The story of Getherto

Basic information

Started: February 11th, 2006 (the day after DoomRecall was released, or even the same day)
Released: April 1st, 2006 (wasn't intentional ;-))

When Liandri corporation opened 'JAR-34' arena (Just Another Rankin - 34th industrial in its possession), no one could expect that players would name the arena on their own. Liandri chose an interesting man to make an arena keeper. Merty Getherto, former gardener and sprayer, surely imprinted his individuality to the face of the arena. Nobody calls it by other name but 'The Getherto'. And he is also funny guy, really. Even Malcolm likes talking with him for a few minutes before he enters another match to win.

Links:
Download from BU FileWorks Info on Mapraider
Release thread on Atari
Alpha/Beta thread on Atari

Before I opened Unreal Editor

Real world provides many interesting shapes all around. I'm walking the street and suddenly I realize: "Whaw – such a cool brushwork!" It's serious Unreal deformation – I know. ;-) Getherto started in a city center near my job. I will give you two pictures of place, that inspired me for a central Getherto area. (source)

I spend one cool minute every day on those transporters – watching girls and so. ;-) I knew, that I want this area from "Polus City Center" in Getherto. Now I needed another area for a100 and for DD. I decided for a100 in kinda dead-end (not narrow one, just at the end of the room) and for DD in overconnected area that is easy to attack.

Now a little excerpt from provided readme file:

Foliage on the map was planned from the start - because there is a lot of plants in aforementioned shopping centre. :-) Later the idea of gardener arose (thanks to JP-Studios) and soon after that Getherto became its surename. Before that Getherto was just the word "Together" with shifted letters, because our shopping park have a name Polus what is shifted "spolu" and that means "together" in Slovak. :-) In fact, Getherto was the first sure thing about this map. Getherto supposed to be Marty originaly, but this was changed because of the "GetHerTo Me(rty)" writing on the wall.

Last thing I knew before I started with the map was, that I would have to tweak the scale and remove most of the barriers of course. I also never even thought about those moving transporters (jeezu, Conveyor! no no). I had some scale experiences (bad mostly) from my first map and so I thought I was prepared for the work. And I started with paper and a100 room attached to the central area.

a100 room

I'm always working on some idea with its implementation. (That's also the way I'm writing code in work, because I am good in refactoring, so I dare to change it when needed.) So there was only some basic shape of the room with two hallways leading back to the central area on my paper. Than I opened the UEd and started to work. I tried to use 2D Shape editor, but after a few minutes I decided to create room with more vertex-edited boxes – it's much more flexible.

I was influenced by Rankin a lot on this part of map – and it shows. I borrowed ligths, whole lift shaft and also some other decos. This room hadn't that platform with health pack at its end but one mate from Slovak community recommended such an addition and it works very well now. I also broke lower hallway leading to central room and added bio-gun room. Simply – two long corridors one above the other didn't feel right and there are few long lines of sight anyway.

Room was textured with different brick than Rankin from nice Hourences' IndusX package. I tried to supress the Rankinish feel a little but then I realized that I don't wanna mix smeshes with another set so I just let it be.

Central room

Central room was most problematic from all rooms. Imagine this room without red brick partitioning walls and without bridge above the splash water and you get the original shape. That wasn't good. It was way too open. I lowered a50 area a little to bring some variety to the upper level height and that splash canal was put there from the same reason. I added two big partitioning walls and major problem was fixed. But still the ramp was too long. I didn't want to break it into two but I needed to add something to break the monotony. That's that small wall in the middle. Now there was still something missing and it was that bridge. It's just another idea from Rankin and this touch (with another wall covering the bridge from the rocket side) was exactly what was needed for this room. It added some risky place how to control two healths and also the rocket and still it wasn't easy camp place. It also added connectivity to a100 room that was needed somewhere there and another way to DD room too.

Originaly there was a rocket on the mini's spot and LG down where the rocket is now. I wanted to place LG into the place where it can't be effective immediately. However I decided to move those three weapons where they are now after some voices. LG near flak is kinda powerful but they are not so close and also not grabbed at once in all cases. Link and bio were swapped too initially. There were some connectivity problem near rocket and I added jump pad to this place. You cannot get so quickly from the place under the a50 up to this shield, but you know – overconnected map is also a bad thing. There simply must be some places where enemy has advantage and you can't get to it so fast otherwise there would be no place for your prediction.

I chose to use another texture from IndusX pack now. That broke the consistency a little but it gave every area its special feel. It could be better to use some sets of textures on different height levels or I could use another rule. But finally I chose room as a key for a main texture. This room is also lit much brighter and much more with blue lights.

DD room

DD room was simply made in the editor with no special plans before. I just wanted a room for DD with idea of risk because of the lot of the connectivity. So I put DD down (down is always more risky) and added a higher place around. There are couple of ways from the central room. The left lower one is split into two (another Rankin trick) and both leads to DD immediately with one of them guiding you to the shock too. Upper left way is leading to the higher platform where you can control the rest of the room but DD itself only partially. There is a lot of danger near DD anyway so I didn't feel necessary to add another open way to attack it.

As I started to create this room I immediately visualized it as a z-axis "full of flying combos" room. It had a jumppad to the upper platform originaly and it became a recall of DD room in Campgrounds – in its twisted and inverted way. However... jumppad didn't allowed to jump to the ledge above the shock court and so showed itself as very limited. It was replaced with a lift and that gave the room the proper feel. I added some stuff to the back ledge to make it more interesting, added plank to the upper platform and with big opening to the central room, door from the minigun and another entrance from the bridge cutting under the central room ramp – it was done. A lot of entrances, some means to jump to the DD directly from central room and one of the power weapons nearby promised hard combats – and now I know that this promise was fulfilled.

I chose another grey/brown toned texture from IndusX package for this room and also experimented a lot with that tree gate on the upper platform. Maybe it was a bad idea however I still can use Merty Getherto – the gardener guy – as my alibi. He is freak into anything that grows! :-)

Gameplay aspects

I see myself as very sensitive to input from players. That's why I test the maps quite a lot. Of course there are points I just throw away immediately but there are other ones (especially from some people) that make me thinking a lot. After all I have my own head but my pride is driven by gameplay quality of the final map more than by the mere fact that it was someone else who gave me great suggestion how to improve it. I don't like to go too far behind decent visuals because I'm not an artist and I'm not so patient when it comes to modelling and another bunch of things I don't handle so good. Gameplay interests me most.

Power-up placement is quite traditional and it ensures very good flow – yet still there is risk involved – espcially in case of a100 and DD. I also added ammo near corresponding weapon, so nothing special with this. But I cared a lot to spread the rest nicely with some small awards (like a bunch of vials) on places where you don't have reason to go otherwise. I was really surprised how much are all those ledges used by TAM players just because they provide unexpected camping site (for a while). Many of those places are accessible by dodge ramps. I made a lot of those ramps much easier since initial versions because I know that you simply don't have ideal position in the middle of the fight for all trick jumps.

T2A said in a betatest forum thread that the connectivity relies on a dodge ramps a lot. I revisited the paths but in that moment I was able to change only one slope dodge to normal ramp – the one leading to the three vials leading to flak in the a100 room. It was nice touch but no other dodge ramp wanted to be changed. However there are many ways even without dodge ramps. I think that Rankin without ramps is crippled much more than Getherto without them. There are also quite extensive lines of sight (few are more than 4000uu), but most of them was quite narrow and even big a100 room is broken a lot by means of platforms and pillars. So much for the layout.

AVA touches and beta testing

What I learned