About Me-Mapping History
I've been mapping for a few years now, I think maybe four or five. The game I got started mapping in was Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy from Lucasarts and I've been with the game since the day it came out. No other game in my collection has been played as much as Academy. I've been interested in Star Wars for a very long time, including the locations. Some people watch the movies over and over again because they like them. I watch them for referance material for future maps. I'm always on the lookout for that perfect redwood tree for Endor, the best adobe stone wall texture for Tatooine or a good window for Theed.
My first map was of the rebels attack on the first Deathstar. The map contained X wings and Ties, and about a million turbo lasers. It was great fun to see how long one could survive out there before getting shot down. The next few maps I did were huge like Deathstar Attack and contained vehicles. It wasn't until I discovered Movie Battles 2 that I started to make smaller maps.
At the time of my arrival into Movie Battles, the mod had just entered build 15. It wasn't until build 16 that I constructed my first siege map: Naboo Theed. After the second version released; Theed Streets, the public started taking a bigger interest in my work. Mostly it was due to the demand of new maps, as build 16 only had four offical maps.
After Theed, following in rapid succession came Deathstar Rescue, a partered map by myself and another mapper known as Eike Legion. Soon afterwards, a project I had been working on the side released; the Geonosis Arena.
After Arena released and the various fixing and upgrading to the map was finished, I started on my seventh for JA; Echo Base from the Empire Strikes Back. On the day the map was to release, Build 17 finally released and with it came alot of new standards for maps such as Full Authentic mode.
Around this time, Nut, one of the MBII team members, preposed the prospect of a community map pack, as interest in making MB2 maps was rising. Being a mapper in the CMP meant your level was tested on a dedicated server, recieved feedback, and suggestions. The CMP brought together many maps into one pack and would see three releases in the first version.
After the release of CMP 1, I went back to Streets of Theed to upgrade it to be playable in build 17. What I thought would take a few weeks stretched into six months as I redid, tweaked and rebuilt much of the map. The new Theed finally released on March 12th 2006 for my 18th birthday.
My final map for Jedi Academy was Geonisis Canyons, based off the location from the PC/Xbox game; Republic Commando. Of all my maps, this was the first to use external scripting to control all the flying gunships and bomb countdown objective. Geonosis Canyons first released on December 25th 2005 as a Christmas gift to the MBII community.
Currently I am helping co-lead a Star Wars mod called The New Era. The mod makes use of the source engine that powers games like Half-Life 2, Counter Strike Source and Day of Defeat.
