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Umm, pardon me, but your bush is on fire...
Well, well, well, another first time author, fresh chum for the party boat guys! Some words of wisdom, when swimming with sharks don't bleed! Seriously now here is a map that has good potential but falls a bit short in too many areas to get a very good score. But this author has potential and will get it right I am sure. At least I hope so. The first thing that hit me on this map was the skybox, which is really well done, on the sides of the box at least. I don't understand that circle of color smack in the middle of the skybox. Is it supposed to spin or rotate in some way? It looks silly as it is and takes away from what started out like a decent effort. The lighting in the tunnel is really pretty poor as well. Don't get me wrong, it's brighter than daylight in there and that's the problem, I had to turn my brightness down just to see in there. The author missed the opportunity to add atmosphere by creating a different effect in the tunnels. Instead what you have is really bright texturing that misses the mark. Look at the lighting on CTF-CBP-Betrayal and see how the lamps sway with the wind and the lighting moves with the sway on the lamps, very nice job on that map. Use smaller lanterns in that tunnel and make them much darker and add some ambient dripping sounds in there for effect. And what is with that golden texturing on the sides of the mountains / hills? It just looks so out of place and needs to be redone to fit in with the terrain better. Speaking of terrain, that texturing also needs work in many places because it doesn't look like a smooth flowing landscape at all. Speaking of terrain, this map needs to have some different texturing around the map to break things up a bit. It just looks too similar all across the map for my taste.
The flow suffers greatly because it's a North / South run to capture the flag. There are 2 flag main route is right down the middle with one route on the side where that tunnel is that I mentioned. It is a very predictable playing board and I would suggest adding an additional tunnel on the opposite side to balance the map or add stairs or a jump pad to allow the runner to use the opposite upper level area as a flag route. This way the tunnel on one side and the jump pad on the opposite side of the upper mountain area is the third flag route. I would also open that wall in the flag base area or split it open so you don't have to go all the way around all the time. The flags are on top of these mounds that can only be reached by a jump pad and are in need of serious help texture wise. Very poor execution IMO because the flags are wide open as it is to snipers and to force players to hit those jump pads to get the flag kills the game play. Your a sitting duck out there and why are they so high that I cannot traverse up that mound and avoid that jump pad like I can do with the Shock Rifle hill?
Speaking of items placement can anyone find any health packs on this board? I couldn't and I looked everywhere, and ammo was not too plentiful either. The Flak is in the tunnel and the rockets are dead center in the map. Shock Mountain speaks for itself and I did like the Sniper placement but didn't see the mini gun unless I just missed it. So items placement is poor as well I would have to say. Not so much in where they are placed but in items that are just missing.
The BOTs played ok set to "ADEPT" so there was a bright spot. But the flow is poor and predictable so game play suffers greatly. I did not hear one ambient sound either and this is canned UT2k3 music that has been used hundreds of times before and I don't recommend that any authors use it anymore, PLEASE!
It's not my place to tell you how to make this map better, but I am going to do it anyway, so here we go.
Fix that Skybox and the tunnel lighting. Re-texture the hills and get the meshes to meld better. Add that jump pad for a third flag route and place the health, Mini gun and more ammo on top of the hills on each side. Retexture or loose those flag mounds completely, add custom tunes and some ambient sounds and Presto! A much better map you will have. And lose that burning bush too! Holy Moses, Lois, your bush is on fire. :-)
Bottom Line: A first time author and effort that needs a bit more work but stick with it. You have what it takes. Try some of my suggestions with version 2.
Score: 4.5
Average User Score: (0 scores)
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