The Creation of Deep Blue Astral
- Chong Lee
The Initial Idea
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After I finished the map DM-SerenityBay in 2012. I didn’t plan to invest much time to making new maps. UT3 had been released for 5 years. And there was no news about a next UT. So I figured I could do some simple maps. Late that year I saw the pictures above somewhere on the internet. And that triggered the idea of a new map which eventually became Deep Blue.
 The corridor and the slanted side shape of the wall. The openings on the wall. And the overall structure. |  The window as tall as the wall  The way the stairs put next to the building |  The stairs going up towards the wall |  The stairs next to the big side wall |
Compare the final look of the map with the initial reference pictures. There is still some resemblance.
The Early Development in UT3 and UDK
I remember when it was started in late 2012, the plan was to create the map for UT3. But I was also making it in UDK.
The reasons were:
I wanted GI for the map but the lighting system of UT3 didn’t have built-in solution like UDK. So I made it in UDK for GI comparison, and baked GI to textures using VRay in 3ds Max.
The map was built with BSP in UDK, then the brushes were exported to 3ds Max for creating layout meshes which were used in the UT3 map.
The first UDK map was created as early as in January 2013. The UT3 map was created before that but I can’t tell exactly when because I have lost all of the files.
 The 20130104 UDK version |  The background vista in 20130104 |  20130204 |
In the pictures above, the main structure in grey, was built with BSP, and it was on the top of a mountain, surrounded by terrain background. These were all meshes.
Very soon, the concept was changed from something very simple to something more mixed. I became a fan of brutalist architecture around that time, and naturally I thought the map could use some concrete structures with interesting shapes. The initial reference had a little bit of that, but I thought my map could go further. And a mountainous background would be perfect for such buildings.
In the UDK map 20130327, two months after the whole thing was started, it already looked like the pictures above, clearly affected by that brutalist style.
The upper two screenshots from UDK were the two major sections of the layout. The lower shot was how the map looked in 3ds Max.
The two sections were roughly the same size, and sit next to the middle area, hand in hand. The design was to give them their own important items while the middle area was hot zone with power-ups. Note the jumppad tunnel was added for the vertical gameplay between the two sections.
I liked the art style, but the layout started to feel too big for gameplay (unless it was for big team size modes) and too heavy for visual. That was not what I wanted. I made a decision to split the layout in half.
The left half was called “Section A“, and the right was “Section B“. They both look fine as standalone maps but Section B was simpler, so I took it as the one for Deep Blue. I thought I would finish Section B first, then come back to make Section A into another map. I never thought just Section B alone, is going to take a decade.
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These are screenshots from 3ds Max of Section B in mid 2013. The lighting with blue ambient and nice shadow was GI baked into base color. And I added the bottom to the ground, still rough, but it was becoming a floating island. It was then I decided to make this a space map.
The mid 2013 was also when I stopped the making of the UDK version of the map. I had the whole BSP layout converted to meshes, and the plan was to work on the meshes and ship the map for UT3.
I learned ZBrush around 2012 to 2013, and was using it to create the terrain background and then the bottom.
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The above two shots were taken in August 2013. The left was from UT3, and the right one was from 3ds Max.
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The above screenshots are taken in 3ds Max and it was a version from March 2014. The layout was considered almost done and I was subdividing the meshes so that vertex color can be used for material blending. Those magenta, blue, cyan colors were painted vertex color, displayed together with the textures. At that point, my plan was to finish the map within 2014 or 2015 at most. Little did I know, things were going to change.
The Porting to UT4
Finally the community wanted to create our own version of UT! There was Open Tournament, kicked off in April 2014. I was so happy to contribute my part that I decided to start work on a Deck remake. Also UE4 looked much better than UE3 in UT3, so finishing Deep Blue for UT3 became no longer my top priority.
Then there came the announcement of the UT4 development, just about 1 month later in May 2014. That changed everything. I decided to stop working on the UT3 version of the map, and export the map to UT4, besides, I added another map, Peak Monastery, into my to-do list.
[To Be Continued]
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