Bear's BTMappack "A Mappers Adventure": BTMappackT2-b1

After several months of.....uhhhh....struggle I am finally close to being able to release a version of the BTMappack for Tribes 2. It has not been an easy process to get maps that were originally built for Legends to run in Tribes 2. While the engines share a common heritage the differences between the two games made the task of moving maps from a newer version of the engine to an older one quite the PITA. Thankfully there more similarities between Legends and Tribes 2 than between Legends and Tribes 1 so even though it was a time consuming task...it was doable.

The first obvious issues were related to the differences in scale between the two games. Legends uses a player that is "larger" than the scale used for the player in Tribes 2. At this point the maps in this first version are tending towards the larger scale used in Legends. While this may be "incorrect" for Tribes 2 I am liking the effect of spaciousness it gives the maps when played in Tribes 2. I will see how I feel about this after a bit of real play testing. Perhaps they will get adjusted down later.

The next major issue I ran in to was, unfortunately, for whatever reason many of the original models used in the original Legends version of the BTMappack would not work in Tribes 2. I had hoped to bring these interiors directly into the Tribes 2 version of the BTMappack. These models were created by a really great guy, donnyKrun, who contributed generously of his time during the initial creation phase of the Legends version of the BTMappack. Without his efforts many of the maps included in the Legends version of the BTMappack would not have been possible. I had to completely remake all of the affected models which caused the time required to reach this point to increase dramatically. (many thanks to donnyKrun BTW)

Additional issues involved checking the origins of various textures used in models and terrains to assure that they were free to use for projects like this and the absolutely horrid control over lighting in Tribes2 when compared to Legends.

I am near finishing this first release. The maps are basically done and all that remains is to go through each map a bit more carefully and clean up any missed items or mistakes. This first release IS what I consider a "beta" release. That means I do recognize there are other issues that will have to be cleaned up over a longer period of time. Since Tribes 2 (and TribesNext) does not support client downloading I thought I should get a beta version into players hands for more general testing. Future releases will change and replace this beta version but it will be a while before another release comes along.

While I do recognize these maps needs more tweaking to be called complete they are playable as is. This beta version is near ready and a release should happen in the next couple of weeks or so from the date of this post. I will announce the actual release on the TribesNext forums.

The initial beta release of this mappack includes the following maps: