Arguably
McKinley Revival ('map
q2ctf1' in the
console) was the first of five CTF maps contained in the
Q2CTF pack for Quake II and was easily the most played map. It was a remake of
McKinley Base which debuted in the
Threewave CTF mod for
Quake I. Since then it has been remade for
Quake III Arena as
McKinley's Vengeance and
Unreal Tournament in the
RealCTF mod.
The map consists of two identical team bases, one
red the other
blue, connected by two hallways to a main square room with a central platform in the shape of an 'H.' This platform does not touch the walls of the room, only the hallways that lead to each base. Beneath this platform was a large water pit that contained a small, enclosed room which housed a
hyperblaster as well as a teleport back to the upper platform. Also located within the watery
basin are two colored sewer pipes that lead to the teams' bases.
Each base was essentially a big box that was entered via a small hallway or the sewer entrance. A set of steps on the right side (when viewed from the front of the room) allows one to get to the flag in the back right corner. A cut-out in the right wall reveals access to a vertical sewer pipe with a ladder to allow for sewer entrance into the base. In the center back there is a little cut-out containing a box to hide behind and a
chaingun pickup. The entire left side of the room has a short little shelf like platform about halfway up the wall with
crates both on it and below it. The boxes beneath the shelf are between the vertical supports and directly below the edge of the shelf. The boxes on top are seemingly randomly placed in the back half of the shelf, but make for great shelter from attackers. There is also a
rocket launcher pickup behind these boxes.
The back left and front right corners of the base have triangular
sniper platforms that fit neatly into the corner near the ceiling. The only way to get to these platforms is to rocket jump or use the
grapple (not all
servers had the grapple weapon enabled).
There was also a small elevator built into the left wall, immediately at the front of the room. The elevator would service a small area beneath each base that allowed one to view and take part in the action in the central room. It did not stop at the first floor of the main base room, only the upper platform. The only normal entrance or exit to this room is the elevator. If one has enough skills with the grapple, however, one could perform some trickery and enter and exit through the "window." This small area contained
slugs and a
railgun pickup.
Without much work, one could also make their way onto the small ledge beneath the team banner that hung above the hallway entrance. This could grant an element of surprise to any defending from hopeful enemy
flag carriers.
The popularity of this map surely came from the popularity of the
original map. While McKinley Revival was faithful to the original map, the map maker(s) changed enough to make the map fit the new game while also making it fresh.
I have noted a small bug if a server is allowed to run this map for a long period of time (anywhere from five hours to a day is what I have observed): The
elevator in each team's base will travel farther (both up and down) than it should be able to. That it does this after an arbitrary amount of time leads me to believe that this is a mathmatical
error (maybe with rounding or something like that) either in the map itself or in the game's elevator movement
code.
*Note: It has been many years since I have played McKinley Revival, let alone Quake II, so some of the details may be off. I currently do not possess any of the files necessary to load up the map and check this writeup for accuracy. My apologies for any glaring errors.