===========================================================================
Title                   : Battery Acid
Filename                : jjj2_magnetbox.bsp
Release date            : 2021-01-21
Author                  : Magnetbox
Email Address           :
Other Files By Author   : xmj21_magnetbox.bsp

Misc. Author Info       : https://magnetbox.bandcamp.com
                          https://soundcloud.com/magnetbox
                          https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZwbkNIeWVUG6JmnfTi95Aw

Description             : Tribute to idBase and other base types from the 1990s up to the 2010s. Although this was not a rule of the jam, play is (almost completely--there is about a 64-qu higher sky in two of the 8 sub-cubes) constrained to a 1024^3 box. Original music and a couple of new sound effects included (reactor startup noise/hum, reactor announcements). Requires Alkaline v1.1 to play properly.

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* What is included *

New levels              : Yes
Sounds                  : Yes - sound/mgntbx/reactor1.wav, sound/mgntbx/reactor2.wav, sound/mgntbx/pulse4.wav, sound/mgntbx/pulse5.wav
Music                   : Yes - music/track115.mp3
Graphics                : WADs used--prototypes, jf2, id1
Other                   : No
Other files required    : No


* Play Information *

Single Player           : Designed for
Cooperative 2-4 Player  : Yes
Deathmatch 2-4 Player   : Yes
Difficulty Settings     : Yes


* Construction *

Base                    : New from scratch
Build Time              : ~ 3 weeks
Editor(s) used          : Trenchbroom
Known Bugs              : None known
May Not Run With        : Unknown
Tested With             : FTE 1.07, Quakespasm, Quakespasm-Spiked


* Thank You *

id Software             : Making Quake
Greenwood               : Running the jam / administering the creation of Alkaline
dumptruck_ds            : Making Quake mapping accessible to intimidated newcomers
Ijed                    : Warp Spasm (especially Bile Plant) and Rubicon Rumble Pack (especially Telefragged)
Trent Reznor (NIN)      : Creating the AtMoSpHeRe
Ionous                  : Giving the idea of doing an 8-box 1024^3 map
Playtesters             : DragonsForLunch, Riccardoman


* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors MAY use the contents of this file as a base for
modification or reuse.  Permissions have been obtained from original 
authors for any of their resources modified or included in this file.

You MAY distribute this file, provided you include this text file, with
no modifications.  You may distribute this file in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file 
intact.  I have received permission from the original authors of any
modified or included content in this file to allow further distribution.



* Mapper's Notes *

This map grew out of music that I wrote rather than the other way around. The music you hear in the level was originally my attempt at writing a full, uptempo Nine Inch Nails-style song. I had been listening to a lot of "Pretty Hate Machine" in the late fall of 2021, and I was going through a tough time. (Then again, in the fall/winter of 2021, who wasn't going through a tough time?)

In general, my musical taste tends toward the relaxing and innocuously depressive. The groups that have popped into your head from that description are probably bang on the mark: elder-millennial, dads-without-kids music.

So, given my usual taste, it was worth noting that suddenly, Trent Reznor's music and lyrics were speaking to me in a way that the others had not been. Similar to a realization I came to several years ago, that if I started buying random stuff on Amazon I needed to take stock of whether I was depressed, I now realized that if I was unexpectedly on NIN's wavelength, then maybe I needed to take stock of whether I was angry and dissatisfied with my life. 

Back to the composition of the song: I got the basic riff finished and, happy with it, I started thinking about adding vocals. But my voice has no grit; I sound like Ben Gibbard when I sing (and this is a fact that I do not enjoy). I also need pitch-correction to reach any semblance of listenability. For those reasons, I believe that I am not well-suited to singing a NIN-style song. If that does not convince you, then consider the irony of a milquetoast man who is pushing forty, singing "Head like a hole! / Black as your soul! / I'd rather DIE / than give you control!" as he drives to his office job. That is practically a scene from a low-effort comedy movie. Could I record myself singing a song like that sincerely, while existing in real life as a hack screenwriter's caricature, and still be able to make eye contact with myself in the mirror? I could not.

Even so, the feelings that had led to writing the song were valid, in the way that all feelings are valid. At the time I felt like personal and world events had manifested in the form of an almost tangible, corrosive goo, and the goo now covered everything in my life: cars, houses, the trees, the sky. The lighting in my bare-bulbed apartment, my furniture, the "done" sound on my microwave. My decisions, my facial expressions, the tone of my voice. My default mood had become simply "agitated." Phone calls with family members turned unpleasant midway through for no reason. Afterward I'd hang up and my annoyance would quickly sublimate into shame. I became aware that I had accumulated a kind of spiritual gravity, and as a result, I was dragging people close to me down.

But none of these emotions I felt I could capture in lyrics for the song I was writing. Any line--any word--that I wrote down looked corny, just visual proof of my giftlessness, and this was the point at which the song began to stagnate. I didn't want to trash the song, but nothing was coming to me that would evolve either the lyrics or the melody. I'd start writing a new section, then think "This is just filler until we get back to the main riff." 

But the main riff, I realized, looped very nicely, since I usually try to come up with the next part of a song by listening to the present part over and over. At some point, it occurred to me that it would make decent background music for a Quake map. Such a map would have to be one in which you were kicking a lot of ass, quickly.

By then I was already well into making my first map, the Xmas Jam 2021 map "Midnight Mass," which I'd had to pare down from a very high concept to a much more doable final product. The lesson I was quickly learning was: mapping is easy to get into, but hard to do well. And it is harder still to create a thrilling experience. The prospect of making another map in the middle of making Midnight Mass wasn't appealing.

