that it allowed for an Unrealish ending.    


----------------
[10] "Departure"
----------------

* Mr.Prophet:

    Every Unreal SP ends the same. You get to some ship and fly away. Seriously, they are all like that. Unreal, RTNP, Unreal 2, ONP, Xidia Gold, Spatial Fear etc. In 7 Bullets I wanted to make it a little different but not totally. You DO fly away in a flyby sequence, but it is a bit more elaborate Stuff happens first, Jones seems dead until your USM buddies come and take you to the Orbit Starship and then there is one last speech dialogue before the ship cut away. Speaking of that cutaway, very inspired from Empire Strikes Back, the whole ship leaving with the protagonist looking out the window. Very bitter sweet ending. This really follows the tradition of Unreal with the player escaping only to find themselves drifting aimlessly in an even smaller prison.  
    People might not pick up on the whole 7 Bullets thing, though if they had paid attention they would know. As I said earlier, it was the idea of atonement, a USM soldier's belief that you had to pay 7 Bullets to God when you die in battle. It isn't a religious thing, it isn't even a spiritual thing. It's a really personal concept, I got the idea from watching a lot of war movies with characters who are stunned by the atrocities they perform in combat. This is all just a subplot to a violent video game, I'm not preaching or anything. But with SP I also think the mappers are required to be storytellers to a certain degree. The concept of paying 7 Bullets is just following through with that general concept of people making peace with their burdens, the last thing I wanted to do was have some hidden meaning or some lame hippie bullshit like that. If you play 7 Bullets a second time, the support with the whole plot concept is there in every map. There are lots of signs:).
    The team credits were done in a way similar to Xidia Gold, only more elaborate. I did the whole map with attach movers and static cams unlike XG where Hourences setup UMS camera systems around a map I constructed. In 7 Bullets nobody really knew UMS except for eVOLVE and he wasn't available so I just used static cams and got all the movement from movers. It really is a lot more tedious than it sounds so people better appreciate it. Darthweasel put together some text textures for the team info stuff using the Fight Club font style I used to make the Intro credits. All in all I think the ending sequence is pretty fitting for the game.


----------------------------
= 7 Bullets Commentary:    =
= The Waffnufflian Version =
----------------------------

    Wow, where to begin? Well, Map 1 is a good start. Let me just say this: when you boot 7B, you don't have to wait through some boring, slow intro scene. Err, well, there is an intro, but the upbeat music makes it all like "WOW I AM ABOUT TO PLAY 7 BULLETS WOOOOOOOT" so the "slow and boring" is nullified. So anyway, you get through the mini credits scene showing Jones' quarters, which look very nice for quarters I guess, and then onto the main game. A USM fighter flies up to the ISV-Kran's bridge and blows the everliving shit out of some poor Skaarj bastard. Then you get chucked out and the fighter leaves.

    Now you are in the Kran. Oh, no big deal, it's just the Kran, right? HAHAHAHA! WROOOOOOOOOONG. There is more to it than that. One: it's been overrun and assimilated by the Skaarj. Two: there are no lights. You heard right None. Just a few areas with some foggy glow, but other than that you are in pitch-blackness. Yeah. I was scared too. Fucking pupae bitches are everywhere. I cursed Proph's name every time one burst through a vent into my face, nearly causing me to throw my cordless mouse across the room. Every single time.

    And I could go into detail about every single map, but seeing as today is Thursday and 7B was due out yesterday, I kinda have to hurry up. So I'll say this: I found Proph's maps the scariest, but Darthweasel's maps the most atmospheric. The only problem I had with his Nali stuff was the question of "what's the purpose of this being here?" I kinda had trouble at times understanding WHY the Nali built all that stuff beneath Vandora's temple. And some AmbModern sounds used for tarydium crystals seemed off. But it all looked and played well, so a few minor plot hole things are excusable. I also found Vandora to be one of the coolest maps in the pack for its enemy usage and the assimilated feel. And, of course, the spinner queen was totally awesome.

