id Software has released Team Arena Map Pak 1, a collection of four maps created by the Quake community that have been tuned and refined with the help of id Software designer Paul Jaquays. The new Quake III: Team Arena maps include Japanese Castles, Schadenfreude, Crossed Paths and An Iteration of TA Hell. A second Team Arena Map Pak is already in the works.

Japanese Castles TA by Mike "g1zm0" Burbidge (japanc_ta.bsp)
Features the two Japanese fortresses from g1zm0's original Japanese Castles CTF map, along with caves, bridges and roaring waterfalls. This is a fast, exciting map with a lot of intersecting action.

Schadenfreude TA by Jason "Cornelius" Gill (schad_ta.bsp)
When we contacted him, Cornelius was already in the process of upgrading the appearance and play of the original Schadenfreude, one of the first community made CTF maps for Quake III Arena. We made a few suggestions for improvements as to how the game might be made to best play Team Arena game types and he turned them into a shiny gemstone of a map.

Crossed Paths v.TA by Dan "Drunken Boxer" Lanicek (dbox2_ta.bsp)
Drunken Boxer had already made some changes to his original version of Crossed Paths, making it even more competitive. We helped him set it up for Team Arena play and pointed out a few things he could do to smooth out some of the rough spots.

An Iteration of TA Hell by John "HAL9000" Schuch (hal9000_ta.bsp)
The Team Arena remake of this map is our token "really, really, quite very large" map in this pack. We helped HAL9000 find and fix a few sticky spots in the map, and showed him ways to improve the in-game performance, but structurally, this map is probably the closest to the original.

by MacNN Staff