Giant Piano
By BlueNinja
Date: 06-10-2010
Screenshots
Readme
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JK3: Jedi Academy
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A Map by Blueninja
Title: GIANT PIANO
Authour: Blue Ninja (a.k.a. Ascendedfish, a.k.a. Fishwithoutwings)
E-mail: fishwithoutwings (at) hotmail (dot) com
"Websites:" Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fishwithoutwings
Deviantart Page: http://ascendedfish.deviantart.com/
Music site: http://sites.google.com/site/ascendedfishmusic/
Filename: pianomap.pk3
FILE SIZE: Roughly 25 MB
RELEASE DATE: 4/6/2010
How to install:
Extract the pianomap.zip with Winzip, place the .pk3 of the same name into the C/programfiles/lucasarts/.../gamedata/base folder.
Features:
New music
New shaders and textures
FFA and Duel support
Preface:
This will likely be my very last map. In a couple months I'm off to college, where I'll be studying music technology in order to become a recording engineer. I may continue to map in my free time, but I will not be publishing anything. However, I might compose more original music for duel music mods! Oh, and soon I should post my V2 of the Sith Temple, the one seen in my film, The Archeologist's Story. Sometime this June, I promise!
Basic map info:
This map is a practise room, of some generic music school. In this practise room is a Yamaha Grand Piano, along with some filing cabinets of sheet music, a chair for a teacher, and inspirational artwork on the walls. Oh yeah, another thing. This room and its contents are large. Very, very large! One key on the piano is larger than the player.
I was inspired to make this:
By the game Vexx, in which there is a level of a giant's house, including a piano;
By my obsession with the king of all instruments that is the pianoforte;
By that Tom & Jerry episode of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody 2 that I, along with countless others, watched and loved from infancy onwards.
The Piano:
I don't have an acoustic piano in my house. I have three 88 key keyboards, one with real keys (Yamaha Disklavier), but to get the details of the inside of the piano I had to use photos from the internet. So it's not that accurate, and there's only so much I can do anyway with radiant.
If you don't know much about pianos, you might wonder: Why so many strings? There're more strings than keys? Well, here's some piano history for you. The piano is the direct descendant of the harpsichord. These instruments were made out of wood, and so the strings were thin, and each note had one string. The strings were plucked. Then they came out with the fortepiano. This is basically what van Beethoven would have used, for example. To get more power and a richer sonority, the notes (above the lowest register) were double strung. One actual piano string, but wound around the inside of the piano so that the hammer would hit, for all intents and purposes, two strings, the same length and tightness, therefore pitch. But pianos were still made out of wood, and they would often splinter due to the force of the strings. Who knows how many pianos van Beethoven broke? But they started to make them from metal (not completely, mind, just certain support parts). Then they could have essentially three strings for each note. The strings sort of go back and forth, so that what appears to be several strings is actually one string, though it depends on the manufacturer. I'm guessing Yamaha does this, and this is a Yamaha piano because it's simply easiest to make their logo with brushes. That way I'm not infringing on any copyrights by using an image from the internet. I have to say that, ideally, I would have made a Bosendorfer, which would have been cool because they have 96 keys, and these extra low keys are all black (even the "white" ones).
?Where are the hammers? you might ask, if your knowledge of the piano is based on that episode of Tom & Jerry. Well, the strings of a piano are struck by hammers from underneath the strings, so you can't really see them in the map. On top of the strings are the dampers. These go up when a note is struck, or when the sustain pedal is pressed down. They should have a sort of curved shape on top, but they had to be rotated at a slight angle. If you've mapped with radiant, you know what kind of havoc rotating anything more advanced than a rectangle can wreak on a map. One of the many frustrations of mapping.
