This release contains three maps packed in one pk3. Each map has it's own construction but the theme is always the same. If you ever watched TV series Stargate, you will immediately recognize the main influence of the pack.

Camel has been working on a large project to allow Stargate ideas, such as the huge iris teleporter (the Stargate), to work in Quake 3. If you take his previous map Camelot Castle / Sahra Catacombs, it is the same map - just in more depth. You can run down a Tok'ra tunnel, activate Stargates and teleport to another planet. Just like the main heroes of the series do.

Using the Excessive Plus mod will increase the play experience. All maps require setting a few system variables, which are listed on the start-up level shot for each map.

q3sg1a: This map is the base for the other two. It is made of three parts. There is a castle with a Stargate connecting with another one in a desert planet where transporter rings will take you in to a Tok'ra base and vice versa. This map has no bot support. There are ramped stairs, which is not good for game flow as the stairs do not operate like stairs, but like ramps.

Items are not visible. There are only indicators that will give you the desired item when stepped on. Only the Rail Gun is found bobbing. Health, Armor and Ammo boxes are all hidden. There is a canal that leads you to a large outdoors area in the castle. The Desert planet has entries to catacombs, where the transporter rings are located. There are actually two rings - a fake set and one full working set that takes you to the Tok'ra base. Besides the second transporter rings, there is a teleport that takes you back to the catacombs. For CTF, one flag is held in the Tok'ra base and the other in the castle.

q3sg1b: Second map is basically the first one with bot support. I don't know where the differences are. I was not able to load the map up due to Z_Malloc error. You may experience the same error if you are using standard engine, I didn't test it with ioquake3.

q3sg1c: Only the castle is in this map. There is a Stargate included, but when you try to activate it, it fails. That way you are trapped in this world and forced to play only there. Flags are now both in the castle and items are normally visible, however some items do not correspond with their markers. Even when the map is reduced to only the castle, the map is pretty vast and full of details, which makes FPS drop down a little bit. Added some bots to play with and had some lags and even connection interruption playing on localhost! Restarting the game caused Z_Malloc error, so I had to restart entire engine and start playing again. The ramped stairs, like the first one map are present here too.

Conclusion: Pretty interesting project that would have great potential re-worked with the EntityPlus mod, where it's even possible to change the teleport destination. Though there are troubles with memory errors and gameplay ping, I must say Camel-XP has produced quite good pack in addition to his previous Stargate map. If you are big fan of Stargate, download.

Reviewed by CZghost

Tig's notes: The Castle section is based on a DeFRaG / Speedrun map by NemiX called NemiX_Run07 (external download). Check this YouTube clip by QuakeRussia for a sample DeFRaG run. Pretty impressive.

Huge amount of works has gone into these maps. I had no issues loading any of these maps with ioquake3 (64bit) on Linux.