But then I finished Midnight Mass and it was released, and the high of simply watching people play my map was enough to make me look again at Greenwood's call for submissions to the January Jump Jam. I had made a lot of mistakes making Midnight Mass, and the worst ones, in my opinion, were that I hadn't spent enough time on the lighting and I hadn't gotten anyone to play test the map. Also I didn't set wait to -1 on a lot of buttons, which confused players.

So I resolved to make a map very different from Midnight Mass, one that was 1) modular, so I could prematurely end it if I ran out of time, 2) simpler in terms of architecture, and 3) more thematically and visually uniform. I wanted to do a base map to contrast the castle/church of Midnight Mass, and I considered using Makkon's tech textures for this one, but I'd sort of abused Makkon's non-tech textures and made them look bad in Midnight Mass, so I figured I'd cool it and try using less advanced textures. Also, no more than 2 sets (not counting prototypes, which is great for blocking out).

Makkon's new tech textures are beautiful, and remind me of some kind of futuristic nuclear power station. Since my mapping skill is not advanced, I figured I'd regress my level's theme to an older technology, to match myself metaphorically. 

I recently played Ijed's "Warp Spasm" and had been particularly blown away by map warpb, "Bile Plant." That map has one of the most oppressive environments I've ever seen in Quake--the cloudy sky, with stars still visible, made one feel more insignificant than if the sky had been completely cloudy. The brushwork, mostly rusted-out metal with vats of what I assume is bile, combined with the environmental green fog, made everything seem poisonous. That, as well as what Ijed described as "attrition gameplay" and the music by Andrew Lagowski/Legion ("Premodial" is the track title), gave the impression that you were an unwelcome annoyance to some enormous, industrial evil.

Around the same time as I was playing Warp Spasm, Ionous released a map for the Xmas Jam 2021 that cut the 1024^3 box into eight 512^3 cubes. His effort led to a claustrophobic, labyrinthine level with tons of enemies and secrets. Compared to a lot of his other maps, which have often been large, bordering on "colossal" in scale, it was both an interesting departure and inspiring. Also, I noticed, modular.

So, if I couldn't be as advanced as a nuclear power plant deserving of Makkon tech textures, and I didn't want to just do a pale imitation of the mechanical map warpb, then I'd settle for something else. Technology-wise, an almost quaint and old-hat technology is batteries. So thematically, I ended up thinking of the map as a big battery, where you'd start at the bottom, knee-deep in the "corrosive goo" of battery acid. Well--there was my title. A quick search on Quaddicted revealed that, surprisingly, "Battery Acid" hadn't been used as a title before. 

And if I constrained myself to a 1024^3 box, even if the jam did not call for it, then the self-imposed limit would prevent level design scope-creep, and cutting it into eight 512^3 cubes made it de facto modular--I could just make whatever box I was working on the "end" if I ran out of time and call it a day/jam. I wouldn't make it claustrophobic and highly interconnected like Microcosmosophy II, though--I'd do pretty much just eight hollow boxes with one entrance and one exit apiece. Further, sticking with jf2/id1 textures would prevent visual scope-creep, and this time I'd do lighting along the way, rather than rushed at the end, to make it less ugly. And the penultimate sub-cube would have a NIN logo, just to pay tribute to the inspiration the music had given me.

The map is still a little on the overbright side, but I added some atmospherics that I felt were a marked improvement over Midnight Mass: the brownish-yellow fog is just enough to spice up the limited view distance of ~887 qu, and the "god rays" I scripted in cube 5 (the "choose 3 buttons" box), combined with the sound effects I made, gave it a fun atmosphere, I think. The sound effects I made in Logic Pro using Native Instruments' Massive plug-in, and for the vocals, I used the "SAM" voice in Plogue's Chipspeech plug-in.

The gameplay was a bit hard to get close to where I wanted it, but I was aiming for it to be emergent from the music: you were facing a lot of enemies, and you were circle-strafing the hell out of them, but you were also strapped with ammo and so the balance of power favored you. I suppose that it was my way of forcing a bit of metaphorical control over my life, which lately seemed so not-controllable in new and frightening ways. 

I think the box I'm most proud of gameplay-wise is box 3, where you have two ways of fighting: you can circle strafe around 2 axes, one horizontal and one vertical, or you can hide behind the pillar on the lower level and spam the "push enemies onto the spikes" button.

The box I'm least proud of is the final one. I just can't think up a great ending to a map yet.

Anyway, if you've read all this, you've truly indulged me, even more than if you played the map. I am by no means an advanced mapper, or even an experienced one, so I'm not entitled to give advice with any authority. Still, I hope that this gives some insight or inspiration to anyone who maps, or who wants to map. And if that's you--look up dumptruck's tutorial videos. He did a very generous thing, making Quake mapping accessible to newcomers, and all the info you need to get started is there. 

I found this mapping jam to be very therapeutic and I believe I succeeded in creating an environment that represented my state of mind at the time. I approach mapping the same way I approach any art I work at: if it's not communicating something I'm feeling, then it isn't really doing much of anything. And also, you must treat the audience as a friend (Jonathan Franzen says this). In this case, a friend whom you want to challenge and thrill. I hope that you felt challenged and, at moments, mildly thrilled.

Thanks again, and I'll see you at the next map.

-Magnetbox
2022-01-15