Music:
The soundtrack is a combination of short (and one long) piano pieces, and not surprisingly they're piano solo works. First is a 2 minute piece by Bartok called the Chase, from the Out of Doors Suite. It's rhythmic and percussion like, very dark and dissonant, perfect for fast paced and brutal fights. Next is a very exciting piece by Nenov, a Bulgarian composer, 9 minutes long. Then an Etude by Prokofiev, op. 2 Allegro. I tried to learn it... didn't get far. Lasts 2 minutes. Finally, another Prokofiev, the last movement of the 7th Piano Sonata in Bb Major, opus 83. A very powerful piece! I can play the first minute of it, but after that... You can find these recordings on the internet, for example pianosociety.com. None of these is a classical piece; they are all modern works composed in the 20th Century. The total is 16 minutes, so you won't have music that repeats every 2 minutes, which I can never stand.
What's on the piano:
On the left hand side of the piano is a metronome. It even ticks when you get close enough, though it's not in sync with the movement of the metronome. Now, if you've used a metronome, it's more than likely that you've been frustrated by their unrelenting ticking, allowing for no mistakes, and no RUBATO!!! I tried making it destructible, but the func_pendulum when made into a func_breakable caused the map to not load. So it's invincible. If you know a way around this, please COMMENT.
On the right hand side of the piano is a small decorative piano (I for one have three different decorative pianos on my piano) which is an upright, and actual size compared to the player. Finally, the sheet music is Chopin's Polonaise opus 53 in Ab Major, the "Heroique." It's quite at odds to the soundtrack, but it works well. This is also a piece that I started to learn, but didn't get past page 3.
Also, the keyboard is stuck on a chord. I'm worried it looks kind of stupid, but otherwise the map's too moribund. The chord is, appropriately, the final chord of the piece that's on the music stand: a fortissimo Ab Major chord!
What's on the walls:
On the walls I put some piano related artwork of my own. It's not because I'm conceited or anything, it was just SO BORING, the room was. I needed to do something to add interest to the room. There is a piano in pointillism, a sketch of a Chopin photo, a sketch of Rachmaninov's hands at the piano, and Sviatoslav Richter. Feel free to check out my art at my deviantart page, above.
Above the door is a sort of vent with a slowly rotating fan. Jumping from the cabinets, across the picture frames and door frame will take you to the fan, which has a trigger_push that will send you flying across the room. Yes, and all because of that ostensibly innocuous fan. This is a good place to mention that I never play on MP. In MP, this will kill you, but not in SP. Also, you need the highest level of force jump to even get there.
Comments:
To get to the map in SP, type devmap pianomap.
It's loads of fun to drive swoop bikes off the piano lid. If cheats are active, you can type npc spawn vehicle swoop, but it's a lot more fun in SP (you go twice as far).
INTERACTIVE VERSION????
OK, I really wanted, and expected to be able to create, a giant piano that could be played by jumping on the keys. That would just be fun! I followed steps from various tutorials, but I couldn't get the keys to sound! IF ANYONE CAN FIGURE IT OUT PLEASE TELL ME! I'll publish a second version with this interactive feature, and I have the piano note samples to do this. But this version does not have a playable keyboard. Sorry.
Now what I would really like is a MIDI interactive version, where playing notes on a MIDI keyboard makes the keys in the map move! But I'm as likely to get that to work as I am to learn the complete Liszt repertoire in five minutes.
The Credits:
Some of the textures were made by me, otherwise:
Textures:
www.sharecg.com/v/8779/texture/parquet-floor
http://www.aussiesnrg.com/KiamaGame/Files.php
http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/godhandevilleg/works/texture/index.htm
got3d.com
http://www.m3corp.com/a/download/3d_textures/pages/woodpg/wood1205.htm
Special Thanks:
As always, a special thanks to RichDiesel, whose mapping tutorials are the only reason I've been able to do anything with radiant.
A very special thanks indeed to Bartholomew Christofori!
THIS MODIFICATION IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY ACTIVISION, RAVEN, OR LUCASARTS ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY LLC. ELEMENTS TM & LUCASARTS ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY LLC AND/OR ITS LICENSORS.