BlueIce Twilight

Author

Szico VII

Story

It is night time on a vast snowy plain. The barely audible squeaks and shuffles of nocturnal creatures going about the nightly business of surviving are the only sounds breaking the heavy silence. On all sides the plain is surrounded by mountains, their icy peaks glowing hauntingly in the moons cold reflected light. The plain is flat, and immaculately white, only the rare track of an animal disturbing the perfectly smooth surface. A perfectly clear sky hangs above the scene, an untold number of stars casting their pinpricks of light onto the planet, under the watchful eye of the ice blue moon. However, despite the clear sky and near silence on the plain, the atmosphere is far from a serene one. The air is dense with apprehension. It is as if the entire planet has taken a deep inward breath, as if every mountain, creature and tree on it is waiting. And have been waiting a long time. Suddenly a blue light appears above the mountains, moving ever more quickly towards the plain. It is immediately followed by another light, orange and heading on exactly the same path. They can already be heard, two engines of slightly different pitches, both whining and straining as the ships hurtling towards the planet try to outrace each other. The nature of the race is not clear, until a bright red bolt comes flying past the first ship and into the ground, the first ship only just moving out of the way in time to avoid having one of its wings ripped away.

Inside the cockpit of the first ship is a man in a simple robe. Far from looking panicked by his pursuer, and the alarm sirens around him signalling the damage already done to the ship, he has his eyes closed and a look of absolute concentration and focus is upon his face. A bladeless hilt on his belt confirms the profession that his ability to dodge the laser bolts flying past suggests. The Jedi guides the ship close to the ground and speeds parallel to it, close enough that the movement of the air around his ship kicks up a spray of snow around it. The movements of the ship are precise and smooth as it evades each potentially lethal bolt. The mans eyes open briefly to assess the distance of the oncoming mountain range, and when he closes his eyes again there is a clear sense of urgency in his expression. he looks desperately as if he is trying to remember something, his eyelids now flickering as his eyes move rapidly behind them.

The mountain range speeds ever closer, with neither ship slowing down. No through it is available, even for the most skilful Jedi pilot. It is a wall of ice and stone waiting expectantly for its victims. The Jedi's ship adjusts direction slightly to point towards the base of the nearest mountain, and bears down, only twitching off course ocassionally to allow each laser to fly past. Just before it flies into the mountain, inside the cockpit the Jedi's face breaks into a smile, eyes still shut, and as he turns the ship sharply upwards, for a brief second his expression changes to a grimace of extreme effort and concentration. In that moment, the pursuing ship fires a single bolt before veering wildly and slamming into the mountain, vaporised instantly. The Jedi moves to dodge the bolt just a second too late, the supreme effort taken to dominate the pursuers mind clearly having an effect on his reactions. The outer half of his left wing is sheared off and falls away into the mountains.

Struggling to maintain control of the ship, the Jedi scans the mountain range for a place to land. As the ships altitude starts dropping sharply, the Jedi spots a small gap in the mountains ahead. He has no choice but to aim for it and hope it contains a suitable crash landing site, and steers the ship towards it, fighting to keep it on course. The struggling ship just manages to clear the last mountain peak before the break in the range, and as the pilot looks ahead of him his jaw drops. As he makes the final preparations for his crash landing, he finally understands the voices that drew him here. He closes his eyes as the ship hits the ground, and skids across the ice and snow into a tree. The last thing he sees from his cockpit before slipping into unconciousness is figure upon a huge landing pad, robes billowing, sillouheted by the moon.

Brush Count: 22713

Entity Count: 3335

Build Time: Overall, about 6 months on and off for this layout and design. Counting from Day 1, about a year!!! (Damn GCSE's!)

Compile Time: 7 minutes normal, 1 hour final.

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Map Installation : Unzip the contents of the zip (BlueIce Twilight.pk3) into your Jedi Academy/GameData/Base directory, and you're all set to go!

(EDITORS ONLY:)

Source Files: Unzip the contents of BlueIce Source.zip into your Jedi Academy/GameData/Base folder and add 'nomad' and 'nomad_snow' to your shaderlist.txt

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Features

• Toggleable teleports, kinda like Stargate.
  
• Dynamic Spawning (Spawn into areas only once you've discovered them for the first time!)
  
• Earthquake Scenario in Duel room.
  
• Public Toilets?
  
• Force-play with the snowmen.
  
• Realsitic Scripted Doors.
  
• 'Subtle Knife' teleporter.
  

THIS FILE IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY ACTIVISION PUBLISHING, INC., RAVEN SOFTWARE, OR LUCASARTS ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY, LLC. ELEMENTS™ & © LUCASFILM LTD.™ & DISNEY, INC.™ AND/OR ITS LICENSORS. STAR WARS®, JEDI®, & JEDI KNIGHT® ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF LUCASFILM LTD™ AND WALT DISNEY, INC.™ STAR WARS®, JEDI®, & JEDI KNIGHT® ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF LUCASFILM LTD™ & DISNEY, INC.™