Digital Extremes' Juan Pancho Eekels has posted in

about the maps BR-ElecFields and CTF-LavaGiant2, both dropped from the final cut of UT2003.

ElecFields was taken out because of the main reason that the shadows/decals were killing it. The occlusion was fairly minimal as well, although that was not that much of a problem. It was running fine until the decals and shadows came back. I would have had to do a massive overhaul of the map and I just did not have the time to do this. Maybe I'll do it one day when machines get faster . I do liked the map a lot and felt that it had a unique place and had a lot of atmosphere.

As for the reason of why Lavagiant was taken out, it was Epic's decision. Making a map that large and open takes some effort and you need to compromise in where you can add detail in order to keep the framerate at an acceptable level. I personally think that the map played the way *I* wanted it to play (a design philosophy of mine). And it was worthy in that way to be included in UT2003 IMHO. But like I said, Epic decided against it and I let it go.

You see there are plenty of maps that do the same thing and I really get bored quickly doing that sort of thing. That's why HallOfGiants, LavaGiant and less popular maps of mine came to be.

So I hope this explains it a bit more. UT2003 is a crazy game that does not need maps like LavaGiant2 and Elecfields to be fun. It has many other maps that are fun to play!

-P

In a later post in the same thread, Pancho mentions that...

No, I'm not doing Magma.

I have been focusing my attention to UnrealChampionship. In here I have made another map that one day 'might' see the light in UT2003.

I am not sure how much time I will be able to devote to and make maps for UT2003 after it gets released. So we'll see about Elecfields and LG2. Our next project is pretty massive in nature, it will feature some pretty wild stuff and I am, to say the least, very excited about it.

I do know that some of our level designers are itching to make new ones for a DE MapPack!

So all is not lost, and we may see these maps again in a future map pack. According to CliffyB, we'll get CTF-Magma in the final version of the game, which is the 'spiritual successor' to LavaGiant.

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