    Noork is also well done and is good lead-in to the pirate base. Ah ha, now we are on to my map! :D Naturally I have more to talk about for this since I made it, and Proph told me to mention how absolutely AWFUL the map was in beta stage (not his exact words, but I don't think he'd disagree!). To give you an idea how awful it was, the map ended with a makeshift Terraniux cave at the end of the long bent cave (with the ladder and Jozak's log book). Yep. It ended there with the up elevator. There was no subplot. Very few pirates. No storeroom. No Jonas. No SO encounter. A giant HOM in the t-cave. It was really bad. Fortunately, I managed to kick myself in the face several times and, within three weeks, added everything you see in it today, including the other pirates. The only things I didn't do were the prison, the exit elevator and exit room, some of the enemy/item placement, Redrickson's last log, all of Jonas' logs, all the prison logs except Grierson's, and some of the texturing. Proph did all of that stuff aside from the level exit stuff, which Darth made. I also fixed up the prison a bit because Proph screwed some simple things that caused a huge BSP hole. :P That's all taken care of now. Well, one hole remains, but its hardly noticeable. It still pisses me off. It's kinda like a scar UED left in there solely to taunt me I can feel Redrickson's pain....

    And, being a batshit insane fool, I had to incorporate more than too many eastereggs. One of them is blatantly obvious, and credit for it goes to System Shock 2. Other eastereggs are more difficult to find, but if you find one of Chef's cousins, remember: the project is called SEVEN Bullets. That's all I'll say. :P

    One thing I didn't get to do, though, was this huge intricate underground network system thing, centered around a huge ring structure (hollow) that would be sort of like a main supply transport hub with all the main arteries of the base connected to it. It would be filled with supplies and vehicles, and could have even been a site for a SO encounter. But the SO encounter I thought up, the current one (made by Proph), worked out much better, even if I still think that Forlorn.umx would have been the superior music choice for it. I even still have the geometry for the old stuff, but it never made it into the pack due to the new layout (which is much better and ended up being easier to modify/complete). Overall, that map came a long way after the beta. It just took some serious inspiration for me to feel really compelled to bring my map up to the right standard. Proph's and Darth's work did that for me. Thank God I could be arsed to play that beta, even if I was busy with school. :) Oh and one more thing before I finish this up: The room in my credits section is what my map looked like before the beta. Well, it actually looked WORSE than that. Yeah. No decorations at all. Just... blandness. And there wasn't much more to the map than that room either. So it really has come a long way.

    The actual pirate base is stunningly detailed. I can't believe how much geometric stuff Darth and Proph crammed into it. It is a really amazing map. The fights rocked, as did the scripted scenes of the SO kicking ass. Fighting Drago's last dudes was a bitch, but very doable. And Drago himself was a REAL bitch, but also doable. Petra met her end in a rather hilarious way. The final SO fight was kickass. The arena was really cool; I'd never have expected jet fuel to do so much damage. :D But apparently it really CAN blow the absolute SHIT out of an entire rooftop area. Pure awesome. The final credits were good too; especially the conclusion of Jones' military career with the last line in his "Seven Bullets..." motif. Very subtle, yet effective.

    All in all, I'd say that Seven Bullets is possibly the best project I have ever had the opportunity to work on and contribute to, and I'm incredibly proud to have been a part of it. My only regret is that I didn't use ALL the time I had early on to make my map even better than it is now. But the past cannot be undone, and as the pack stands now, I think that all of us team members worked to do the project justice. Proph deserves it; he put more work into it than anyone else, except maybe Darth, who obviously poured loads of time into his contributions, including his XSM map. Oh! How could I forget! XSM is AWESOME! Absolutely BRILLIANT. I've never liked Deathmatch so much. XSM got me into it. I just hope that we can whip up a mutator to replace Unreal1 weapons with XSM ones. Zynthetic said it should be easy, so.. XSM Unreal, here I come! :D

    Thanks for reading my poorly-written, incredibly rushed commentary that probably doesn't really tell you much more than you already knew / cared to know. You might win a prize. But don't count on it.


                -- Lord Waffnuffly "War Bonnet" Letz

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