Citadel makeover - GoldenEye: X

Download the patch from here (included as part of GoldenEye: X 5a)
Citadel was one of the best kept secrets of the Nintendo64 cartridge, GoldenEye 007, shown to the world by Krijy. Its design was quite interesting, but it's visuals weren't that good and the player would get lost in it easily. Today this level can be played as a multiplayer map thanks to a patch released by Zoinkity; and it can also be played thanks to the Perfect Dark hack named GoldenEye: X since its fourth version.

Since this project begun until it was released a year passed. In mid September 2011, Wreck, the leader of GoldenEye: X asked me to try fix the level and give it an Aztec theme. I extracted the level as OBJ and after a few a few tweaks I was able to load the triangle mesh in Autocad so I could edit it as I wanted. Because I was already busy finishing Kakariko Village for GoldenEye and I started modelling objects for another GoldenEye mod named GoldFinger 64, I didn't start working on this new Citadel until the beginning of 2012.

I already had in mind how I wanted the level to look like. The first thing to do was get rid of the ugly details (gaps between triangles and paper-thin walls). Second was selecting the textures I was going to use since I already decided that the iconic Aztec images would identify the different locations of the map and help the players to navigate through it. Also, I wanted to experiment with a third aspect: projected shadows in the background to make the level more appealing and realistic. And because I wanted to make things realistic, a metallic structure was added to the iconic spiral ramp (and I really like how it turned out).

New Citadel with the original GoldenEye sky. Final version has it different.

During the months I was working in New citadel (the name I gave to the project) I had some difficulties that were overcome thanks to the help of Wreck and SubDrag. One of the last things I did was choosing new sky colours, since the original green and gold didn't match the new theme. As I was working with Complex as base level, I get used to its redish sky, but a red background made the joins of the differents parts of the map more noticable. A black background fixed that issue, and in the end I made the sky look like this, although it didn't make it to the final version.

My main focus in New Citadel finished in mid April. Until the time of its release Wreck and SubDrag have been polishing the level to make it perfect, as the other contents available in the last Goldeneye: X update.
Thank you very much to both of you for thinking of me for the task and all the help you provided.


The utilities I used were:
-'GE Setup Editor' to extract the map in OBj format y the textures as BMP. Also for exporting to modified map to GoldenEye and Perfect Dark.
-'3D Studio MAX R6' to convert the OBJ to DWG
-'AutoCAD 2004' to modify the DWG file, modelling the level (fix geometry and prepare it for the new textures, modelling shadows), creating colisions (and the areas with light effects) and exporting the files to 3DS format.
-'DeleD CE' fot importing the 3DS file, then texture the level, group geometry and export the map to OBJ in order to finish the level in the 'GE Setup Editor'.