09.12.99

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Title                   : Mel Soaring 3: Tomb of the Makron God
BSP Name                : alk04.bsp
Author                  : Shaun Ross aka [Kona]
Release Date            : December 1999
Email Address           : alkali@ihug.co.nz
Home Page               : http://render-seed.cjb.net

			  Ethereal Hell: SP Map Reviews
			  http://etherealhell.cjb.net
			
  
Map Description         : Control galactic villain Mel Soaring smash his way into the great
			  Strogg palace of LLallik and destroy the tomb of the Makron God.
			  This level is more Quake than Quake2 - dark, spooky and atmospheric
			  with all new textures.

Storyline               : Your name is Mel Soaring. A couple of years ago you stole a pod and
			  escaped Earth where you were wanted for the murder of Commander Tokay
			  and one of histories greatest hero's, the man who defeated Makron.
			  Since then you have lived on a planet named Meeylark with a small
			  population of Iron Maiden. Having defeated Meeylark's ruler they took
			  your side now that you had the power. You have fought off 
			  the ravages of the Strogg, Humans and even some unknown race of alien
			  that you recently discovered, which the Humans are calling Xen.
			  Every few months a starship will fly by and perhaps even try to land
			  on your planet, or an airstrike will try to get close enough to cause
			  some damage. After much planning you have decided to hit them back -
			  both the Human's and Strogg. Your plan is not to win a war on your own,
			  or even help win - it is to simply mark your name in history. After
			  murdering one of the highest ranked men on Earth, and the living legend
			  Private Bitterman, you have already become the greatest villain in 				  history. Now it is time to hit the Strogg and become their worst 				  nightmare too...

			  After much thought between you and the Iron Maiden, you come up with a 
			  great plan. On a planet named Llallik there is a great palace which
			  stores the dead bodies of past Strogg leaders. Most importantly, 
		    	  right in the heart of this palace lies the tomb of the Makron God who 			  was defeated by the very man you murdered two years ago. Because of the 			  war, there are not many Strogg left to guard this palace, therefore you 			  are to enter alone, kill everything in your path until you reach the 				  great tombstone. There you will set a bomb and escape!
			  
			  In doing so you will destroy what is probably the most important 
			  palace of the Strogg race, and perhaps even earn your name in both
			  Human and Strogg history books as the greatest villain of the great
			  war...
			  
			  
Other maps by Author	: Dec 99 - On A Dreary Night (Quake2 Deathmatch)
			  Nov 99 - Pillars of Pain (Half-Life)
			  Oct 99 - Mel Soaring 2 - Star Rancor (Half-Life)
			  Sep 99 - Mel Soaring - Hear Me Roar (Quake2)
			  Mid 98 - The Alkado Adventure (Quake Partial Conversion)

Other Info		: Please email me if you liked this level. 

			  Warning: At the console there will be a long list of errors. They won't
			  make much sense unless your a mapper. These have absolutely no effect 			  on on the level and should be ignored. They are simply entities that Q2 			  does not recognise (Half-Life entities that weren't washed away 			  	  originally... see below)

			  I was halfway through Mel Soaring 3 and was sick of it, I liked Q2 
			  designing better. Therefore, I started work on a small Quake style
			  level for Half-Life. But I got bored with it when it came to scripting
			  and gameplay. Compared to Quake and Q2, the Half-Life monsters 
			  simply are not enjoyable enough to fight (except for the human grunt).
			  So over halfway through 'On A Dreary Night' I stopped working on it. 				  Here two excellent levels almost complete... after much thought about
			  how I could convert them to a different game, it just wasn't going to 			  work so eventually I just left them alone and started up this level for
			  Quake 2 - my favourite game :)
			  I had no idea of what the theme of this level would be. And with no
			  ideas on layout or design I just started making a level.				  	  However, then I struck a new idea... how about a Strogg graveyard :P
			  With this idea I was able to, with a little work, convert the Half-Life
			  level 'On A Dreary Night' to work with Quake2! Many of the textures 				  were replaced and more detail was added.
				
			  This was level was halfway done using Half-Life, and already had some
			  monsters present. When I converted it to Q2 all monsters were taken 				  out. I finished the level, then the last thing I went to do was put the
			  Q2 monsters in it. But to my surprise (and horror) the Q2 entities are
			  MUCH smaller than Half-Life's! Sadly I did not notice it without 				  monsters running around, but half of this level ended up being much
			  too big! So I spent many hours pretty much rebuilding alot of it so it
			  isn't like your a Smurf. Unfortunately parts are still too big, but 
			  I fixed most of it.


Additional Thanks to    : Ben Morris for Worldcraft, ID Software for Quake 
			  Ty Matthews for Wally
			  Jay Aiken (jaaiken@ibm.net) for beta-testing
			  Brian Griffith (http://grinreaper.gamedesign.net) for beta-testing
			  OgrO_FiX (aka FragOnizer) for his textures
				available at http://www.fondation.com/pandemonium
			  Christopher Buecheler of The Texture Studio - 							http://www.planethalflife.com/studio/ for his textures
			  Iikka "Fingers" Keranen - www.planetquake.com/ikq/
				for his textures, and of course his incredible levels
			  J.F Gustafsson for his great levels too


================================================================

* Installation *
Unzip into the Quake2 Directory, a directory will be created called alk04. Then either run alk04bat (medium skill) or type
quake2 +set game alk04 +map alk04 +set skill #

* Play Information *

Game                    : Quake 2
Single Player           : Yes
Cooperative Play        : Is there a nightmare skill level? NO
Deathmatch Play         : There is a dm version of the large and vertical tomb section (near the 			  end). It is named 'On A Dreary Night' (alk04dm.zip)
Difficulty Settings     : Easy-93  Medium-120  Hard-131
			  
* MAP Information *

Solids			: 1736
Faces			: 10072
PointEntities		: 718
SolidEntities		: 113
New Textures            : All new (some by me, the rest by Ogro, Chris or Fingers - see above)
New Enemies/Sounds      : Mostly new ambient sounds used
New Weapons/Quakec	: No

* Construction *

Base                    : From Scratch
Construction Time       : Started 25.11.99, finished 05.12.99
Build programs          : Qbsp3, Qvis3, Qrad3
Build Time              : QBSP3 - 36 sec
			  QVIS3 - 2579sec/43min (level 4)
			  QRAD3 - 2458sec/41min (-extra)		  
			  Total - 1.4hrs (strange... my last level took 14 hrs!)
Compile machine         : P3 450mhz, 128mb RAM, Riva TNT2
Editor used             : Worldcraft 1.6a
Known Bugs              : 	  

* Copyright / Permissions *

You may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels!
You may distribute this BSP in any electronic format (BBS, Internet,
PC/Game Mag cover-CD, etc) but you MUST inform me before you do this.